GetMyFirstJob has just enjoyed a bumper 2017, reaching over 360,000 young people registered on the site and engaging with over 100,000 young people every month. In addition, on behalf of our training and education partners, we’ve interacted with more engaged young people, careers advisers and schools than ever before. For me, one of the big breakthroughs has been the way in which we’ve been able to create real benefit by partnering with some great youth organisations across the UK, together reaching over 2 million young people every year.

Now, in my experience, the word ‘partnership’ is often overused. It’s a slightly soft word for customer; the partnership represents an exchange of money on one side, and services on the other. To my mind, true partnership has to be defined by far more than money. Cash may be part of the transaction, but there have to be reciprocal services and benefits too.

GetMyFirstJob was built on the basis of partnerships – unlike any other approach, our training providers, colleges and employers use a platform to share their opportunities to create a shared database of interested candidates. The power of working together and being part of the UK’s largest platform for young people means that they benefit from a combined traffic of over 2.5m visits per year, and can then focus on the important part – delivering a great experience to the young people they want to talk to. In turn, this enables them to provide a great service to the businesses they serve.  

This year, we’ve been able to add another dimension to the Partnership. We’ve been able to introduce a number of youth organisations into our eco-system. Not only does their direct access to work and further education vacancies provide with an easy next step for the young people they work with, and a ‘real’ option for those that might not consider these routes, but our ability to provide feedback about the outcomes and destinations of those young people provides them with an insight that would otherwise be very difficult to measure. We’re delighted that the National Careers Service, the Prince’s Trust, City and Guilds, SEMTA and Tomorrow’s People are now part of our partnership model, with more partners working with us in the months to come.  

As we evaluate this model, it’s showing some fascinating results. In August alone, we were able to help 25,000 young people explore 10,000 opportunities resulting in 30,000 applications. This is a partnership that is really bearing fruit, and we’re looking forward to sharing more insight about the progress young people are making in the coming months.  

David Allison
CEO, GetMyFirstJob