Recruit Ability launch brings great talent opportunity to local employers

 

 

As befits the UK’s most diverse, friendly and inspirational city we saw the launch on Thursday 29th September of Possability People’s and Brighton Chamber’s exciting new project Recruit Ability to a packed out room upstairs at one of Brighton’s premier Pizza restaurants, Franco Manca in Church Street.

Recruit Ability has been set up with funding from the Department of Work and Pensions to help the employers of Brighton and Hove tap into the much overlooked but nevertheless rich vein of talent that exists within our city’s disabled people.

 

The open invitation event was attended by a significant number of Brighton & Hove employers who were keen to understand why it made so much sense to recruit via the Recruit Ability project. We were also joined by some of the people who have been placed via the project and some that were looking to find work through it in the near future.

Mandy Crandale from Possability People opened the event by giving us a short talk on what Possability People does and how it works. The local charity is committed to helping people make more things possible, no matter what their situation. They work with disabled people, older people, young people or anyone with an impairment or long term health condition.

 

Driven by a clear recognition of the independence and meaning that work can bring to people’s lives, the organisation seeks to prepare and support disabled people who have a strong desire to work and then connect them to employers in Brighton and Hove who have recruitment needs that fit through new project Recruit Ability.

Mandy was keen to hear from employers that had current vacancies but she was also keen to stress that, even if we didn’t have any openings at this time, employers could support the project by offering work experience and interview training.

 

We also heard from Matt Chambers, the Founder and CEO of Madison Solutions. Matt shared with us his very recent experience of recruiting an employee through the Recruit Ability project. He explained that, as one of many web design agencies in Brighton, finding good people in a busy talent market is always a challenge.

 

A chance conversation between him and Mandy at a recent Chamber Breakfast encouraged Matt to explore the opportunity of finding someone who would fit his business needs through Recruit Ability. The result was the recruitment of Kieran Stack into the Madison Solutions team a short while later.

 

Matt has been impressed with the progress that Kieran has made since joining his company and is clearly recommending Recruit Ability to other employers in the city. He was extremely keen to impress upon us that his company were not doing this to be kind, although they recognised that these opportunities make a very big difference in the lives of the people they are recruiting. Madison Solutions recruited Kieran because it made simple, good business sense to them. Even better, Matt still can’t get over the fact that there is no recruitment fee!

Following the short presentations we had the chance to network a little and enjoy the fabulous food laid on by Franco Manca. Talking to Angela Graham from Possability People I discovered a lot more about the support that their organisation provides to the candidates and the companies in the process. Getting people into work who may not have had any significant work experience in the past requires good preparation but there is also a recognition that once an candidate is placed the support doesn’t stop there. Possability People continue to work with the employer and the new employee for months after the placement to make sure that everything is going as intended.

 

All in all, the launch of Recruit Ability proved to be a great success. For me the opportunity works on so many levels:

 

 

It just makes good business sense.