The waiting is finally over for ‘A level’ and GCSE students and many students are ‘sat-naving’ out the next stage in their education or climbing onto the first rung of the career ladder. Many will fly the term-time nest and enjoy campus life but others are increasingly plotting out alternative routes to a career. Business leaders and owners throughout Stockport are keen to nurture young talent and provide opportunities here in Stockport.
Nigel Bennett, Senior Partner at Hallidays, is one such advocate of ‘home-grown’ talent:
“From our perspective age isn’t what matters, it is attitude. Also most of the
time having a precise skills match is less important as if they have the right
attitude we are a great training firm. We also profile everyone who joins the firm;
we often look for specific profiles although this is also overridden by someone
who has the right attitude, is open minded, keen to learn and will come on
board with the way we all do things at Hallidays.
“We take people from college at 18 who may have done the Accountancy
Technician Course in which case they may then study for one of the
professional qualifications, ACA or ACCA. They may however come in having
no particular accounting experience and then do the Accountancy Technician
course. We do recruit at more senior levels but we prefer to grow our own
wherever possible. Nearly all the managers and partners at Hallidays qualified
with the firm. Historically we had a policy of only taking on graduates to complete the professional qualifications; however we dropped that before we moved to Stockport, the main reason being that pre-recession, the big firms were sucking up all the good graduates and we found we could find better people who weren’t graduates”.
In business there are many routes to achieve success, but as Wayne Jones also emphasised recently – it is attitude that will ensure safe first steps.