A West Thurrock employment partnership that has given work to 14 long-term unemployed people to date, has found its latest shining star in the form of newly promoted cleaning supervisor, Louis Fredericks from Tilbury.
Louis, 33, unsuccessfully searched for work for five years before being referred to local Work Programme provider Ingeus, which partners with Churchill Contract Services to provide unemployed candidates for cleaning and maintenance vacancies at The Co-operative Food’s Distribution Centre in West Thurrock. With Ingeus’s support, Louis not only successfully prepared and applied for a cleaning position at the depot, but has made such a sweeping impression that he has quickly progressed to a supervisory role.
“Having tried everything myself to get a job, I couldn’t see how Ingeus would help, but they really did!” said Louis, who was made redundant from his last job. “I got no replies to most of my old job applications and the longer I was out of work, the worse it got, but Ingeus tailored my CV to different types of roles, gave me interview practice and IT training, and access to lots of vacancies that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.
“I had pretty much given up hope before going to Ingeus, but getting back to work, and being promoted too, has made a world of difference to my life.”
Louis now works full-time as a supervisor in the Churchill team responsible for keeping the huge food distribution depot hygienically cleaned and maintained. Churchill site manager, Ann Andersen, regularly calls on Ingeus’s free recruitment services to source motivated local people for vacancies and knew Louis had the aptitude to succeed from the start.
Ann said: “Louis was well briefed and prepared for the interview and clearly had the motivation to work hard and prove himself. He is an absolute asset to the team and is responsible for supervising Churchill colleagues and liaising with Co-operative managers. The feedback on his performance has been outstanding and I can’t believe another employer hadn’t already snapped him up.
“Churchill and Ingeus work together nationally and here at The Co-operative depot we’ve supported 14 Ingeus clients into work so far. I can rely on Ingeus to only put forward relevant applicants for my vacancies, saving me huge amounts of time and expense when it comes to advertising, sifting through CVs and setting up interviews.”
Ingeus’s employer partnership coordinator Michelle Burningham is based at the Ingeus office in Grays and works with Ann, and other employers of all sizes and industries across the region, to source the right applicants for vacancies. The service is government-funded and therefore fee-free for employers and can range from the supply of CVs for single vacancies to an entire recruitment process for a multiple chain.
Churchill delivers cleaning services at a number of The Co-operative’s distribution centres nationally and has a strong commitment to local and socially responsible employment initiatives. To date, Churchill has given employment to 92 Ingeus clients throughout the UK.
With 12 offices based across the East of England, Ingeus has supported 7,500 people into work in the region since the launch of the Work Programme in June 2011. Please visit www.ingeus.co.uk/employers for further information.
Ingeus
Tel: 0800 321 3160
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