Recruiters offer 'companions' new home in job market

Recruiters offer ‘companions’ new home in job market
Thu, 19 Nov 2015 | By Sarah Marquet

FROM DECEMBER 2015'S RECRUITER MAGAZINE

With no government funding other than housing benefits, homelessness charity Emmaus Leeds relies on its own furniture recycling enterprise, as well as community grants, to stay afloat.

All 26 ‘companions’ — formerly homeless people or ex-prisoners who would otherwise be homeless — are required to work 40 hours a week collecting, delivering, upcycling and selling the furniture, but that leaves little time for learning other employability skills.

Like the other 23 Emmaus ‘communities’ in the UK, it relies on outside partners for other help. “It’s being in the right place at the right time and meeting the right people” to make those connections, Emmaus Leeds community leader Katrina Mattock tells Recruiter.

Which is where Leeds-based IT consultancy and recruitment firm Corecom Consulting and the Leeds office of professional recruiter Badenoch & Clark come in. Corecom and Emmaus met at investment bank Goldman Sachs’ recent 10,000 Small Businesses event, which provides business support to small firms and social enterprises, Corecom managing director Jonathan Sanderson explained.

And in early November, the two officially formed a partnership that has already seen the recruiter teaching the companions interviewing, CV writing and IT skills. Some of the companions had never sent an email before, Sanderson said.

Corecom taught them how to use Google docs — free online document creation software — to create CVs. “I thought if they could prepare a CV in the shelter, then they’d always have it,” Sanderson explained. “As long as they can remember their password and username, no one would be able to take that away from them.”

And for the companions who already had some IT knowledge, Corecom staff taught advanced skills such as how to create and use spreadsheets, he said.

Mattock said learning new skills also gave the companions a confidence boost, which is another challenge they face when trying to transition into the job market.

Sanderson added education and giving back to the community were core Corecom values and important to him personally. “I once read a book by John Bird [co-founder of magazine The Big Issue, sold by homeless or near-homeless people], who changed my perspective on the homeless situation,” he added.

He said the book made him realise just turning up somewhere at a specific time each day is difficult for someone with no fixed abode, and that is the first challenge rough sleepers face when trying to turn their lives around.

Mattock says these people need both jobs and homes to move on with their lives but it’s a catch-22 — you can’t get one without the other.

Consultants from Badenoch & Clark are also mentoring specific companions at Emmaus Leeds on similar employability skills. Recruitment consultant Lucy Parker told Recruiter that the firm’s engagement with Emmaus was in its “very early days”, but that in just one session with a companion, she had seen one man progress from having no sense of his employment opportunities to setting out to put together a CV.

“It was an eye opener,” Parker said of learning about the companions’ lives. “But it was also quite inspiring.”

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