Grad Central, the brand new initiative funded by Regional Development Agency Advantage West Midlands was officially launched today. Please see below the official press release.

New service to keep thousands more graduates in region

The number of graduates working in the private sector across the West Midlands is set to increase with the launch of a new online service funded by regional development agency Advantage West Midlands.

The ‘Grad Central’ service aims to place thousands more graduates into jobs in the region’s private companies over the next four years.

A key priority will be helping smaller businesses to recruit the graduates they need to enable them to develop their business – particularly in areas where smaller businesses have traditionally not employed graduates, such as Stoke on Trent.

Ian Austin, Regional Minister for the West Midlands and Mick Laverty, Chief Executive of Advantage West Midlands will meet one of the first graduates and businesses to benefit when they visit Birmingham based independent courier company Trax Express Systems at midday Thursday.

The visit to Trax (Unit 14, Mainstream Industrial Estate, Birmingham B7 4SN) will take place on the same day the online service goes live.

The service will create business relationships to access and create graduate level jobs and will be marketed to students, graduates and businesses. The long term goal is for the scheme to become a self-sustaining service.

The West Midlands private sector workforce has 70,000 fewer people with degree level skills compared to the national average for England. Year on year, the flow of graduates into jobs is lower than in other regions in England. 400 fewer graduates move into jobs in the West Midlands each year than the national average and 8,000 fewer than in the best performing region.

Ian Austin, Regional Minister for the West Midlands, said: “The West Midlands has made significant headway in recent years improving its skills performance but our skills levels still lag behind other regions particularly in the case of higher value jobs and graduate level employment.

“It is vital for the future well-being of the regional economy that we retain our talent and I am delighted by the multi-million pound investment from Advantage West Midlands.

Lucy Cheatham, Project Director for Grad Central, said: “A new survey by Grad Central has indicated that only one fifth of undergraduates attending the region’s universities intend to start their career in the West Midlands when they finish their degree course.

“This only reinforces the need for the service, particularly during the economic downturn.

”Indeed, the current economic climate has made the jobs market more competitive, which makes it even more important that final year students don’t wait until they have graduated to look for work.

“The good news is there are jobs out there across the West Midlands, so our advice is to take advantage of this new service and start looking now.” 

“Grad Central’s unique benefits include providing businesses with access to the very best graduate talent, along with no fees on their first graduate placement and an extremely competitive set fee of £500 for every graduate after that until the end of 2009. 

“To complement this, our experienced recruiters will be on hand throughout to walk companies through the entire process, from initial advertising of vacancies to shortlisting, interviews and placements. 

“For graduates, it provides them with a matchmaking service to help them find their dream job, offering them an unrivalled choice of opportunities across all industry sectors and all business types.”

Mick Laverty, Chief Executive at Advantage West Midlands, said: “Grad Central is part of a wider programme of activity over the next few years to increase graduate level employment in the private sector.

“This wider programme aims to get an extra 600 students into work experience placements; support 300 graduates to start their own businesses; develop work-based graduate development programmes with employers; and update all final year students about regional job opportunities.

“The new service now provides a real opportunity to help us increase the number of people in the region with graduate level skills, which will be crucial if we are to successfully raise productivity and create the higher value jobs needed to reduce the £10 billion output gap – the single most important challenge facing our regional economy.”

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