Cosmic's got Young Digital Talent
Everyone nowadays has heard of apprenticeships, they have been around for some time in one form or another and have been set up to give people an opportunity to work for a company, while earning a real salary and gaining a real qualification within their chosen career path. During the apprenticeship they will also gain valuable workplace skills, experience and get to understand what the world of business is really like.
Cosmic, is a locally based social enterprise, which offers IT services to businesses across the South West. At Cosmic we are very aware of the growing issue of youth unemployment in the region; with an increasing number of unemployed 18-24 year olds in the area. So this year we secured investment to help as many of these young people as we could. Since 1998 Cosmic have been offering young people a chance to take up an apprenticeship with the company, but this year we have developed a new scheme and have now offered 6 young people an apprenticeship with the company.
Cosmic’s CEO Julie Hawker said: “Cosmic has always championed the need for great jobs for young people in IT and in the local economy. We’ve offered many work placements and opportunities over the years, and there’s no better time than now for us to really take things forward and to bring bright new talent into our team.
“This is very different to anything we have done before and we are basically doubling our workforce, but we believe that through the scheme we can grow our own talent, train and develop a highly skilled workforce, whilst offering our customers even more top quality and affordable services”.
Julie added: “This is a different kind of apprenticeship and we aim to ensure that the apprentices learn as much as they can with Cosmic. Our customers will also benefit from this business plan as we will be developing great new service packages that the apprentices can offer at affordable prices.”
The long-term plan is to create a 'pool' of young people (and their talent) which will be used to service a growing number of local businesses and organisations. This will not only provide a valuable and affordable resource to local business growth, but will also provide young people in the local area with a set of skills and experience to develop their roles in the local economy.
The apprentices will not just be learning from our highly skilled team, they will also be offered work placements with some of our key partners including Mole Valley Farmers and Yarlington Housing; they will also be working with some of our current customers to create service packages.
“This is an exciting time for Cosmic and our customers; we can’t wait to see where the next 12 months will take us”.
Why not follow the apprentice’s story throughout the year? You can follow blogs, catch up on latest news, watch video journals and much, much more here: http://www.cosmic.org.uk/about-us/digital-apprenticeships/about or keep up to date via twitter @CosmicDAs.
