A placement offer that nobody took up
Your social enterprise gives trainees experience in its own café, workshop or depot, and then moves them on to placements with outside employers: a hotel, a warehouse, a garden centre, a council depot, an office. The employer engagement worker has built good relationships with twenty or so local employers. Her contacts are in her phone and her notes are in her inbox.
A hotel manager emails in March offering two kitchen placements for the summer. The email sits under forty others. By the time the engagement worker replies, the hotel has taken students from the college. Meanwhile two trainees who are ready for a kitchen placement have been waiting for weeks, because their job coach did not know the offer existed.
Why matching depends on one person
Placement work sits between two groups who never see each other's information: employers with needs and trainees with readiness.
- Employer contacts, roles and past placements live in one worker's phone and email.
- Trainee readiness is in job coaches' notes and progress records, not visible to the engagement worker.
- Employers have practical requirements, such as start times, travel distance, uniform, or checks, recorded nowhere central.
- Offers arrive in email, calls and conversations at networking events.
- Placement outcomes and employer feedback are rarely written down.
What each trainee is ready for, and which placements suit them, are judgements for your job coaches and the trainees themselves. We make the information available so those judgements can be made in time.
What missed matches cost
Trainees lose momentum. Someone who is ready to move on and is kept waiting can lose confidence, and some drop out.
Employers lose interest. An employer whose offer goes unanswered, or whose placement goes badly because the trainee was not prepared for the early start, may not offer again.
And the organisation is fragile. If the engagement worker leaves, the employer network leaves with her.
An employer record and a matching list
What we build brings employers and trainees onto the same screen, for the staff who need both.
- Each employer has a record: contacts, sites, roles they can offer, practical requirements, past placements and feedback, and the last time you spoke.
- Placement offers are logged as they come in, from an email forwarded to a placements address, a quick form after a phone call, or a form the employer fills in themselves.
- Job coaches mark trainees as ready for placement, with the types of work, locations and hours that suit them, drawn from their progress record.
- Each new offer shows the trainees whose readiness and preferences fit, and each ready trainee shows the offers that might suit, for staff to discuss with the trainee.
- Once a placement starts, the record tracks start date, check-in calls, employer feedback and outcome, including any job offer.
- Employers who have not been contacted for a while are listed for the engagement worker to call.
| Employer need | Trainee information it is matched to |
|---|---|
| Kitchen role, early starts | Kitchen skills signed off, can travel early |
| Warehouse, needs a site card | Qualification held or booked |
| Office, part-time | Hours agreed with job coach |
| Location on a bus route | Trainee's travel range |
The employer record can be built in a CRM you already use, such as HubSpot or Salesforce nonprofit editions, if that suits you better than a custom tool.
The next offer
The hotel manager fills in the placement offer form on your website in March. The engagement worker sees it the same day with three trainees listed as possible fits. She talks to their job coaches that week, and two trainees meet the hotel manager before Easter.
When the placement ends, the hotel's feedback is logged. One trainee is offered a job. Next spring, the hotel is on the list of employers to call about summer placements.
Is placement matching like this for you?
- Employer contacts live in one person's phone and inbox.
- Placement offers are missed or answered late.
- Job coaches do not see which offers exist.
- Employer requirements and feedback are not recorded.
- The employer network would leave if one person left.