Belfast City Council is leading a pilot as part of L&W’s New Futures programme, testing an alternative employment pathway for people to switch career into the city’s growing technology sector. In December 2022, Michael Kane from Belfast City Council described the approach and outcomes from the first cohort of participants. In this latest blog, he provides an update and introduces two further cohorts of participants who began their journeys in June 2023.
As a quick recap, 11 participants impacted by Covid-19 completed the first academy and nine of these participants successfully switched career into tech, securing immediate employment with starting salaries ranging from £23,000 – £28,500.
Through FIT, our appointed training organisation, we’ve maintained contact with everyone from the first academy. The graduates who started employment remain in their role to this point – a huge credit to them and their employers. We continue to work with those who did not find employment immediately, providing relevant information, advice and guidance to support them towards employment. We’re confident that at least one further job will be confirmed in the next couple of weeks.
I’m also delighted to share that we started two more technology academies in June 2023: one in Product Management, the other in Cyber Security. In some ways, it has felt like starting all over again (because we needed to develop new curricula etc), however the lessons learned from the first cohort were tremendously useful in shaping what works best for the target audience.
