Companies back campaign to target unemployed through recruitment processes

RA Now

Manpower Group and Pertemps are among 15 ‘champion businesses’ leading an initiative to help businesses recruit unemployed people by changing their recruitment processes.

A further 90 businesses have backed the campaign by pledging to adapt their recruitment strategies to include the unemployed.

The Generation Talent initiative, led by the charity Business in the Community (BITC) with JobCentre Plus, aims to show how businesses taking steps such as finding out if their current recruitment processes automatically sift unemployed people out can lift more people out of unemployment and widen their talent pool.

With 92 per cent of businesses using informal methods such as word of mouth to recruit a portion of entry-level staff, many unemployed people are cut off from knowing the job is advertised, BITC says, quoting figures from the Centre for Social Justice.

The stigma around unemployment adds another barrier, with 72% of managers considering unemployment for six months or more as a negative indicator of a candidate’s ability.

BITC suggests companies reassess what qualifications and experience are really needed for entry-level roles and instead emphasise importance of aptitude and attitude during recruitment.

Steve Holliday, chief executive of one of the champion businesses – National Grid – said his own company has started advertising posts with JobCentre Plus and changed the wording of its ads after it found it was not making its jobs accessible to everyone.

“The UK has the fastest growing rate of youth unemployment of all the G8 countries,” he added. “And many of these young people are unemployed not because they’re lazy or demotivated, but because businesses are inadvertently excluding them from opportunities.”

Whitbread Hotels & Restaurants is also a champion company. Its managing director Patrick Dempsey, said: “We want all UK businesses to support the criteria that recruitment and selection processes are not about unintentionally putting unemployed people at a disadvantage by making ‘previous experience’ mandatory for entry level jobs. If we can change these behaviours it can have a hugely positive effect on the prospects of a generation of talented people.”