It’s been a long time since my last blog, such is the hectic world of setting up any new business venture.  Finding the time to sit and reflect and put down some thoughts on paper seems almost an impossible task at times, but here I find myself today with a bit of time on my hands.

First of all I just want to take my hat off to all the team a give a big thank you for all your hard over the past few months.  It’s hard to believe that we only officially launched 9 weeks ago and only came together as a team 14 weeks ago.

We have had an incredible start and everyone has contributed so much to that, and that includes every person who is reading this, every Facebook fan, and every Twitter follower- your support is appreciated more than you know!

This actually got me thinking the other day about when you see celebrities and pop stars saying how much they love their fans.  I used to think they were just saying it for the cameras but I now realise that they most probably genuinely care for them.

Even though we are still (for now) a very small organisation with only a handful of fans compared to these super star celebrities we really do care for the people who are supporting us.  Every supportive tweet, every Facebook Like, comment or word of mouth is helping us to grow and achieve our goal of getting more people into work.  And it’s this time out that people are taking to be supportive that makes us care. 

Everyone leads a busy life and I know I’m guilty of not ‘liking’ good causes or ‘re-tweeting’ or ‘following’ because I can’t find the time (even though it would only take about 30seconds in reality) and so I genuinely appreciate the time that people do put in to liking, commenting, sharing, reading, following, and tweeting

The last few weeks has seen us reach some great milestones, over 200 unique visitors in one day, over 1000 active job hunters, over 180 live jobs to name but a few.  And we have also met some great people who are working hard behind the scenes in the communities we live in from people on the front line at Job Centre Plus, to Welfare to Work Providers, Community Organisations, and Recruitment Agencies.

We have had some great testimonials from people using the service too which we have now put onto a Testimonials section of the website.  I urge anyone reading this to also read the testimonials as a thank you for those willing to share their stories with us and you.  I can’t begin to describe the smiles that go around the office when we hear that what we are building is really starting to make a difference and bring some added positivity to people’s lives.

It’s also great to see that at a grass roots level people are working so hard to improve the country for the better with initiative such as health, employability, social inclusion.  Lots of these people often go unseen and probably go unappreciated too because we don’t see how much hard work goes into getting around bureaucracy, writing bids, obtaining funding, developing strategies etc. and then implementing the projects. 

After meeting many of these guys over the past few weeks I can tell you first hand that they care, and it’s encouraging to see people pulling together in the heart of these communities that are helping to improve lives create a change for good.

I’ll leave it there for now, and I’ll try and not leave it so long until my next blog but you know how things are!

Big Thanks, Rich!

5 Secrets In Job Hunting

For the past week I have been in the Job Centre Plus, West Street, introducing them to Jobs4everyone. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the Jobcentre looking for a job, and the only up to date information that I had on it was all from the media.

So that was exactly what I was expecting on my visit, people without hope and feeling very down in the present climate of unemployment in the world today.  At first glance, as a snapshot photo, they are definitely right. People don’t seem to be too happy with the state of things. But then as I started to speak to them I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with what I found.

There was a large presence of people that I spoke to that had something in common, they still had their hope!  Even though you never saw them smile, there was something there, something that kept their spirits high. The hope that something has to change, along with the hope that their perfect job is out there waiting for them.

I guess you could liken it to playing the lottery. They play the job hunter game in the hope of winning a job at the end of the day.  But more often than not they don’t win anything, in some cases not remembering to check their tickets, but they still have that have that hope that the next time they play, they may win big.

Hope is a great asset to have when things don’t go quite the way you planned. Hope is the one thing that will give you the strength to carry on towards your goal.

Getting a job in the 21^st Century is like being at war with unemployment, and in that there comes a time when all you have left is hope, hope that you will reach a victory of employment. 

Here is an excerpt from a story I found, in an edition of this weeks Star that I just thought i would share... It's about how Sheffield appears to have turned a corner in the recession and things are looking up for our region...Intresting read.

"But the report - Cities Outlook 2012 - also reveals Sheffield is turning a corner, having the fourth-best rise in the proportion of the workforce in employment of any large British town or city between 2009/10 and 2010/11.

The city also retains large numbers of university graduates.

Sheffield Hallam MP and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told The Star: “The coalition is pulling out all the stops to create jobs in Sheffield and South Yorkshire, especially for young people.

“That’s why I launched the £1 billion Youth Contract to get young people earning or learning and why we are creating more apprenticeships.

“Liberal Democrats are determined to do the right thing and build a new economy that benefits the whole country.”

The Government believes tax breaks and favourable planning rules, which will apply in Sheffield’s new Enterprise Zone, will also help by encouraging entrepreneurship.

Sheffield Council, which is currently behind a drive to create new apprenticeships for unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds, said while the report ‘reinforces challenges’ it ‘confirms Sheffield has fared generally well through the recession’.

Edward Highfield, director of economy, enterprise and skills at the council, said: “The report also reinforces a number of challenges ahead for the city region’s economy such as the need to reduce youth unemployment and increase business start-ups.

“It highlights strong performance in innovation and research and developments, as measured by the number of patents registered, and large numbers of some of the most highly qualified people in the country.

“This reflects the strong emphasis on knowledge-intensive industries which will be at the heart of Sheffield city region’s future economic growth.”

Mr Highfield predicted Sheffield’s economy would benefit from Government proposals allowing the city to keep its own business rates, and from dedicated funding set aside for schemes such as transport and infrastructure improvements - which would be controlled locally.

One of Sheffield’s biggest efforts to transform its old manufacturing base involves the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, a collaboration between Sheffield and Hallam universities and Boeing.

Adrian Allen OBE, its commercial director, said the Centre for Cities report gives ‘graphic proof’ of the need to attract and develop high-value manufacturing business.

He said: “Businesses will grow and invest in the region if we can show we have a highly skilled workforce.

“Manufacturing is still an area where Sheffield has real strengths - there are world-leading businesses based here - and the Advanced Manufacturing Park is widely recognised as a great cluster of applied innovation.”

Read the full story at The Star website page

I was in town on Thursday (Sheffield, South Yorkshire) and noticed a wanted sign on a newsagent's door. It was written on a pale yellow postcard and was advertising a full time sales assistant vacancy.  It even had written on it 'URGENTLY NEEDED'.  You would think that many people that run their own business could post a job vacancy well, but many of them don't.

When I myself was having to sign on and had to go on job work courses done through the job centre, the figures they gave us were that 75% of all jobs are never advertised, this was 15 years ago and this statistic still remains the same to this day.  They also told us that it was our job to find those jobs. That was great, but how and why could this be with so many people looking for work?

Today, some of the problem comes from job search sites.  Firstly, employers have to pay to advertise a job vacancy and many businesses don't have that sort of budget, so the ad ends up a piece of paper in the canteen.

Secondly, it's not easy to get the right person for the post you need filling.  No employer goes out looking for a plumber and ends up hiring an electrician- they just don't have the time in this day and age.

Now I know that you can post an ad in the job centre for free, but they have their own job cuts and heavy workloads to contend with, meaning they can't pay as much attention to the ad as perhaps they would like to (in terms of spending that little extra time with jobseekers in order to find the right person for the role).

And on that note, it is now no longer the role of the Job Centre to find employment for people, but this has now fallen on the shoulders of job hunters and employers to find a solution that works best for themselves.

To see how we can help please take a look at our website, jobs4everyone

Who or what is 4everyone, and jobs4everyone?

On December 23^rd, 2011 we were proud to announce that jobs4everyone had gone live.

And it has been a long time coming, 4 years in the making!

Jobs4everyone is the first service released from the social media community organisation, 4everyone Limited, which has been developed to help local communities regenerate themselves.

The broader context of 4everyone is to provide a platform, that is a tool that local communities can use as a way of providing resources within themselves to help regenerate their own local economy.

Many local communities are suffering from high rates of unemployment and this is having a serious detrimental effect on these physical areas. However, the look and cosmetic degradation of these local communities is only the tip of the ice-berg.

When areas become deprived and the standards of living drop, stress levels on the people that live there rise.  This in-turn has a knock-on effect to families, friends, and wider networks.  Everyone ends up suffering.

Our aim at 4everyone is to see these local communities prospering; both physically in the condition of these areas, but more importantly in the relationships and lives of the people that live there.

Many of these smaller districts have a number of self-employed people and small independent businesses and services that once played a vital part in helping these areas to thrive.  Unfortunately though, over recent years we have been hit by recession and 'the credit crunch' and it has been these key components in community life that have been some of the hardest hit.

The result is the closure of local shops, pubs, community centres and a breakdown of relationships and services that once knitted these communities together.

Our vision is to provide a way for local communities to once again be thriving places with friendships and relationships bonded together by a strong sense of community spirit that runs through the core of everything that happens there.  

We want to provide a cost effective way for local traders to advertise their services with maximum exposure at a minimal cost.  We want to once again see people looking inside their own communities for services again rather than going out into other districts.

In doing so, money will be kept inside these local communities instead of being transported elsewhere.  If we can enable these local communities to retain their economies then we feel we're stepping in the right direction and starting build a foundation for what we want to achieve.

We know we have a long way to go until we reach this aim of ours but we fully believe in what we can achieve, and what these communities can achieve given the right tools to do so.

So the first step for us in helping to regenerate these local areas is to increase the rate of employment in them.  We know that there are jobs out there, but a large problem lies with the small businesses who have vacancies available simply cannot afford to publicise them.  A recent government report said that over 70% of vacancies currently go unadvertised!  An astounding amount!

Our role is to begin by providing an outlet for these local businesses to publicise available job opportunities at no charge, and then to present these vacancies to local residents looking for work.

If we can create one database of every available job vacancy and another database of every person looking for work then we can use the wonders of modern technology to marry the two together, and at the very least create a positive change in the rate of employment.

We know there are other free services available to advertise vacancies, such as the governments’ own resources, but the problem with public sector is that it doesn't move quickly enough and is always playing catch up due to government restrictions and bureaucracy higher up.  And today’s world moves much more quickly than that!

As a social enterprise our role is to not take over what other people are already doing, but enable others to carry out their services and roles with more efficiency for the benefit of everyone, not just ourselves.

I hope you stay with us on this journey, and we encourage any comments or feedback as we look to unite both people and services and provide well, just a simpler and better way of doing things.

To have a look at our website, please follow this link-> jobs vacancies in sheffield

Thanks

Rich