News & Events

‘Get Started in Retail’

A three-day course designed to get the long-term unemployed into retail jobs was held in Festival Place recently.

The three-day course covered a variety of retail related topics such as customer service, customer complaints, teamwork, policies and legislation and CV writing. Managers from Debenhams and Next gave up their time to talk about what it is like to work in a retail environment and describe the qualities they look for during the interview process.  

Job Centre Plus was instrumental in finding the delegates and the retailers that were interested in joining the scheme. The retailers involved guaranteed an interview for any delegates who showed an interest in working for them.  

On the final afternoon delegates were matched with available jobs and were given help to fill out application forms.  

Five courses were run across various locations between November 2007 and March 2008.

These locations included:

• Two courses in Basingstoke
• Two courses in Andover
• One course in Southampton

In total 62 people enrolled on the five courses.

At the end of their courses each student filled in an evaluation form giving feedback on issues such as the teaching style, the course environment and how the course has improved their confidence etc.

Examples of these evaluation results included below:

Do you now feel that you are better prepared for finding a job?

Has it made you feel more confident?

Comments at the end of the training included:

‘It was a good course and it’s made me realise what I want in life’.

- Tom  

‘I found the course very helpful and fun. I feel more confident that I can get into a retail career now’.

- Kylie  

‘It was interesting, educational and informative. I feel more positive about finding a job; it was great fun’.

- Carina  

There are currently no further dates planned for this course.