As Business Manager for Skills within Futures, I have the responsibility of project managing a number of contracts including the Adult Education Budget and Sector Led Growth whilst supporting various arms of Futures to support their objective of upskilling their customer baseThis consists of designing and implementing paperwork and processes ensuring quality compliance with awarding and funding bodies, working to stringent targets and established a budget forecast model to deliver the programes in the most efficent way for both the business and the learner. In addition to this I am responsible for working with all stakeholders including the Department Work and Pensions, Nottingham Jobs and furthermore offering a high quality cost effective recruitment service for both local and national employers through giving them a bespoke package tailored to their needs. As well as this, I work closely with all departments of Futures including marketing to ensure high quality promotional material is published to give clear and concise information to all that are concernedThis is a fantastic position and I am proud to work in a position where I can help truly change a persons future and prospects through offering both training, development and sustainable employment

Managing a small team of employment support officers, I am responsible for the ensuring high referrals are set to to all classroom based delivery courses in both Derby and Nottingham at CT Skills. Through working effectively with local and national stakeholders, I am able to offer a bespoke recruitment service to small,medium and national businesses to help them employ qualified and motivated staff to develop their organisations. As part of this role I work closely with centre managers to ensure effective planning and organisation takes place to ensure productive delivery at all times and making sure the right courses can be offered to the right learners at the right time. With this role I am competent in all areas of welfare to work and staff development including SBWA's , Traineeships, Apprenticeships and Adult Education.

Throughout my time at CT Skills I iniitally started my contract as a sales consultant which required me to contact local and national businesses in order to offer our services and analyse their bespoke company infrastructure in order to get a better understanding and see if they would benefit from having an apprentice or trainee to help not only their day to day to activities, but also to help develop and progress young people into work and creating a new generation of qualified working staff. From this role, I then moved to work directly with employers and stake holders to help with their recruitment needs by offering individual sector based work academies which would allow learners to get both a qualification and a chance to have an opportunity to progress into employment. Throughout these two roles, my main responsibilities include:• Working on both EFA and SFA funding contracts liaising with employers to provide traineeship and apprenticeship opportunities• Being responsible for the account management of nationally based employers including Principal Hayley and The Air Ambulance Service running successful academies to help meet their tailored recruitment needs. • Liaising with stakeholders including Job Centre Plus, Connexions and training providers to recruit and engage learners onto the right course for them to achieve a qualification and progress back into employment

Throughout my role I have worked as a key member of the ESF Families contract with unemployed customers (on a range of working age benefits including JSA, ESA, Income Support and Carers Allowance) to help break down their barriers to work and help move them towards long term sustainable employment.Through this support I have used a range of techniques to offer advice and guidance including one to one sessions, leading group classes and working with specialist providers to offer a bespoke package to the customer. In addition to my day to day role, I have been given the opportunity to begin the Working Links Management training programme where I have attended courses on key techniques including motivating teams and effective delegation. With this training I have been able to put my theoretical knowledge into practice by leading the graduate programme in the Derby office through planning induction schedules as well as setting targets and delegating responsibilities where needed. In addition I have acted as deputy to the Performance Manager when needed being responsible for hitting weekly office targets and producing financial and auditing records for customer files. I have also been selected as one of the highest performance staff members to represent the company on a National Level with being one of only 2 to receive this accolade. Through this I have worked closely with members of the Senior Leadership Team to play a key role in projects to streamline the recruitment process, improve internal systems and work on a training programme to ensure that staff are able to develop themselves to achieve targets and work to the best of their ability to achieve company strategic objectives. As for my personal achievements in this role, I have continually not only hit but over achieved on performance targets and have worked to improve the Derby office computerised systems to monitor performance and tracking of customers.

I started at A4E, as an Employment Advisor where I worked with a caseload of up to 200 clients at any given time. With this, I was required to give extensive advice and guidance to customers who had been unemployed at least a year in order to move them back into sustainable employment. To do this I worked on a one to one basis to ensure they had clear realistic Job goals. I developled a personalised action plan and helped the customer to produce a tailored CV and worked on improving their Interview Techniques. In addition to this direct support, I also worked closely with the sales team to generate new vacancies through offering our services to employers including running specialised courses, tailored labour skills and even rooms required for interviews or training needs. After 5 months, of this role, I moved into the Adult Skills Budget team to utilise my teaching experience and expertise. In this role, I worked as a tutor to design, plan, implement and deliver a wide variety of training courses to improve candidate’s core skills to give them a better chance of employment. This included working on City and Guilds Employability and Personal Development courses, Functional Skills in Maths and English to Level 2 standard and Entry Level 3 ICT courses. Through these courses, I worked with classes of up to 15 people and was required to ensure that customers had an enjoyable learning experience as well as meeting all the core criteria for the chosen qualification.With regards to extra responsibility, I was given the role of Employee Voice Representative which enabled me to work as part of a small core team of staff who focused on listening to the viewpoints of staff on all levels on ways in which they think they could improve the business. Once these viewpoints had been collated, I then worked on various projects to present these findings to the senior management board and then worked on improvements

During this role, I was required to work as a Employment Advisor on the Work Programme as maternity cover for one of the key staff members of an effective team. As this was my first role in the area of welfare to work, I quickly developed the ability to write an effective CV and give constructive advice and guidance to customers looking to move back into employment. On a day to day basis, I was required to work to stringent targets monitoring the progression of people into work looking at not only getting them a job but the right job so that they would sustain and not return to benefits therefore showing them and their families the value of work.As for my caseload, I worked on the second year customers of Work Programme with those having more complex barriers to employment as they had already been on the course for a year and not had entered into work. This involved working with over 400 customers at a time requiring excellent organisation and time management skills ensuring that no customer was not helped, but instead was given the right information and support to guide them back to where they needed to be whether this be a suitable qualification, volunteer work or development of core social skills.

When I commenced employment at System training, I was working as a Learn Direct facilitator required to manage a small caseload of learners through doing online courses on Maths, English and ICT including both Clait and the new ECDL. Within a year of being at the company, I was promoted to lead facilitator where I was solely responsible for the development of running new courses and liaising with various agencies to promote our programmes. Being successful in continually hitting targets and filling courses, coupled with the development of a business plan in Nottingham which provided us to work closely with local Job Centres through offering a revolutionary approach to training by service allowing customers upon the completion of their employability / Maths and English courses could gain their FLT license in both Counterbalance and Reach which was of high demand in that area. With customer referrals tripling, I was given the role of centre manager where I was responsible for the management of all staff including an administrative assistant, 2 tutors and 2 FLT instructors. Within this I was required to set targets, perform appraisals and manage rota patterns as and when required.

Lecturer in Key Skills ICT and Business Studies and a personal tutor to 27 year 12 students