I thought I would take some time to share my journey with the government’s Kickstart programme so far, it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster and very frustrating to say the least.
So let’s start at the beginning, I was aware of the kickstart scheme back in the summer of last year when the government first talked about it’s plans to help young people get off Universal Credit and into paid employment. It sounded like a great idea but when I looked at the details you needed to recruit a minimum of 30 people so yet again it seemed like something aimed at large business rather than SME’s, a little frustrating when us small business owners had been through a pretty tough year. Thankfully when these rules changed to allow businesses the chance to apply directly, even just for 1 person it made the scheme accessible to all and I was delighted. Business was picking up and I could really do with an extra pair of hands to help with some of the more administrative tasks I need to do day to day but cash flow was holding me back from employing someone right now, I just wanted to continue to ride the Covid storm without this added pressure. But Kickstart could provide exactly what I needed and give me the opportunity to help up-skill a young person, something I am incredibly passionate about. So I made my application.
Whilst completing my own application and looking at the criteria I discovered that one thing that was really important was to cover off employability training with these young people and ensure they would be more confident applying for jobs after their 6-month placement, this was something that would be easy for me to support, I have been doing this with candidates and school leavers for years. But it got me thinking that this wouldn’t be so easy for many other small business owners in different industry sectors. It was my lightbulb moment! I set about coming up with a plan around how I could work with business owners to complete their applications for them, then do the screening of the candidates and then the really exciting part, once they started their placement with my client they would come into a 6 month weekly mentoring programme with me. We would meet over a zoom call as a group covering training around CV writing, interview tips, how to stand out when applying for roles but then cover off much more than this such as behavioural profiling, systems training and also invite in guest speakers from my network to talk about their career journey to inspire these youngsters. Having spent 20 years seeing so many young people finish education and not really knowing what to do or be able to find a company that is happy to take them on with no experience, this really felt like such a great opportunity for so many.
So I launched my plan out to my network and I was delighted with a great response, I set about applying for my clients and to date we have only had 3 declined, 2 of which has received approval 2nd time round. I was so pleased with how smoothly it was all going but then we hit the bottleneck! The initial application process only takes a couple of weeks but once your paperwork is then submitted back to DWP you can be waiting around for sometimes more than a month before they have advertised your role and unless the role is advertised then candidates cannot apply. I have candidates who have heard about the scheme and are eligible, they would be perfect for some of my clients but as we are still waiting for the roles to go live on the system they are unable to apply. Only this week I spent a day in my local job centre hoping to interview candidates for 4 roles that I have, but there had only been 1 interview set up and although I would like to offer this candidate the role, despite emailing the contacts I was given for my role, 5 days later I am still awaiting a reply. There have been examples of job centres that are very proactive, Woolwich Job Centre has been amazing, we have received a high number of referrals for my client and they have set up Teams calls with interested candidates for us to talk about the roles and answer questions which really helped.
I’m never one to be beaten and give up on something, especially something I am so passionate about but it does feel like the idea for this scheme is a great one but it’s not been set up with the infrastructure to deliver the volume. I’m sure things will improve and for now, I will keep hounding people until I get the people I need. But if it’s something you are considering then don’t delay in applying, the process takes a while!!