Quest Professional launches recruitment consultancy to address youth unemployment

Jan. 26, 2012 - PRLog -- London, January 26, 2012 – Leading business training centre Quest Professional has launched its own recruitment consultancy to address the challenges facing young people looking to kickstart their careers.

The new consultancy will be run by Carlie Santoro, who has almost a decade of experience as a recruitment and HR consultant and worked at a number of leading recruitment companies in Australia before joining Quest Professional.

She won ‘Consultant of the Year’ in Australia in 2007 and believes that being able to work with Quest apprentices for an extended period of time before they are looking for jobs will give Quest a greater insight into which jobs suit the skills and attributes of individuals.

Ms Santoro said: “I’m tremendously excited to be joining Quest Professional and think that we have a great opportunity to change how employers select their young staff.

“Working with the apprentices for a minimum of 12 weeks will give me the opportunity to get to know them extremely well and learn where their particular strengths lie. They are essentially completing a 12 week assessment centre from an employer’s point of view.

“Rather than just having the employer’s best interest at heart, my role is to look after the candidate as well so the emphasis is on ensuring candidates are placed into a role that will suit them long term rather than just for six months.

“Coming from Australia and having recruited for some of the biggest companies in the world, my approach tends to be less ‘pushy’ and more about building long-term relationships with all parties involved.”

Recent official figures show that UK youth unemployment has hit record levels with more than one million 16-24 year olds out of work.

Quest Director Jo Barnard said: “This is a significant step forward for Quest Professional and ensures that we offer a complete service for young people who are keen to get their careers going. “Almost three quarters of our apprentices get a full time job within eight weeks of completing our courses and we have successfully coached 1,300 people in the last five years to achieve their first step on the career ladder.

“We meet with blue chip companies on a regular basis and hear all the time how personal aptitude and training is more important than a university education. The growing number of our former apprentices who thrive in careers at these companies suggests attitudes are changing.”

Quest Professional runs a range of courses which offer a complete range of business and personal development skills that ensures candidates can undertake a variety of roles, which is so vitally important in the competitive jobs market, such as marketing, finance and strategic planning.
ENDS
NOTES TO EDITORS

The brands that underpin Quest have existed since 1912. Originally Queen’s Secretarial College, Quest Professional combines the former well-known businesses of Queen’s Secretarial College, Lucie Clayton, and St James’s and provides tailored training in skills for the modern business environment with an updated and progressive coaching and development approach.

Quest Professional offers a mixture of courses based on terms of up to 36 weeks, focused on the development of essential business skills. In the current environment of increased university fees, employer concern over the quality and relevance of some degrees in the business world, it is seen increasingly as a positive choice to university.

Quest Professional also has specific courses aimed at those who have graduated and are looking for business training following the completion of their degree. It is seen as the first step into committing to a career and taking life more seriously.

Quest Professional assists its graduates on completion of their course through its placement service to find employment in a world where there is fierce competition for jobs. Its reputation with employers in the business and professional job market greatly assist its graduates to gain employment following the completion of their course.

Quest Professional Managing Director Sean Morgan joined BE Limited in 2010, a group within the education sector whose businesses include Quest Professional and the Frances King School of English.

He provides strategic guidance for Quest and also works directly with Quest Professional apprentices on self awareness programmes, career development and explaining the workings of finance.

Quest Professional Director Jo Barnard started working for Sight & Sound Education Ltd in the late 1980s and quickly moved into contract business development for large public sector programmes.

She joined Lucie Clayton in 1997 and played an instrumental role in the merger with St James’s in 2003 and the subsequent sale and merger with Queen’s in 2006 which resulted in the formation of Quest. She was appointed Director of Quest in March 2010.  

Quest has a superb record of placing its apprentices in jobs at blue chip companies including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Morgan Stanley, Grant Thornton, Nomura, Goldman Sachs, the Royal Bank of Scotland LK Bennett, and Christian Dior.

For more information, please visit www.questprofessional.co.uk

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