Connecting Taupō employers and young job seekers

Students try out a new career to see if it's a good fit at the Taupō District Careers Expo.

A youth employment programme in Taupō is producing the goods and could be a model for other towns hoping to retain young people, fill skill shortages and get people out of unemployment.

Taupō Pathways for Youth Employment is starting to gain attention, to the extent that when Taupō MP Louise Upston brought National leader Christopher Luxon through recently, it was one of just two local projects on the agenda, alongside Contact’s new $800 million Tauhara geothermal power station.

Luxon said it was exactly the kind of organisation they wanted to support.

Taupō Pathways manager Gaeleen Wilkie said they started out about six years ago because there was a “bit of a disconnect” between employers and young people looking for a start in the workforce.

“Employers were looking for staff out of town and young people thought they had to leave Taupō to get a good job.”

They responded by organising the Taupō District Careers Roadshow and by starting a programme called Pathways Connect.

Now, every Year 11 student at both high schools in Taupō participates in the Pathways Connect programme, visiting workplaces according to the vocational pathway they are interested in. This is being expanded this year to include professional careers in a programme called Connections.

“It doesn’t have to be a specific job but the pathway. If you ask a young person who’s into construction and infrastructure, what the jobs are they will say builder and that is about the extent of their knowledge so we get them into workplaces to show there is a lot more people involved in infrastructure than just builders.”

Employers were too busy to teach the “soft skills” that come with entering the workplace - things like attitude, communication, teamwork and self-management.

“Young people feel like walking into a workplace is like walking into a foreign land, with foreign customs and foreign language.”

There were also basic skills that some people were lacking, like simply being physically fit enough to cope with a day’s work.

They brought in a programme called Licence to Work, which helps prepare young people for the workplace and helps them identify what sort of person they want to be. It is also run in the high schools.

A new initiative this year will see employers recognised for their support of the various programmes with a Youth Friendly Employer Award, which is an endorsement of the business, with a certificate and a sticker to display on the window.

“Everything we do we can’t do without employers and so we just really wanted to do something back for them.”

She said it was not just valuable to young people but also to the economic and social prosperity of the whole community.

“We are giving young people a hope, a plan, a future.”

The journey for young people was more complex than it used to be.

“When I was leaving school I was told I could work in an office, be a nurse or be a school teacher. I didn’t want to be any of those.

“Now they have so many hundreds of jobs to choose from, it’s actually very, very confusing for them.

“Young people often get jobs but don’t keep them because they don’t know what is expected of them. If you prepare them beforehand and they know what is expected they are much more likely to succeed in that job.”

Unemployed young people are also offered the Pathways programmes and they aim to get at least 72 per cent into employment or tertiary training.

“We have some of the best outcomes for New Zealand.”