The Job Preparation Space of United Kingdom

26 Jan 2023    

One of the many questions in mind lately has been: is UK considered a stable market for a startup to enter for the University’s Career Preparation space? My research came with some delight. UK has been setting up the resources and seemingly comprehensive support for a meaningful support for the job seekers. These systems does not indicate that the space is crowded. Rather, it indicates that the space consist of people that are knowledgeable about the complexity of the problem, and systems has been set in place to address such complexity in different levels of engagement.


We seek not to take over markets but rather, understand how a country could learn from others in tackling the same problem. Typically Career Placement is a matching problem - matching the demand (Job Seekers) with supply (Hiring Managers). This match is not the challenge. The challenge lies in the suitability of each match. What then determines the suitability of a candidate to a company.


In this article, we shall first consider the objective criteria of a candidate’s suitability, then we will return to the context of United Kingdom and understand how that market has identified the persona of their Job Seekers & list out the respective tools created.




How do you know if you are the one?


  1. Character

  2. Competency

  3. Success Stories

  4. Referrals

  5. Level of Passion

  6. Signs of Progression


After a personal evaluation on your suitability to enter into a market, you want to consider the current available infrasturcture to support your targeted problem statement.


Assuming we are selecting the following problem statement: Job Seekers have trouble landing into jobs of their choice.


You want to break down the following:


  1. what job seeker persona bucket do you belong to?

For example:


  • Are you a mid career switch?
  • Are you trying to upskill yourself instead of a complete transition?
  • Are you a single mom with a specific skill that requires you to be remote

All of them are seeking for jobs and yet have vastly different needs and support to help them land into jobs. If you wish to support the job seekers, you first then need to understand which bucket you belong to.


  1. What does the market look out for?

Generally, all hiring managers across all markets want to look at:


  • Your CV
  • Your Motivation for joining
  • Your foreseeable goal for yourself
  • Your understanding of the role you are applying for

Do you know the required standard for each of these information required from you?


You can look at Kinobi for your Resume building. This application provides freemium resume building tool that can help you to create a professional Resume in no time.


Generally you want to demonstrate the type of skills required from each job by indiciating specific keywords related to the industry you may be in. Skills keywords can come from (1) the job you are applying from, (2) the industry you wish to apply that job.


  1. How is my government supporting me?

Now, you have a common problem across all countries. You got to understand that the governments generally are supportive of finding jobs for their workers. Everyone has a stake in the game.


In that, you do not have to start from scratch. Today we will be delving into the type of support the United Kingdom is providing for their people.




What are some of UK’s tools for Job Preparation


First off, you can head down to the job seeker’s Website. In here you find the tools needed to help you answer the questions mentioned above.


Intersting, you may notice some of the key stakeholders identified by UK.

These personas are:

  • General job seekers
  • Education seekers preparing for a job
  • The laid off workers

4 buckets of Job Seekers


  1. Want to improve your chances to get a job

1) Don’t know where to start


2) Improve my job application & interview performance



3) Find out about training or learning opportunities to help me find work


Linked directly to article: https://jobhelp.campaign.gov.uk/skills-and-work-based-training/


4) Getting started in sectors that have vacancies: https://jobhelp.campaign.gov.uk/sectors-recruiting/


Linking to jobs specific to city & industry


Each job has these details in their page.


The portal has lists jobs from different sources such as Applybe


  1. Cant wait full time and want to know what other options are there

Just content library on what people could do.


  1. What to know which jobs are available now
    Links to Job Portal

  1. Learn about the support available for the people

A) Benefits and financial Help - List of help across 3 locations


B) Disability, health condition, or mental health condition - List of help


C) support that are available for parents - List of help


D) How the jobcentre can help me find work - Listing out details on Local Job Centre


Top Nav, Page, & Footer Nav all has 4 key paths: Improve my job chances, cant work full time, find a job, & Benefits and other help.


Job help quiz


The jobhelp tool starts here
Consisting of 4 questions to narrow down the articles that are more relevant

  1. What is the help needed
  2. Current type of employment
  3. Location
  4. Age

Will narrow down job help for me with different filters applied on the URL


This URl directs you to UK’s list of help you can find in the midst of your career search




Tools


  1. Job Portal
  • consisting of 3rd party jobs & own jobs
  • Over 160k jobs in UK

  1. Job Help Portal

  1. National Career Services

    Available to anyone aged over 13 living in England for free and impartial information, advice and guidance to help with decisions about careers, learning and work


  1. Find a Traineeship

What is a traineeship? https://www.gov.uk/find-traineeship5


  1. Apply for Apprenticeship

  1. Skillstoolkit

An online course platform


Putting together courses from different providers. For example: Open University


  1. Free Level 3 qualification

A levels or equivalent


  1. Skills bootcamps

2. There is a call for UK to level up their labour force


How does this level up look like?

  • Infrastructure
  • Inward Investments

3. There is strong push towards skills framework to provide fit gap analysis on industry and labor force’s skillsets


Reference of Prime Minister’s angle for UK as a Global Science & Technology Superpower




TLDR


UK has the infrastructure to support the people. Displayed understanding about their labour force’s needs to match them with suitable jobs.


The support provided online has largely been job portal, CV builder done by Barclaylifeskills.


They provide educational suggestions for the labour market that are limited by education constraints. Upskilling seems to be one of the customer persona.


There has also been a general call for UK to relook into the labour force upskill



References