It’s been almost a year since Clare, our managing director, became an Enterprise Advisor for Pool Academy. Within that time, she has helped connect many local businesses to the pupils and teachers, went to career carousel days and even helped organise a bit of speed networking with the pupils.
The Enterprise Advisor programme looks to help connect local businesses with surrounding schools and colleges to help bridge the gap between education and employment.
The idea of the programme is for business owners and employees to use their skills, business experience and networks to help schools develop career programmes that can benefit and support all students.
It can be a way to give back to the community that helped your own business to grow. It’s also a way to open conversations with other businesses to see what their issues are when it comes to recruiting and seeing what skills are needed in what sector.
One of the biggest barriers that students get caught in when applying for their first jobs straight out of education, is the lack of skills for that specific job. There is a big disconnect between employer and potential employee. As an Enterprise Advisor, you can help provide an insight into what skills are required in your sector and integrate that back into your schools’ careers programme.
The ultimate goal of the programme is to help both the local businesses and schools. Businesses can provide their input on what they need from future employees. For schools, these conversations can all be fed back into the schools to be filtered into careers programmes so young people can be career ready.
You can find out more about the Enterprise Advisor programme here.