Former Dragon Caan and Deputy Clegg launch Opening Doors for youth jobs
The ‘Opening Doors’ campaign, which also has the support of Peter Searle, chief executive officer for UK and Ireland at recruiter Adecco Group, calls on companies of all sizes to open their doors to young people from all walks of life. It has 150 founder signatories made up of major UK firms including Barclays, Channel 4, Fujitsu, PwC, Random House, Siemens and Slaughter & May.
London offices of some of those firms are today being visited by tour buses carrying Caan, Clegg and Searle alongside 120 young people from across the country.
By signing up, firms pledge to offer “fair and open access to their jobs and professions for young people, regardless of who they are or where they come from”, according to a statement from Clegg’s office. The campaign will also have a related awards for employers, judged by Caan and Searle.
The companies signing up so far are doing so predominantly because they believe it will secure them a broader range of talent (93%), or say a fair and open recruitment process creates a staff better reflecting their client base (82%).
The launch comes after new research from pollsters YouGov, which shows that over a six times as many young people from more privileged social groups obtain employment in the area they had hope to work in, compared with those from lower social grades.
Says Clegg (pictured below), who has done substantial work around youth jobs, most notably including a £1bn Youth Contract: “We have a big problem in this country. Every year employers are closing their doors to talented young people. This is a terrible waste of talent and potential that could be otherwise boosting our economy and driving growth in our businesses.
“In good times this would be tragic. In tough economic times, it is unforgivable.”
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph published yesterday, Caan said that fair access to the world of work should extend to parents not helping their children into the world of work.
The paper today, and various other media, notes that Caan has himself employed his daughter Hanah since her graduation in 2009 at his private equity firm Hamilton Bradshaw. Meanwhile, his other daughter Jemma-Lia works as a consultant for Voyage Global Energy, a Hamilton Bradshaw-backed recruiter.
Speaking to Recruiter, Caan says there is no conflict in his case, with both daughters being qualified for the roles they took up, and getting them on merit. “You’ve got to be qualified to do the job – should you get the job just because she knows me? No,” he comments, noting that it would be damaging for a young person to end up getting a job they are not qualified for.
He also says it is important that children have “the right to choose their own career… I’m glad that my parents allowed me to chose my own career”, noting that Jemma-Lia worked in PR, marketing and events before turning to recruitment.
This news come almost a year to the day since Caan, the fifth richest man in the world of UK recruitment, was appointed by the Department for Business to chair a board charged with distributing £82.5m in start-up funding to youth.
