Recruiting and Retaining Diverse, Young Talent.

3 November 2022

From 2017 - 2019 UpRising delivered our Fastlaners employability programme to unemployed and under-employed 18-25 year olds across London, Birmingham and Manchester. Funded by BBC Comic Relief and The Queen’s Young Leaders, this free programme of support was delivered over a 5 to 8 day period. Programme participants took part in interactive workshops, mock interviews, mentoring sessions and networking events and met a range of speakers and businesses who delivered sessions designed to support them to identify their career goals and develop the skills, networks, knowledge and confidence to secure and retain fulfilling employment that was meaningful to them.

Over the course of our Fastlaners programme, we worked with the young people to understand their experience of the barriers they faced in securing meaningful work, so that we could communicate their experiences to our stakeholders, partners, employers and government. The young people we work with at UpRising come from diverse and under-represented backgrounds and so were able to speak to a wide range of barriers and issues they encountered.

We ran nine consultation events over a three-year period, in the regions we delivered in, exploring issues such as recruitment, retention and progression.

The consultations were designed to encourage the young people involved to address the issues and barriers they perceived, while also encouraging them to discuss solutions to the challenges.

Our experience delivering Fastlaners face-to-face was the foundation of our Youth Futures Fund-backed digital employability programme Stand Out, delivering during 2021 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read the full report here.