Hospitality jobseekers complete essential skills course

Monday 18 June 2018

A group of 10 jobseekers have completed a two week essential skills course, working inside the hospitality industry to try and earn a 13 week placement in work.

The Prepare to Work course was run by the Job Centre with the College of FE and various employers, and was the first of its kind in this line of work.

The 10 people who finished the course were presented with their awards at the College of FE by Deputy Michelle Le Clerc on Friday.

"This is the latest in a series of training initiatives that we have worked on in collaboration with the College and once again the delivery has been exemplary and achieved the outcomes we hoped for," Mark Gilbert, the Manager of the Job Centre, said.

"The next step is now to the 13 week placement with one of the host employers to take your training forward and put into practice all that you have learnt."

Mr Gilbert said they had run a similar course last year for the care industry, and this year had also been a great success.

The candidates themselves ranged from 18 all through working ages, and some have already been given placements for the next part of the course.

Callum Le Noury, Operations Director for Sarnia Hotels, said the course was a "really good idea".

"This kind of thing is very, very, important. We need to try and show more young people what this industry is about, and there is no better way to demonstrate that in reality, everything isn't like the stereotypes you hear about," he said.

"One of the key things we showed off was how many aspects there are to working in a hotel, whether that be accountancy or any number of other jobs, there is almost like mini industries in the hospitality industry." 

Mr Le Noury said he hoped many more courses like this took place in the future: "It is really good, some of the guys I met were excellent and hopefully we can get some of them to come and work for us after this".