Whether you’re recruiting, networking or collaborating, engaging with talent is vital to your business, regardless of its size. BCU Advantage takes a look at the different options available to businesses and what’s right for you.
Whether you’re a multinational corporation or a one man band, engaging and networking with talented individuals can play a huge part in developing new ideas, providing answers to resource challenges or expanding the service offering of your business. This can be through hiring them, working together in collaborative spaces, or simply through the sharing of advice.
Many businesses forget that engaging with talent is a learning process, even if you’re hiring them as an employee, learning is something a business should constantly be doing to support positive change and development. The great Steve Jobs once said ‘what’s important is that you have faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.’
So which type of engagement suits your business? We’ve listed a few services and activities designed to introduce you to new skills and talent, that will fit every stage of business.
Pre-start
You may not be in the position to recruit or even pay for an intern, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get support in either man hours or technical resource to fuel business growth.
STEAMhouse is a collaborative makerspace in the heart of Digbeth that offers free access to makerspace workshops, tools and technical expert support to help you develop new businesses and services from planning to design and delivery.
Start up
So you’ve set up your business and you’re focused on surviving and making things work. Surely it’s not the time to recruit now? Wrong. With student micro placements and short-term internships available you can take on talent for limited periods of time that suits your financial situation.
Whether you can take a student on for 1 week or a month, this is precious learning time for your business, giving you the opportunity to see where (when you can take on someone permanently) the extra resource should be spent and how having extra staff can shape your business and make a positive impact.
A more established business
Up until now you may have been the perfect entrepreneur, however for your business to expand and truly deliver, you’ll need to develop a highly skilled, multi-disciplined team.
There are various services available to access, but not many of them help you access external talent at the same time as upskilling your existing workforce. Higher Level Skills Match is an account managed skills service helping SMEs to access graduate talent, training and workshop support.
You may also consider the need to expand your service offering or explore new ideas, but feel you’re getting the most out of your current recruits. Have you thought of the potential for new innovation when different people are brought together to work on a project?
Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) are the perfect mechanism for bringing together a business, academic experts and the resource of a highly skilled graduate to deliver on particular project objectives. KTPs could be the kick your business needs to dreally drive through an innovation and make it have a positive impact on your business development.
