Recruiting and retaining skilled staff looks set to continue to sit at the top of the priority and ’cause of headache’ list for HR managers and business owners across Hawke’s Bay and New Zealand as a whole. Whilst most initiatives concentrate on bringing Kiwi’s back from their lengthening OE’s and attracting immigrant talent, we ought not loose sight of the painful reality that a significant slice of our population are not engaging in the workforce. All that potential talent lost.
Cast your mind back to when you were 16 and yet to take those first tentative steps on your career path. Did you know what you wanted to do for a living? Did you have the support and guidance to help you get there? What if there was a process that identified what your unique talents, skills and work preferences were, then illustrated the jobs and careers most likely to fulfil your potential and pointed you at the qualifications, training and work experience you needed to get there. In short, a Careers Guidance Counsellor that actually worked.
People Central are delighted to announce a pilot scheme in partnership with Te Tai Whenua O Heretaunga Youth Transition Services. Our statement of intent is bold and clear. We aim to place school leavers who currently have little or no idea of where or why they want to work into jobs that will nurture, develop and fulfil their potential by delivering skills assessments and career support of the highest corporate professional quality using tried and tested people assessment tools.
Our long term objective is to reduce both the employer’s skills gap and proportion of young people not engaging in the workforce in Hawke’s Bay and beyond.
We are not going to achieve this by ourselves!
The partnership and support from HB Chamber of Commerce and Te Tai Whenua O Heretaunga in initiating this project is a fantastic start but we need enlightened businesses and organisations across the region who recognise the benefits of an engaged young workforce on the bay’s economy and wider society to join in by offering meaningful work-experience and job-placements to individuals who express an interest in pursuing a career in your industry, service or sector.
If you are able to offer genuine work experience placements to young people with an equally genuine interest in forging a career in your business or organisation, then we would love to hear from you.
Further information is available by calling Steve Evans on 06 833 6465 or emailing him at steve@peoplecentral.co.nz