Networking For Employability
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What can you do?
There is an increasing awareness that employers are looking for more than just formal qualifications when recruiting new staff. What young people do and achieve outside of formal education is as important, if not more so, in shaping the attitudes and aptitudes that they bring to the world of work.
Youth Work Awards
The Awards Network captures a wide range of non-formal learning awards available to young people in Scotland. The Award Finder will help you to identify and better understand these Awards and the skills that youth work awards can demonstrate in the people that you are considering employing. Skills that they gain are particularly relevant and transferable to their employment potential. Awareness of these awards can support your recruitment decisions.
Many of the awards can also offer experiences, skills and opportunities for developing confidence and self-worth in your existing workforce too.
Why is non-formal learning important?
Regardless of where young people are on the attainment spectrum, they all need to demonstrate that ‘something extra’ to stand out from the crowd at the shortlisting stage and at the job interview.
From the Business Sector, CBI Scotland, tells us…
Business is clear – we need an education system which develops rigorous, rounded and grounded young people. This means a system which focuses as much on the development of key attitudes and attributes – such as confidence, resilience, enterprise, ambition – as on academic progression and attainment.
– Delivering Excellence- a new approach for Schools in Scotland, 2015, CBI Scotland
From the Education Sector, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education found through an Aspect Review of youth awards that:
Young people gain a wide range of skills such as confidence, interpersonal, team working, leadership and employability through participation in youth awards.
Youth awards support young people in their learning and to progress to further and higher education, training and employment on leaving school.
– A Review of Youth Awards in Scotland, 2015, HMIe Education Scotland
Any job requires a set of technical skills, but employees also need a range of ‘soft skills’. These are the skills that enable people to work together effectively. Recognising the breadth of opportunities offered by youth work awards will help employers better understand the way in which young people’s extra-curricular activities build up their ‘soft skills’, and make them more effective employees in the workplace.
Awards Aware
Your organisation can demonstrate the value it attaches to youth work awards and its understanding of the opportunities they provide to young people by signing up to be “Awards Aware”.
An Awards Aware body understands the range of youth work awards available; endorses youth work awards as evidence of learning and achievement; values the skills developed through youth work awards; and recognises recipients of youth work awards as successful learners offering strong transferrable skills.
As an awarding body, The Prince’s Trust is regulated by SQA Accreditation to design, offer and award qualifications in Scotland.
The Prince’s Trust Personal Development and Employability Skills qualifications are included in Insight and have Tariff points awarded.
Skills Development Scotland found that 98% of young people that completed our qualifications had successful outcomes. This includes 82% moving on to Further/Higher Education.
The Prince’s Trust Achieve programme is a flexible, free personal development programme.
It is designed to support and empower students aged 11-19 (and up to 25 with SEN statement or EHCP) who may need additional assistance to succeed in education.
It supports education providers by providing free learning resources and guidance for you to deliver flexibly in your setting. There is also the option for Achieve learners to gain a Prince’s Trust qualification. Our qualifications are regulated by the appropriate regulatory bodies.
The Achieve programme helps learners to develop skills and experience for life, whilst building their confidence to realise their potential.
Read MoreBaqar, 16, from Glasgow, suddenly found himself two years ago transported from Iraq to Scotland, unable to speak any English.
Shy and reserved, Baqar struggled to integrate at school and found communication with his peers and engagement with the curriculum extremely difficult. Consequently, he had few friends and became increasingly isolated both in class and at break times.
Baqar joined The Prince’s Trust Achieve programme in school which offers students the chance to try industry taster days, giving them practical experience across different sectors to inspire their career choice. This gave Baqar the opportunity to build up communication and team working skills and to start thinking about what he wanted to do after he left school.
The programme focussed on personal development and at first, Baqar found it difficult to participate. However, a visit to a local technology business, Artronix transformed his progress. At Artronix, he was desperate to get started on the electronics challenge. Not only was he first to finish but he was able to help others in the team who were struggling.
It became clear that Baqar’s main barrier to educational success was his language skills so The Trust provided specialist tuition. Baqar really began to shine. He took part in the Achieve programme’s enterprise challenge and achieved the top score. At the regional final, he was able to give a presentation in front of a large audience.
He says, “Now I can speak to my friends and understand my lessons which I couldn’t do before I went to The Prince’s Trust.”
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