Know what you want to do? Need a bit of help to get there?
About 60% of the people who take up our Skills Grant get a job within months.
So that’s a worthwhile investment of your time and money, and ours!
Aiming for a certificated learning experience is a way of showing potential employers what you can do, and it also attracts a higher level of support from HIE Caithness and Sutherland. People have used the Individual Skills Development Grant to gain a qualification as an LGV driver, European Safety Passport, Rope Access, Hospitality Management, Offshore Standby Vessel, Advanced Scaffolding, National Pool Lifeguard qualification and many others.
To check if you are eligible, click here to look at our conditions of eligibility.
You can also get information and advice from Careers Scotland, from advisers who specifically work with adults.
You can also consider some of the following information to help you in your job search:
A 2002 employer survey across Scotland tells us that:
- It would appear that attitude is a more common shortage than skills; almost 70% of workplaces in the Highlands and Islands area stated that issues such as poor attitude, motivation, or personality are more of a problem than a lack of skills (58%), qualifications (23%) or experience (47%).
- In the Highlands and Islands area, at the time of the survey, there were approximately 6,200 job vacancies. This accounted for 4% of all employment in the area. Around 3,500 of these vacancies were hard to fill, representing 2.2% of all employment. Further, almost 800 were hard to fill due to skill shortages – accounting for 0.5% of all employment in the area.
- In the Highlands and Islands area, skill shortages (relative to all employees) were most likely to occur in: the skilled trades, and elementary occupations; hotels and restaurants, and construction sectors; companies employing less than 10 people
- The key skills job applicants appear to be lacking are: customer handling skills; problem solving; planning and organising; and oral communication.
- Skill gaps (relative to all employees) in the Highlands and Islands area are most likely to occur in: the skilled trades, and process, plant & machine operative occupations; high labour turnover workplaces; the construction, and hotels & restaurants sectors; and the LEC areas of Caithness and Sutherland, Lochaber, Moray, and Argyll and the Islands.
- The skills that employees lack were overwhelmingly ‘soft’ skills (e.g. team working; communication; customer handling; planning, organising and problem solving); followed by IT related/or other technical/job specific skills such as strategic management; with literacy & numeracy skills less of an issue.
- Over the next 2-3 years, 22% of businesses in the Highlands and Islands area anticipate recruitment difficulties; attracting appropriately skilled staff is the second highest ranking challenge that businesses believe they will face in the next 12 months; and 23% of businesses expect their employment levels to grow over the next year.
(Survey information supplied by Futureskills Scotland 2002.) |
