Support unemployed graduates – and the industry’s future!

Building is backing the Pledge campaign, which advocates making 2% of your employees interns. The Pledge aims prevent built environment graduates who haven’t found jobs turning their backs on the industry and into the bargain it will help firms increase their resources, temporarily and at limited cost, to cope with spikes in workload.

Employers can pay interns anything from expenses to the market rate for the equivalent permanent role, and they may be employed for anything from a couple of weeks to several months.

The idea is to keep skilled and talented people focused on pursuing a career in construction, even if we can’t offer them full time jobs just now.

Stephen Gee, managing partner in John Rowan and Partners, who has masterminded the campaign, said: “We must keep these young graduates interested in a construction career or when we come out of recession we’ll face a disastrous skills shortage.”

Gee has calculated that if every firm made 2% of their staff interns, this would be enough to give each currently unemployed graduate at least one placement. He said: “Given that the ‘professional and technical’ element of the industry accounts for about 300,000 jobs – excluding senior executives and construction managers – then that 2% will maintain skills slightly above the forecasted level, allowing for some losses along the way.”

The Pledge asks you to advertise internship vacancies (for free) on the government website, graduatetalentpool.direct.gov.uk. Interns employed through this route can continue to claim benefits for a period.

Add your support for The Pledge here.