The Jobs Fair That Left the Curling Civic Sandwiches Behind

More than 400 young people found employers, training and practical help in a Birmingham venue built around excitement rather than officialdom.

There is a familiar civic recipe for helping young people who are not in education, employment or training. Find a stuffy institutional building, fill it with folding tables and earnest people wearing lanyards, add several plates of curling civic sandwiches, then express surprise when the young people do not come. Simone Schehtman tried something rather more intelligent. She opened the doors of Teamworks Hub and brought more than 400 disadvantaged young adults together with 56 employers, training organisations and support partners in a place that young people might actually want to visit. This may sound like common sense, but in the world of public policy common sense can still arrive dressed as a dangerous new idea.

Teamworks is at 202 Fazeley Street in Digbeth, Birmingham, B5 5SE. It is close to the Custard Factory, around ten minutes on foot from New Street station and served nearby by the 2, 4, 6, 97 and 97A buses. It also has a large car park, which in central Birmingham now counts as a minor miracle. Teamworks deserves the plug because it is not simply a building that happened to be hired for the day. It is Birmingham’s city centre indoor karting venue, with laser tag and racing simulators, but it has also developed into a serious hub where young people can build confidence, explore careers, prepare CVs, practise interviews and connect with jobs, apprenticeships and further education. (Teamworks Karting)

The scale and range of the Talent Finder Day were impressive. Ten construction and engineering employers attended, alongside four healthcare organisations, adult social care, the RAF, the Army and Civil Service opportunities. Hospitality, finance and banking were represented, while Creative Alliance brought opportunities covering digital media, marketing, television and film production, ceramics, fashion design and more. There were cosmetics companies, training providers offering routes into healthcare, sports coaching and catering, plus English language assistance, housing support and other practical help. This was not a gathering of organisations competing to distribute the greatest number of glossy leaflets. There were real jobs, apprenticeships, courses and routes forward.

The expression NEET is useful for official statistics but tells us very little about the young person standing in front of us. One may need qualifications. Another may need confidence. Someone else may be dealing with insecure housing, limited English, poor health or no idea how to approach an employer without feeling that the entire process has been designed to expose their shortcomings. Bringing employers, trainers and support organisations together in one place makes practical sense. Putting them somewhere welcoming rather than somewhere that feels like an appointment with official disappointment makes even more sense. The venue was not a gimmick attached to the event. The venue was part of why the event worked.

I visited Teamworks a few days beforehand and could already feel the energy building. It is a wonderful place and seeing this kind of ambition in Birmingham made me more than a little proud. For the record, no go karts were operating during the Talent Finder Day. Parts of the track were instead being used to help secure the future of another generation at a jobs fair they are unlikely to forget. This was an excellent use of the circuit and certainly more useful than my own appearance on it many years ago.

I had been invited to my future son in law’s stag event and tipped the scales at about 20 stone, not necessarily all of it muscle and sinew. I was then, and remain today, an exceptionally good looking hunk. And if you do not believe that, take a look inside my mind. When the race began, my considerable ballast carried me magnificently through the first couple of bends. Then the lighter young men accelerated past and disappeared. The race track may remember my defeat, but dignity requires that I do not.

The young people attending Talent Finder Day should retain a rather better memory of the place. They met employers, explored careers, discussed vacancies and encountered people who could help with the obstacles between them and work. The buzz and the outcomes were palpable, while the feedback from employers and young people was described as off the scale. That is what happens when an event is designed around the people expected to attend rather than around the convenience of the organisations delivering it.

One of the people behind the wider effort was Professor Harris Beider, founder and chief executive of Forward, a Birmingham organisation bringing together business, government, universities and civil society to find practical answers to the city’s problems. Harris is an academic and public policy expert whose career has included senior work at Birmingham City University, Coventry University, the University of Birmingham and Columbia University in New York. His specialist interests have included communities, housing, race, cohesion and civic renewal, so he brings rather more to the table than a lanyard and a hopeful expression. (Birmingham City University)

Harris described Talent Finder Day as a made in Birmingham solution and said it was the eighth event of its kind. He reported that the model typically attracts more than 400 young people and more than 50 employers, with over 60 per cent of participants directly securing jobs, training or apprenticeships. Those are serious claims and serious outcomes. The model is not simply about creating a pleasant atmosphere for a day. It is about producing a destination for the young person after the banners have come down. (LinkedIn)

I recall this fellow very well. Harris was a colleague of mine in the Labour Party more than 30 years ago. I have a tale or two about him that would make him blush, and I am afraid, Harris, this material is not safe with me either. For the moment, however, I shall behave myself because he is right about the importance of what has been created. Attendance figures are welcome and enthusiastic feedback is encouraging, but real destinations are what matter. A successful employment event is not measured by how many leaflets leave the tables. It is measured by whether young people leave with somewhere useful to go.

Simone deserves enormous praise because she understood that you need young people in the room before you can help them. That means creating an event they want to enter. Too much employment policy begins by treating the young person as a collection of deficits. They are assessed, processed, referred and reviewed. Every organisation records an engagement and every programme produces an outcome report, while the young person is still waiting for somebody to offer a proper chance. Talent Finder Day joined the support directly to the opportunity. It was serious work without making seriousness feel like punishment.

Birmingham does not lack strategies about youth unemployment, skills gaps, economic inactivity and disadvantage. We can establish boards, appoint chairs, convene round tables and commission reports until the curling civic sandwiches demand their own representative body. What matters is whether a young person walks through the door, meets someone useful and leaves believing that life might move forward. More than 400 young people walked into Teamworks and found real employers, real training and real assistance waiting for them.

The go karts remained silent, but the building still moved at considerable speed. A circuit normally used for racing was partly occupied by people trying to give the next generation a better start. It was imaginative without being frivolous, serious without being stuffy and practical without being buried beneath official language. Congratulations to Simone, Harris, Teamworks and every employer and support organisation that arrived with something genuine to offer.

Birmingham needs more of this. More imagination, more direct contact and more opportunities placed where young people will actually find them.

Fewer lanyards would also be welcome, and the curling civic sandwiches can finally be put out of their misery.