A college in Oxford is helping to reduce unemployment in the county thanks to an innovative approach to finding jobs for students and the long-term unemployed.

Oxford and Cherwell Valley College’s Jobfinder scheme is matching its own apprentices with employers and helping to find jobs for those out of work who have received training from the college, especially so for those out of work for more than six months. This is thanks to funding from the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS).

“I wouldn’t want to refer to the project as a recruitment agency but if you think about the services offered by the very best agencies, we have similar aims,” explains Neil Edwards, the college’s business enterprise manager.

Oxford and Cherwell Valley has a strong track record in delivering high quality vocational skills training, holds the Learning and Skills Council’s sought-after Training Quality Standard certification and served more than 500 employers of all sizes last year, including BMW and Oxford’s University’s colleges.

But as unemployment has risen it has proven harder to find would-be apprentices sustainable employment to allow them to continue to take advantage of college-based apprenticeship training. This has prompted a rethink on how the college can better help match aspiring apprentices to employers.

“We have around 50 young people already training on Programme-Led Pathway Apprenticeships, mainly in the motor vehicle and plumbing sectors” said Mr Edwards, “They are our priority group because we have to match them with employers by September to enable them to continue training. But we are also working with Job Centre Plus clients from across the county, running a wide range of short courses for people out of work.”

“We thought about how we might be able to more actively match these people with the employers we serve.”

The answer is to recruit two people – with the help of LSIS funding – to conduct in-depth interviews with all the candidates trained by the college and then take the resulting profiles to employer groups through one-to-one meetings and events so that aspirations are precisely matched.

The college is also offering recruitment support, such as interview tips and CV preparation, for these candidates, who may be entering the job market for the first time.

In an effort to win over employers to the scheme the college will not make any charge for placing candidates with employers – at least whilst it has LSIS funding – and the support offered will not end when a candidate is matched to an employer as Mr Edwards explained: “If a Job Centre Plus client has come to us for a short course in something like security training, once we have matched them with a new employer we can then offer them a longer-term NVQ qualification in the subject. It is all about how we can offer support for candidates and employers at every stage of the process.”

The scheme is one of several awarded to innovative schemes by LSIS in the first round of bidding for its flexibility and innovation fund. The fund is aimed at fostering innovative ideas which can produce results to benefit the learning and skills sector nationwide.

Jobfinder is already up and running with college HR advisor Nicky Harris kicking-off the candidate interview process until the two new arrivals are in post by the end of this month. As well as paying wages for the new recruits the £90,000 provided by LSIS will help publicise the scheme and subsidise some of the additional college costs to get the scheme operational.

“We’re confident that this scheme will make a difference and we will happily share our experience of what worked well and also any operational concerns, so that similar organisations can replicate it across the country,” added Mr Edwards.

LSIS recently opened the second round of bidding for the flexibility and innovation fund, for more details visit www.lsis.org.uk

Military communications on operations are to further enhanced, thanks to a new £400 million contract to use a new satellite, the Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, Quentin Davies, announced today.

The Skynet 5D which is the fourth satellite of its kind to be used by the MoD is roughly three times the length of a double decker bus and will be launched in 2013 playing a key role in gathering intelligence on operations. The satellite will also be used to provide the telephone and internet welfare support facilities for Service personnel on operations.

Minister for Defence Equipment and Support, Quentin Davies, said:

Future operations require that our Armed Forces are given access to the best possible communications and this new satellite will go a long way to ensuring this.

This value for money package not only builds upon a tried and tested capability for the Armed Forces, but also secures hundreds of jobs in a very important field of technology.

The build of Skynet 5D will directly create around 100 new jobs, mainly at EADS Astrium’s sites in Portsmouth and Stevenage. It will also sustain approximately 800 jobs at these sites and in Corsham, Wiltshire, at Paradigm's Hawthorn site.

Lord Drayson, Minister for Science and Innovation, said:

The UK's thriving space and satellite industry has been a real recession-buster – creating jobs and achieving exceptional growth. This latest success cements the UK's position as a world leader in satellite technology, with the sector forecast to be worth £40Bn to the UK by 2030.

Darrell Midgley, MOD Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S), Information Systems and Services Networks Head, said:

The demand for satellite communications is growing faster than originally predicted. To ensure that future operations will continue to have access to the vital communications they may need, the MOD has decided to make arrangements to take advantage of the services that a fourth satellite in the Paradigm’s Skynet constellation would provide.

Source: MOD