Keeping local talent in Lancashire!

By Phil Ashton, manager, Ashberry Business Recruitment

Our home county produces an abundance of talented young professionals, champing at the bit to get into to the world of work and make their mark, but all too often they are drawn away by the bright lights of a big city.

We are on a mission to change this culture, to keep Lancashire’s talent nurtured and on track for big things on their home turf. We work both in-house and on behalf of our clients to source, cultivate and support local workers, keeping them local.

Sourcing our own staff showed us what the county really has to offer. As a growing company, set up in the midst of a recession, we needed hard-working, ambitious and driven newbies - but we needed them on a budget.

This led us to striking up (now long-standing) relationships with local training providers and our first ever recruit was via a graduate scheme with Pendle Training. That particular employee, 7.5 years later, is our associate director - a successful appointment in our eyes!

From that day forward we have relied heavily on the Apprenticeship Scheme offered by our neighbouring college to provide us with cost effective school and college leavers who want a career, not ‘just a job’.

Many of our 22-strong team started with us in this manner and have gone on to make fantastic administrators, consultants, and team managers.

Had we not taken these little wonders under our wing, they would surely have been drawn out of the area by city centre consultancies offering careers people don’t realise we have right on our doorstep!

Our own experiences prompted us to extend our offering to recruiting locally, not only in our original specialist sectors of social care, social work and social housing but to businesses of all shapes, sizes and sectors - first within East Lancashire and now across the county into West/North Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.

You’d be forgiven for thinking we only provide apprentices after that sales pitch, but our business team sources highly experienced candidates at all levels (including directors) across a plethora of sectors.

To all Lancashire businesses struggling to recruit: We understand your predicament and we have the solution.

Every day, we speak to work-seekers and we can confirm that Lancashire is full to bursting with young, fresh and dynamic workers. Some of them don’t even know what they want to do yet. Your company could be the one to take them in, train them up and see them flourish. We have a wealth of experienced and highly skilled workers who live here but travel out of the area for work. Help us bring them back! Let’s get these talented red rose folk building our economy, growing our businesses and, let’s face it, reducing the carbon footprint that commuting inevitably increases. (Everyone loves an environmentally friendly point, don’t they?!)