Employers

There is an increasing awareness that employers are looking for more than just formal qualifications when recruiting new staff. What young people do and achieve outside of formal education is as important, if not more so, in shaping the attitudes and aptitudes that they bring to the world of work.

Youth Work Awards

The Awards Network captures a wide range of non-formal learning awards available to young people in Scotland. The Award Finder will help you to identify and better understand these Awards and the skills that youth work awards can demonstrate in the people that you are considering employing. Skills that they gain are particularly relevant and transferable to their employment potential. Awareness of these awards can support your recruitment decisions.

Many of the awards can also offer experiences, skills and opportunities for developing confidence and self-worth in your existing workforce too.

Why is non-formal learning important?

Regardless of where young people are on the attainment spectrum, they all need to demonstrate that ‘something extra’ to stand out from the crowd at the shortlisting stage and at the job interview.

From the Business Sector, CBI Scotland, tells us…

Business is clear – we need an education system which develops rigorous, rounded and grounded young people. This means a system which focuses as much on the development of key attitudes and attributes – such as confidence, resilience, enterprise, ambition – as on academic progression and attainment.

– Delivering Excellence- a new approach for Schools in Scotland, 2015, CBI Scotland

From the Education Sector, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education found through an Aspect Review of youth awards that:

Young people gain a wide range of skills such as confidence, interpersonal, team working, leadership and employability through participation in youth awards.

Youth awards support young people in their learning and to progress to further and higher education, training and employment on leaving school.

– A Review of Youth Awards in Scotland, 2015, HMIe Education Scotland

Any job requires a set of technical skills, but employees also need a range of ‘soft skills’. These are the skills that enable people to work together effectively. Recognising the breadth of opportunities offered by youth work awards will help employers better understand the way in which young people’s extra-curricular activities build up their ‘soft skills’, and make them more effective employees in the workplace.