Your Inner Greatness - The Recruit

We welcome to the floor Karen Clark, Project Manager at Enterprise to give you an insight into one of the Projects we run here at Enterprise; The Recruit. 

Have you had someone in your life that inspired, motivated, challenged, tested and/or encouraged you? 

That person, when you go up to receive your Brit Award, Noble Prize or Oscar that you will mention in your acceptance speech? 

For me it was "Big Bell", Mrs Falconer - my French & Guidance Teacher - a lady big in stature and big in personality.  She encouraged me to ask questions, to push boundaries - to be me!

We would, I think, all like to be such a person in someone's life. The person who "elicits in someone their inner greatness", Professor Norman Drummond, FRSE. 

Who are they - teachers, football coaches, aunties and uncles, your first boss, the dinner lady, the business adviser?

I have been lucky enough to work with young people over the last few years on a variety of programmes the most intense for me being our Recruit Programme. 

  Four cohorts of soon to be school leavers have experienced our employability programme - some getting more out of the experience than others. The success of these are to a point dependant on the connection between us and the participants.  We try to find out about them, listen to them, develop their soft skills, guide them and try to raise their aspirations. 

This week two of our Recruit alumni were speaking at the Aberdeen Learning Festival on their experiences of learning outwith the normal school environment but my greatest surprise that day was seeing another of our alumni working at the event. 

We greeted each other with shouts of surprise, hugs and honest joy.  The young person concerned had and has plenty of issues to deal with but handles them all in their own way - never ever scared to be the person they are. And you know on reflection I think that person had a far greater impact on my life than perhaps I had on theirs. I do hope that in small way I did make an impression in some small way on their life, gave them a spark of what Big Bell gave me - to take every opportunity to be what we can and want to be - to give our inner greatness a chance.

Our 2014 Recruits have created a video to help other young people prepare for job interviews - please pass it on to anyone who might find this useful (http://bit.ly/RecruitVid14) or click the image below...