Providing meaningful training and volunteering opportunities to employees and supporting companies to become attractive places for underrepresented groups to work.

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Our Partners

Featured By

CAREER ACCELERATOR

“Being a mentor has helped me grow as a leader within my company, whilst learning to listen to others and help develop others without overstepping was a great experience”

FATIMA, CISCO

“By delivering the workshop as a group and working collaboratively, this was an opportunity to continue developing teamwork in schools outside of our normal project environments.”

AMAL, JUST EAT

 

THE PROBLEM

The digital sector is creating jobs 2x as fast as the non-digital sector (Nesta, 2018), however, female and BAME students from low income backgrounds aren’t always encouraged to seize these opportunities. This contributes to a lack of diversity in the technology sector, where 60% of technical roles are filled by white people, but only 19% are filled by women and 1-2% black people (British Computer Society, 2017).
Research by BCG found that the first year of employment was particularly important for LGBT+ professionals to come out at work, as only 10% of the people surveyed came out after the first year of employment. Additional research by Vodafone and Out Now found that 41% of 18-25 year olds have gone ‘back into the closet’ within their first year of employment for fear of discrimination.
Career Accelerator helps address this problem by working with forward thinking firms to support 14-30 year-old young people make informed career choices and prepare for careers in the modern economy. By working with us you will be contributing to growing the pool of eligible talent in the UK to go into top apprenticeships, universities and jobs and be leaders in the modern economy.

THE OPPORTUNITY

  • Recruitment: 88% of young people were inclined to work for businesses with prominent
    CSR programmes
  • Employee Satisfaction: Employees who volunteer
    during work time report being more loyal and committed
    to their company
  • Training: 85% of businesses find volunteering advances talent as part of their learning and development strategy
  • Employee Wellbeing: Employees who have volunteered with their company are 13% happier than those who have not
  • Employee Productivity: Being happy made people 12% more productive

Partner with Us

Partner with us to have Career Accelerator run its training and volunteering programme for your employees.

We supply all employees with an Enhanced DBS and provide training to ensure they are confident and engaging communicators to the young people.

Young people are particularly chosen because of their interest in careers in the modern economy, as well as their passion and ability.

WE OFFER YOUR BUSINESS:

We ask that businesses put forward at least 5-10 employees to make the most of this employee opportunity. Career Accelerator provides the following to partner businesses:

  • Employees take part in 3 x 1 hour employer mentoring sessions over 3 months.
  • 1 hour employee training and onboarding.
  • Employer pack and support preparing each session.
  • Providing Enhanced DBS needed to work with young people under 18.
  • Selecting high ability students for employees to work with.
  • Supporting with arranging catch up mentoring sessions.
  • Providing recommendations to mentors and company.
  • Collecting feedback and sharing this with Mentors for professional development and branding purposes.
  • Support arranging work experience for mentors and their mentees, including sorting out consent forms.
  • A designated Career Accelerator member of staff as a point of contact to support the mentors throughout the programme.

Employee Feedback

100%

Of employees found acting as a mentor a meaningful volunteering opportunity for them.

100%

Feel more positive towards their employer.

100%

Were very satisfied working with Career Accelerator.

80%

Would hire some of these students in the future.

80%

Found Career Accelerator a helpful way of promoting their brand to students.

What Did the Employers Say?

“It’s great to have the opportunity to be able to mentor young people, offer them advice and provide them with insight into the business world and what potentially lies ahead for them”
Maurice, Cisco

“A really good opportunity to share my experience with a student struggling with so many opportunities in front of her, it gave me insight into cultural considerations that I would never have encountered and made me more aware of the impact these could have on future decisions for a young person”
Darren, Just Eat

“It was a great opportunity to provide support to a student going through a similar process I did at that age. It gave me the opportunity to reflect on the decision I made to progress academically and through my career and share some insight as to what I’d change for the mentee to learn from”
Samit, O2

What Our Companies Say

“For me, it was personally fulfilling to be able to meet students from the area I grew up in and provide them with an opportunity that I didn’t really have.”
Ismail, Product Manager, Just Eat
“Good to develop new skills and work with students, networked with colleagues from different areas of the business and had to work collaboratively.”
Emily, Vodafone
“It was refreshing to engage with young minds; learn what they need, aspire, so we can create better conditions for young people who decide to join Vodafone.”
Apolo, Vodafone
“I felt that this experience helped me to further develop my presentation and communication skills. It was also helpful to learn how to plan an event like this to meet the participants’ expectations and ensure the session is useful for everyone.”
Ekaterina, Uber
“This opportunity helped with building my listening and communication skills. To focus and understand what is best for the mentees, I needed to understand what works and does not work for them.”
Charu, Vodafone
“I have thoroughly enjoyed taking part in this program. Career Accelerator did a fantastic job of bringing it all together… the students were incredible – ambitious, driven and willing to learn. A real pleasure to work with. Thank you for the opportunity.”
Audrey, LinkedIn

How can we help you?