As a Yorkshire PR agency and Wakefield based business, we were asked recently to attend a meeting with like-minded companies in the area, who would support a local initiative to provide unemployed people in the district with advice and guidance, in the hope that they may secure temporary or permanent roles as a result.
The initiative, Wakefield Works, was the brain child of local entrepreneurs Andy Turner from First Choice Recruitment and Marcello Moccia from Room:97 hairdressers. The concept is relatively simple – each business who agrees to get involved will open their doors on Thursday 4 October and will commit to meeting with local unemployed people who choose to visit their business.
Giving around 15 – 20 minutes to each candidate, businesses are asked to provide advice and guidance to each person, while also answering any questions that they have. In addition the company will provide one person from those who visit the organisation with a week’s work placement.
What a great idea! So simple, yet potentially very effective.
Needless to say here at Open Communications we are getting behind this project 100% and hope to meet with some very interesting and inspiring people as a result. I think it’s important to highlight that the people who are looking for work in the region can be any age and any level of experience and that is what makes this approach all the more interesting.
If as a result of this activity just one person finds temporary or full time work then it has been a success – ideally more will follow and we will find that as a result of this activity the companies who choose to get involved will also help to reduce local unemployment levels.
So come on – here’s a shout out to all those businesses within the Wakefield district who aren’t involved in this great initiative yet. Get in touch with Andy Turner at andy@first-choice.co.uk and find out more about how you can help to make our area a better place. You never know, you could just find the new recruit of your dreams. Stranger things have happened!