The idea of supporting people in their career is not a new one. Many people have mentors that they lean on when they need advice or guidance. Lots of organisations run mentoring programmes for their staff, and professional institutions have started offering mentor programmes as part of their membership. However, having spoken to many people, these programmes simply are not reaching enough people, or are only reaching a privileged few who are chosen to participate. The content of these programmes is also often not designed to support people to find the right company or role. The programmes are generally designed around career progression within a specific company or industry. What happens when you are not happy at your company, the role you are in or the industry you are working within?
Most would start a job search and potentially turn to a recruitment agent for support. However, many people that find themselves in this situation, it seems there is know one you can turn too for professional and reliable advice for your specific situation. Recruitment agents are often incentivised by their clients, not the job seeker, and then the whole recruitment process can be daunting with all the information that is available, job boards, networking, applications, interviews. It is often left to the individual to navigate this process on their own, and we all know how difficult this can be.
We wanted to make quality career development and job support guidance available to everyone, and so we launched Hire Pals to help people succeed at work.
Our model is simple, we want to match job seekers and people looking for cross sector career development, with expert coaches at an affordable price, often paid for by the employer.
With all the disruption that COVD-19 is bringing to the workplace, competition for jobs is difficult. According to a recent report, there are currently more skilled candidates on the market than ever before, and fewer job opportunities. Our coaches aim to give practical and actionable advice to help people secure jobs during these difficult times.
We have already helped numerous people on their career search. One particular success story stood out last month. One of our coaches provided support to an individual following a redundancy. Support was provided towards the end of her consultation process and within two weeks of leaving her company, she had secured her first job offer. This was validation to us that our help can have an impact.
Our service can be end-to-end, providing coaching and practical support for people searching the job market, building their professional network, creating a CV, writing cover letters, understanding professional social media, and preparing for interviews and assessments.
We are still very much a start up and are changing direction all the time by trying new things, however the early signs have been promising and we have been amazed at the reception we have had so far. We believe there is so much more we can do to help people get jobs in this difficult time.
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