Leading IT recruitment specialists Certes, based in Warwickshire, has been awarded a multi million pound funding contract by regional development agency Advantage West Midlands (AWM) to place thousands more graduates into the region’s private companies over the next four years.
The new service, called Grad Central, aims to increase the number of graduates working in the region by helping SME’s in particular to recruit the people they need to enable them to develop their business.
Simon Churan, Managing Director for Certes, commented: “It was an extremely competitive tender and pitch process, not surprisingly for such a high profile regional initiative, so we’re delighted to have been awarded this prestigious contract. This contract means we’re creating an entirely new business with a dedicated team of expert Graduate recruitment consultants, and at the heart of it a really exciting new regional graduate recruitment portal”.
The key priority of Grad Central is retaining graduate talent in the region. The fact is the West Midlands private sector workforce has 70,000 fewer people with degree level skills compared to the national average for England. To compound this, year on year, the flow of graduates into jobs is lower than in other regions in England. For example, 400 fewer graduates move into jobs in the West Midlands each year than the national average and 8,000 fewer than in the best performing region.
Continued Simon: “The good news though is that despite the current economic downturn, there are job opportunities for graduates across the region. Retaining this talent is therefore vital for the future well-being of the regional economy.”
Grad Central was officially launched at Birmingham-based independent courier company Trax by Ian Austin, Regional Minister for the West Midlands and Mick Laverty, Chief Executive of AWM. Trax was the first company to benefit from Grad Central’s recruitment expertise after offering Wolverhampton University graduate Louise Gardner a position in its customer services team.
Ian Austin said: “The West Midlands has made significant headway in recent years improving its skills performance but our skills levels still lag behind other regions particularly in the case of higher value jobs and graduate level employment.”
Grad Central’s unique benefits include providing businesses with access to the very best graduate talent, along with a Funded ‘no fees’ for first graduate recruits and an extremely competitive set fee for every graduate after that.
To complement this, Grad Central combines all the last online recruitment technology with experienced recruiters who are on hand throughout to walk companies through the entire process, from initial advertising of vacancies to shortlisting, interviews and offer negotiations.
For graduates, Grad Central provides them with a matchmaking service to help them find the right graduate level job, offering them an unrivalled choice of opportunities across all industry sectors and all business types.
Mick Laverty, Chief Executive at Advantage West Midlands, said: “Grad Central is part of a wider programme of activity over the next few years to increase graduate level employment in the private sector. “
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