Jobcentre Plus; helping businesses and long term unemployed
September 14, 2009
With the grim news today that unemployment could continue to increase, and potentially not recover to pre-recession levels until 2015, there are millions of people relying on the services of Jobcentre Plus to help them return to employment. The numbers of people who are classed as long term unemployed is increasing as the time to find new work gets longer in the limited employment market, but at the same time many companies are still recruiting and potentially struggling to find candidates that meet their needs through their existing recruitment methods.
One effective way of tackling this dual problem is with a Local Employment Partnership (LEP). This is a scheme where the Job Centre helps to source candidates through the pool that is classed as long term unemployed, and if required may carry out pre-interview training or assessments to ensure that candidates with the right capability and skills are being put before employers. One employer that has recently found success with this scheme is John Lewis, where recent recruitment drives for new store openings have involved many LEP candidates, and the success rate for these applicants has been high. In addition to this, it has been found that those employees that were sourced through the LEP have been retained at 90%, which shows the benefits in terms of loyalty and commitment that can be found through this route. As Suzy Welby, manager of government initiatives at John Lewis highlights, the labour pool of long term unemployed people is growing and could be a great source of untapped talent:
“There might soon be three million unemployed, many of whom will have the skills we want, and that is not a group you can ignore.”
For more information on this subject visit the jobcentreplus website
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