Jobcentre Plus
When the Government's employment service Jobcentre Plus reviewed the ways it helps people into work, it realised that one vital element was missing: a partnership with another recruitment agency. Working with JGP has given job seekers greater access to the public sector, while the public sector is getting access to more candidates.
Case Study - Working together for the common good
"Organisations are often reluctant to develop work with the Government, fearing that a change in power will lead to a cut in funding and them being left out in the cold. JGP was not afraid of taking risks and together we have pioneered new technology that will help slash unemployment and get the hard to reach back to work", Anita Holbrow, Head of Partner Channel, Jobcentre Plus.
When the Government's Jobcentre Plus reviewed the various ways it helped people into work, it realised that one vital element was missing - working in partnership with other recruitment agencies.
Anita said: "Potential job applicants could get information by visiting a local branch, on line, on the phone or by dealing with an account manager. But, if we could not fill a vacancy it remained unfilled as we had no means of looking outside our own database. As our aim is to help people back into work by whatever route and as we are not in competition with other recruitment agencies it made sense for us to work with them" .
Anita was recruited in April 2004 to develop Jobcentre Plus's partner channel and when she looked around for an organisation to pilot the work with, JGP was a natural choice.
Anita said: "Jobcentre Plus and JGP are effectively two sides of the same coin with one focusing on the private and one on the public sector. By working together we can populate each others talent and job pools giving our job seekers access to a far greater range of employment opportunities as well as giving the public sector unparalleled access to job seekers throughout the UK".
Now all jobs posted on Jobsgopublic are automatically posted up on Jobcentre Plus's Job Warehouse, a site that gets millions of hits a day. The system is far more efficient with jobs being downloaded at the click of a button cutting down on much of Jobcentre Plus's paperwork
Anita said: "Working with JGP and using its advanced technology has saved us from becoming the "expert", which cuts our costs and speeds up the process and it has also helped us develop far more user friendly systems, which we can now use to get other agencies on board.
"The potential cost savings are enormous, not just in terms of efficiency but in terms of the number of people we can get off benefits and into the right job".
Other advantages of using the internet and the partnership include giving the public sector a blank canvas on which to sell a career in the public sector to thousands of new potential applicants and the breaking down of traditional barriers to employment faced by many young, disabled and black minority ethnic people.
So successful has the partnership been that Jobcentre Plus is now looking to provide training for job seekers on how to navigate their way through job sites with the ultimate aim of e-enabling the majority of its services so that the most expensive service, the one to one provided in job centres, can focus on looking after the most disadvantaged.
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