Member Article

Trade body facilitates over 100 new roles in recruitment sector through Kickstart Scheme

The Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) has submitted an application to Government under the Kickstart Scheme for 101 new roles in the recruitment sector on behalf of 32 of its members to help the staffing sector to support young people in building their careers.

Kickstart – part of the ‘Plan for Jobs’ scheme – is intended to create thousands of new, fully subsidised jobs of up to 25 hours per week to support young people (aged 18-24) into employment during the Coronavirus. However, to be eligible for the support, an employer must create at least 30 new job placements.

In order to provide staffing companies with access to this scheme, APSCo has collated vacancies from a number of its members and submitted them to Government. The roles are varied and include resourcers; CV administrators, trainee consultants and digital marketers.

“We want all our members, irrespective of size to be able to get involved with the scheme”, says Ann Swain, Chief Executive of APSCo, “and so we felt it important to offer to facilitate members who wanted to get involved but who just didn’t have the vacancy numbers to be able to participate. In order to further support members, we have also put together a training package for each young person on placement at a hugely subsidised rate with modules aligned to the placements on offer.”

“The first tranche of applications have already been made and I’m extremely pleased to see so many of our members getting involved.”

Toni Harney, Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Goodman Masson and Richard Bradley the MD of Kelly Services UK and Ireland operation, both of who have been part of the first application feel that the initiative really plays to promoting recruitment as a career of choice

“Creating opportunities for young people to enter our industry is something we’ve always been passionate about, and this really aligns to that.”, says Toni. “We’ve been working hard to prepare an on boarding journey and training plan that allows the people who join us to have a great experience and get the most out of their time with us.” Richard Kelly agrees that the scheme will be really valuable for the sector: “We’re really pleased to be involved in the kickstart scheme with APSCo. Whilst the economy has been rocked in 2020 we continue to look into the future and attracting new talent to the business is essential to Kelly. The support APSCo has provided in helping hire young people seeking exciting new career opportunities is incredibly valuable. The recruitment sector can provide fantastic opportunities for the emerging generation of the workforce and we’re excited to begin welcoming new hires to the team.”

Zack Raja, Director at Talentometry, a turnkey recruitment start-up in Bolton made the point that the scheme can really help deprived areas:

“Having grown up locally in Bolton in one of the top 10 most deprived boroughs in the UK, I firmly believe employment provides the best route out of poverty. The Kickstart programme provides Talentometry with a risk-free route to give a young person with little to no experience an opportunity to succeed with our business.”

According to Tamara Barnard, People & Key Account Director, Build Recruitment, being able to access the scheme through APSCo will support business growth:

“For us at Build Recruitment, the kickstart scheme came along at the right time. We’re looking at setting up a new desk and we don’t want to pull consultants away from their current work to deliver this. The 18 to 24 age range is a good target group to focus on career development. Recruiting and training those that are recently out of education gives us an opportunity to develop the next tranche of recruiters. We currently have four roles advertised under the scheme and we’re working on a full on-boarding and training scheme to give the new recruits the best possible start.”

First placements are expected to take place in November and there has been so much interest that APSCo is now working on the next tranche of vacancies for a further application by the end of the year.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by APSCo .