ESB Jobs Fairs
During National Apprenticeships week (6th - 10th March), the Essex Employment and Skills Board (ESB) held a series of jobs fairs across Essex, allowing residents to access live job vacancies form employers in their area. These three events were held in:
- The Harvey Centre, Harlow, Tuesday 7th March
- Eastgate Shopping Centre, Basildon, Thursday 9th March
- Intu Lakeside Shopping Centre, Thurrock, Friday 10th March
Local businesses attending the events all offered live job vacancies and the opportunity to have an informal discussion about their company and the available role.
These businesses all came from priority sectors of Essex (which has been identified from research by the ESB): Advanced Manufacturing & Engineering, Care, Construction, Finance & Insurance, Health, IT, Digital & Creative and Logistics.
These sectors all significantly contributing to the local economy, however, they are all suffering from skills shortages, which has created a large amount of vacancies in these industries. In 2015, there were over 75,000 job opportunities within these seven sectors alone.
Businesses within these sectors who attended the events included: London Stansted Airport (MAG), IFDS, UPS Ltd, Princess Alexandra Hospital, DP World, Bluebird Care, South Coast Port Services, ECL Cares, First Data and AVL Powertrain UK.
In addition to the plethora of businesses that attended each of the events, training providers, Seetec Skills, were there to offer their apprenticeship opportunities and give support to those who are considering training, or re-training, routes into work.
In addition to this, the ESB also supported a jobs fair held in Braintree by Braintree District Council, Saturday 4th March. Along with local businesses, there was also the potential for attendees to expand on core working skills in some of the free workshops on the day. This event was really well received:
"We have successfully recruited two permanent members of staff from the event. It was also a great opportunity to raise our profile and speak to other providers from other sectors and organisations." - RBMI, Care
"The turn out for this job fair seemed very high and we appeared to have a constant flow throughout the day... We ended up booking enough people in for a day of interviews". - Invent Health, Health
"A thumbs up from my colleague and myself: good venue (including parking onsite), a good flow of people (both jobseekers and jobchangers which is great) and we had some good quality CVs to take away" - IFDS, Finance & Insurance
More details of the events can be found at: http://www.essexesb.co.uk/our-activities/esb-essex-jobs-fairs