Hannah Still from our recruitment department talks about what she is up to in our busiest time.

My name is Hannah Still and I oversee the recruitment department for the apprenticeships here at Creative Alliance. We deal with all the applications, screen the candidates and work with employers to organise the interviews. We must get an understanding of what employers want from their apprenticeship positions and help guide the candidates. I suppose you could say it’s the engine room of the company.

This is really a diary of actions for the week and a review of how the summer is going for our department.

Summer is, of course, the busiest time of year for recruitment in Creative Alliance. Candidates are finishing off academic years in school, college & university and really considering what direction they want to go into next. With apprenticeships being such a wonderful middle ground between more traditional education and the big scary ‘real world’ of work, it’s no wonder that apprenticeship recruitment is always at its highest peak from June to September. Most employers know this, and so choose to grow their team and invest in a new apprentices around this time of year.

We’re currently recruiting for 18 positions here at Creative Alliance and are receiving around 100 good applications a week. This is much higher compared to just 2 or 3 months ago when we’d be averaging around 30 applications to sift through each week. Things are busy, but this is exactly how we like to work!

Our ‘Initial Guidance Sessions’ are the perfect first step in our recruitment process. We like to meet as many applicants as possible who seem to have the type of potential that we’re on the lookout for. These sessions are usually once a week, and we average around 8 attendees per afternoon. This week we’re hosting a record breaking 3 sessions which will likely have around 10 candidates in attendance at each. It’s great for us to meet such engaged and interesting people at these sessions and hear all about their skills, experiences and interests.

Meeting such talented candidates and sending their information across to our employers will, naturally, result in interviews. In the past 2 weeks we’ve arranged 21 interviews with some wonderful candidates. They’ve been prepped and advised; we’ve gone through common interview questions; discussed at length the importance of thorough research for an interview and sent our handy ‘Interview Checklist’ over with interview confirmations. We like to make sure our candidates come across as their best selves when they meet our employers. More often than not, this inevitably ends in an offer of employment. There’s nothing more rewarding then making that call: offering a talented young candidate their dream role and knowing that they’re going to make the most of the opportunity and could very well be about to embark on the start of a very exciting new career.

It usually slows down leading into October but so far this summer interest seems to be to be staying consistently high. This shows a change in attitude I think. People are really considering the advantages of a clear route to a creative, digital and marketing career through an apprenticeship.