We’re pleased to announce that our youth employment accessibility research is being utilised by the Prince’s Trust initiative, Talent Match Middlesbrough.

Companies based in Middlesbrough will have their jobs/careers section on their website assessed against young people’s expectations in a bid to show local employers the problems young people have in gaining work.

Linda Smith, Middlesbrough Talent Match Manager, said: “Young people on our project identified inconsistencies in recruitment practices and felt they were overlooked much of the time due to their age and lack of experience and/or qualifications. We wanted to explore whether this could be improved and as a project what could we share with employers to support future generations.”

Our youth employment accessibility assessment was designed by young people with the support of Talent Match Leicester. So this week, we took two of our young peer researchers to Middlesbrough to train three new peer researchers.

One of the Middlesbrough peer researchers commented: “We always feel like we are being judged and assessed by employers. This is a great project because now we get to assess and score employers instead. The tables have been turned.”

During our peer training session, we did some sample scoring on some local companies to make sure everyone was comfortable with the process and methodology.

Linda said: “The training was purposeful and well-pitched. The group remained on task and understood the key indicators for which to score employers. The quality check was particularly useful as it affirmed many of their decisions; boosting their confidence. The young people came away smiling and seemed raring to go. I feel they have been empowered to take on this project and they understand the objectives and expected outcomes. We look forward to seeing how it develops.”

The new cohort of young peer researchers based in Middlesbrough will be scoring local companies over the next month. We will then be running a free half-day training workshop in Middlesbrough in early November.

Look out for details on this event in the coming weeks on our events page.