Christmas office closure: We’re closing for the Christmas break from 5pm on Monday 23 December 2024 until 8:30am on Thursday 2 January 2025. Learn more.
Youth Employment Week
An annual celebration of young people and employers, this year's Youth Employment Week takes place from 15-19 July 2024 – and we're proud to be headline sponsors of this brilliant event, hosted by Youth Employment UK.
The week-long event aims to help young people discover careers and pathways to suit their strengths, build their skills and boost their confidence, and grow their knowledge and explore lifelong learning to progress their careers. This year's theme – Creating Opportunity for All – puts a focus on inclusivity at every level.
Explore how we're getting involved and helping to connect young people to the jobs, training and insight they'll need to grow their careers here at NCFE below.
Introducing our Young Person Ambassador Programme
We recently launched our Young Person Ambassador Programme for colleagues aged 16-30. As a subgroup of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) forum, the programme offers our young people the opportunity to help shape the future of youth employment for themselves and others.
Through the programme, members have the chance to:
- attend workshops, conferences and events to collaborate with other organisations
- come up with ideas and solutions to address the issues currently affecting youth employment
- share their experiences and opinions on areas within the youth employment space
- create content to support this, such as blogs, vlogs and articles
- empower, inspire and support young people to become young professionals.
Alongside this, the programme also offers a brilliant opportunity for our young colleagues to progress their own personal and professional development. If you have a collaborative opportunity for our Programme members in mind, please do get in touch and let us know!
Advice, guidance and top tips
If you're a young person looking for career advice and guidance, we've got you covered! Take a look at our articles below, in which we speak with work experience students, members of our Young Ambassador Programme, and even older colleagues who have taken the time to reflect on the advice they'd pass on to their younger selves.
NCFE launches Young Person Ambassador Programme as part of Youth Employment Week
The awarding organisation has launched a new initiative, aimed at its 16-30 workforce, to provide young people with the opportunity to contribute towards and shape the future of youth employment.
Read the article
From student to teacher: how work experience at NCFE has supported my career aspirations
We speak with Kate Queen, who recently completed work experience at NCFE, to learn more about how she found the week and the knowledge that she gained to support her on her path to becoming a teacher.
Read the article
Dear Jeff: A letter to my 16-year-old self
Ahead of Youth Employment Week, we invited our colleagues to reflect on the advice they would have valued as young people. Here, Customer Support Advisor, Jeff Davies shares some words of wisdom written to his younger self.
Read the article
Different roads, same destination: exploring two educational pathways into Customer Relationship roles
In this blog, colleagues Alex Helm and Sophie Radford share their experience of taking two different educational routes into their current roles at NCFE as Customer Relationship Executives.
Read the article
My advice is that it’s okay to sometimes feel out of your depth, or that you have ‘imposter syndrome’, but you’re here for a reason and are a valuable asset so don’t forget that. Speak to someone, the support is there!
Our experience attending a Futures Conference
In the lead-up to Youth Employment Week 2024, two members of our Talent team, Claire Bevan (Talent Coordinator) and Jenni Chismond (Talent Resourcer) headed to St James Park in Newcastle for the Emmanuel College Gateshead 'Futures Conference'.
Jenni explained: "The students had a jam-packed morning planned with keynote speakers and a wide range of employer stands to visit. Our table of goodies was soon depleted, but the absolute winner of the day was our “career pong” game, which led to some interesting conversations about the students' experience with work and the barriers that they had faced.
"Overall, we were really inspired by how engaged and dedicated to their future the students were, and we’re ready looking forward to attending again next year."
Pictured L-R: Claire and Jenni