Employability Skills

Our employability skills development pillar will provide an opportunity to develop key transferable skills such as problem-solving and resilience, self and time management, organisation, team working, and interpersonal skills, as well as specific sector or job-related skills. Such training not only helps with the personal and career development of young people, especially those from disadvantaged groups but also contributes to reducing unemployment, crime rate and facilitate social mobility. 

The BiG Youth Social Action Volunteers Scheme

The BiG Youth Social Action Volunteers Scheme is a skills development and employment journey programme that will support young adults to first self discover their own chosen employment pathway, and support them into the labour market. We focus our attention to those who are not currently in employment, education or training to support those young adults to get back on track.

This is a two phase programme with phase 1 aimed at building up the young adult and developing employability skills including CV writing and preparing for interview and engaging in dummy interviews. This is now done through 1-1 mentoring sessions and well as interactive group sessions. Phase 2 candidates engage in education to progress towards their chosen employment pathway and practical work experience.

1-1 mentoring Sessions

The 1-1 mentoring programme commits candidates to work with us twice a week - through a zoom interactive session using education activities followed up with a telephone call. We have an effective 6 weeks timetable that supports our intended outcomes for phase 1 of the BiG Youth Social Action Volunteers Scheme programme which is proving impactful for those who have enrolled onto the programme.

We are also using an external service to produce individual Youth motivation map reports - https://www.motivationalmaps.com/Resources/YouthMap_examples_3_reports.pdf- that will be an important foundation for each individual young persons skills development and employment journey and enable us to tailor our 1-1 services effectively to get maximum benefit from our sessions.

BiG Work Experience Programme

BiG offers practical work experience opportunities through its 2-1 holiday football programme where teenagers and young adults develop key transferable employability skills in a real work setting. The programme kicks off with a Induction Day where candidates are happy to meet and understand what is expected of them. They are also taken through a Safeguarding Risk Assessment session to understand what is expected of them to safeguard others and themselves.

During their experience, candidates have their own area of responsibilities set out in a rota which includes meet and greets, organise sessions and equipment, leading sessions and managing lunch-time activities. By the end, candidates appreciate the importance of punctuality – good time keeping in particular arriving early to organise themselves; develop self-management skills and the importance of remaining professional at all times, good interpersonal and communication skills, especially when trying to engage with children who are not listening and good organisational and leadership skills, as they have to organise their own sessions and manage large groups of children when delivering their session.

BiG also offers school work experience programmes and opportunities for Trainees who are engaged in Traineeship programmes to fulfil 100 hours of work experience. These are office based where candidates engage in a variety of tasks which includes designing marketing material, sending emails and responding to enquiries, social media, editing films liaising with stakeholders, and more!

The BiG Interns Programme

We also host virtual internships positions to support international students in order for them to gain work experience and / or to satisfy requirements needed for their qualifications. We are passionate in supporting young adults develop the skills they need to strive towards their goals and it is a pleasure for BiG to go global and learn from these young adults as well as inspire them.