#skillednorth

I left University in the summer of 2009 and like many of my peers, had very little idea of how to kickstart my career.

If someone had said to me, eight years later you will be working as a PR professional in the heart of the North of England, I probably wouldn’t have believed them!

That is why I am sharing my story in this #SkilledNorth week as we way of championing the skilled opportunities in the North.

After three years studying politics at University, I had the Houses of Parliament in my sights. However, I knew I needed to gain work experience to help me stand out from the thousands of other graduates vying for a position in the mother of parliaments.

Having grown up in the South West, I moved back to my family home and volunteered on the campaign trail leading up to the 2010 General Election. I gained valuable experience and developed new skills that would set me up for the next step in my career journey.

When the electorate had cast their vote and the new intake of MPs arrived in Westminster, I proudly earned employment as a Parliamentary Assistant in the House of Commons.

It was a dream come true - every day as I crossed Westminster Bridge on my commute to work, I had to pinch myself that it was real.

That was why after three years in post, it wasn’t an easy decision to leave. Working in the heart of the capital, with the job opportunities in the public and private sector, many of my colleagues questioned my decision.

However, I’d spent a number of years visiting Yorkshire and thought I could have a good quality of life and a rewarding career. But it wasn’t until I began my job search that I knew this to be true.

Doing my research, I found there were multinational businesses with headquarters in cities like Leeds and Bradford, SMEs that were world leaders in their sector, government departments that employed thousands of people and Local Authorities that were delivering major economic growth across the region.

All of which provided enticing career prospects.

I was fortunate to secure a communications role with the Leeds City Region LEP. It was here that I developed my knowledge of the regional economic agenda and began to further build my skills and experience.

I’d secured a job that was rewarding, fulfilling and provided opportunities for me to grow. But what topped it off was the quality of life I could suddenly afford. Living just twenty minutes from Leeds city centre, I had a home in Yorkshire’s beautiful countryside within commuter distance of some of the North’s major cities including Leeds, Bradford, York and Manchester.

Now almost five years after packing my bags and migrating North, my southern accent may remain strong but I’d like to think of myself as an honorary northerner!

I have now taken the next step in my career by joining Social Communications and I am in no doubt that this growing company will help me build the skills I need to continue climbing the ladder as a PR professional, and I look forward to what I can give back in return.

In this #SkilledNorth week, I am taking the time to celebrate the skilled opportunities the North provides for a prosperous career and demonstrate how this is helping create a true Northern Powerhouse.

I began my work placement at Social Communications in August 2017. Over the course of 6 weeks I was given a comprehensive introduction to the professional world of PR and gained first-hand experience of working life in the cities of Leeds and Manchester. Though not without its occasional challenges, my experience was truly enjoyable and imparted several transferable skills which are invaluable in any profession.

Through taking part in daily exercises such as a morning newspaper roundup, followed by a short, daily news briefing for a client, I improved my ability to quickly process and repackage information. The constraint of a 70-word limit forced me to be concise in my writing and later work on press releases for local trade media enabled me to practice writing in a journalistic style. As I was frequently given several tasks to complete throughout the week, with various deadlines, I also often had to practice effective time management. I quickly learned the importance of communication and making sure the relevant parties were informed if I became overwhelmed by my workload or was struggling with a specific task.

Although I previously hadn’t really thought about working in the North after university, working at Social Communications has opened my mind to the possibilities available, in applying for graduate jobs in the Northern cities. The experience has also led me to seriously consider PR and public affairs as career paths which make the best use of the verbal and analytical skills imparted by my degree in Philosophy and Literature. The work I undertook was always engaging and varied and my only hope for the future is that I will be able to work in as dynamic and generally pleasant an environment as that which I experienced in my time at Social Communications.

A few months ago, I chaired a panel session discussing skills and what needs to be done in this area to grow the economy. The panel discussed how, although we have seen a welcome fall in unemployment, the country needs to better develop a pipeline of skills and talent that matches the future growth of our economy.

In Yorkshire, we have a wealth of talented individuals that are helping spur business growth and ensure our economy continues its growth trajectory. We also have educational centres of excellence that are helping to develop the pipeline of skills to meet future business demand. 

In this #SkilledNorth week – an initiative led by the government’s Northern Powerhouse team to shine a light on the abundance of talent and skills across the North – it’s time to champion our educational institutions and recognise the work they are doing to create and retain talent in the North.

In Huddersfield, the Process Manufacturing Centre is a good example of how collaborative working across the public and private sector is meeting the business demand for skills. Leeds City Region has the UK’s largest manufacturing base and this employer led initiative sees local businesses donate equipment for students to have real life experience working with modern machinery and learn skills tailored specifically to the sector.

Leeds College of Building is the only specialist further and higher education construction college in the UK and is encouraging more young people to explore careers in construction- a hugely important sector if we are to meet our housing needs.

Leeds City College is bringing forward a new £60m campus in Leeds and is at the forefront of tackling the skills agenda across a number of sectors and provides both further and higher education courses and apprenticeships aimed to complement the needs of business.

The University of Leeds is developing Nexus, a new £40m research and innovation centre to open next Summer. It will be a hub for the local innovation community as well as national and international organisations looking to innovate, be more productive and grow.

The newly launched National College for High Speed Rail, with campuses in Doncaster and Birmingham, is a specialist education and training institution dedicated to the future of the UK’s railway industry. With major national infrastructure projects such as HS2, Northern Powerhouse Rail and Crossrail 2 in the planning, highly skilled engineering and manufacturing expertise will be critical to our country’s economic prosperity in the future and it is educational centres like the National College that will enable the north to help meet this skills demand.

These Colleges, and the world class Universities we possess in this region, are an important part of the answer to our growing skills deficit. Alongside Yorkshire’s 12 Higher Education institutions, which between them produce over 55,000 graduates each year, Yorkshire has much to be proud of in terms of training, developing and unleashing skills and talent.

However, there is growing recognition that business cannot sit back and expect our educational institutions on their own to lead the charge. Businesses must be part of creating and retaining talent in the North. UTC Leeds, a new specialist school focusing on engineering and advanced manufacturing, opened in September 2016 with huge support from industry, the University of Leeds, Leeds Chamber of Commerce, Leeds City Council and partners from across the region. This school will prepare young people to take up the apprentice vacancies, employment opportunities and engineering degree places available in the region and beyond.

As the government shines a spotlight on skills across the Northern Powerhouse, it is imperative we in Yorkshire don’t hide our light under a bushel. Instead, let us champion our educational institutions and celebrate our skilled workers and ensure Yorkshire continues to play a leading role in creating a prosperous Northern Powerhouse.

London is bursting with journalists, TV channels, radio stations and therefore PR practitioners, but it is my Northern roots and a thriving communications industry that has kept me in Manchester. Transitioning into PR after six years in the financial services might seem unusual but I am hoping it will become clear as to why I embarked on such a challenging career change. 

Supporting our client, the National College of High Speed Rail (NCHSR) in the launch of their new campus, I journeyed to Birmingham in my second week on the job.

NCHSR offers learners the “hands on skills” needed for a career in engineering. The college has a strong commitment to diversity and a core value to attract more women into the sector, preparing students to join the workforce by using new technology and training to demolish the current gender imbalance. Social Communications promotes the organisation and its people, who are truly trying to change people’s lives and the economy for the better. 

We’re the people behind the curtains, building connections and meeting new people. We invited the media prior to the launch, outlining the structure of the day and “pitching” to explain why their listeners and viewers would be interested in knowing more. Learners, project managers, government officials and the chief executive Clair Mowbray were all briefed by us ahead of their media interviews– strange territory to most people. It’s our job to ensure the college is painted in the positive light it should be and showcase the journey the organisation has taken to tailor education for the future generation in rail industry. 

Networking and knowing a lot about a lot is part of our job. We need to communicate with a wide variety of audiences and plan everything to the very last detail. The media and our clients have busy agendas. We make contingency plans and ensure we fit interviews around everyone’s tight schedules to the very last minute, there is no time to sit on decisions – we need to be “thinking on our feet”.

Returning home and watching the BBC and ITV news, I had a sense of pride in what the college and Social Communications had achieved together. We secured radio coverage across several regional stations and presence in recognised industry magazines – our work has encouraged learners to apply for a place at the NCHSR.

A “day in the life of a PR account executive” at Social Communications would include attending client meetings, executing communication plans, pitching to the media, reporting and doing a lot of writing. Very often our priorities change to support our client when they need us – we need to be flexible and resilient. 

I’m quickly learning that no two days are the same at Social Communications but I’m loving the opportunity to learn by doing. Whether it’s an exciting day out of the office managing a big media launch like the one in Birmingham or writing press releases and pitching to the media from our Manchester HQ, I’m delighted that I’m developing my career right here in the North. With neighbours like Boohoo, Kellogg’s, Siemens and MediaCity just a stone’s throw away, it’s a great place to pursue a career in the PR and media industry.

The end goal of the Northern Powerhouse is create greater wealth and prosperity for the UK. 

It has been couched, so far, as a regional issue. While the focus is on the North and immediately supporting the populace of the North in its collective endeavour to become both competitive and complementary to the economic behemoth that is London and the South East, we should not forget the logical conclusion is a “better” UK.

The fundamental aim has been to increase GDP in the city regions of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Hull and Newcastle. Quickly it was realised the three levers to do this would be:

to invest in infrastructure 

to better support businesses in their efforts to thrive

and to develop a better skilled and more productive workforce.

While accepting this is dumbing down to a certain degree, the first two are, in simplest terms, about hard cash. We need to spend more in better ways on infrastructure in the North and we need get more growth capital into businesses quicker and support them to access global markets more effectively. The latter poses more questions; the skills issue is the toughest to develop a different future.

In the four years I was at Yorkshire Business Insider a conservative estimate is that I engaged with more than 3,000 business owners and managers. This includes interviews, forums, surveys and award ceremonies. I’m confident, at least anecdotally, that 90 per cent of those openly considered “skills” as a barrier to growth.

The issues are extensive, and the challenges permeate through from primary school through to what one very senior engineering executive described to me as “the age tsunami”.

The scale of the challenge will not be met by throwing money at it, we are talking about social and cultural change. Just for good measure, if you throw in the fact that many commentators now suggest the jobs we expect to be driving the economy forward in as little as only ten years don’t even exist today, a seemingly insurmountable problem becomes an impossible task.

Yet, that isn’t the case. Yes, it is certainly a big problem but looking at it one dimensionally ignores the best-practice examples already in existence. It discounts the quality of the many schools, colleges and universities and it dismisses the very many examples of thriving and successful businesses which are not only creating jobs but shaping their employees, growing their own talent and developing a blueprint for a better future for themselves, their businesses, their employees and by definition, the North and the UK.

So it is welcome that this hasn’t been lost on “that lot” in London. Only this week the Government is spear-heading its “Skills Week” campaign aimed at highlighting and showcasing the best the North has to offer.

This week of activity aims to showcase the talents and skills of people working and living in the North, publishing content on a newly created Northern Powerhouse LinkedIn page, and sharing content which demonstrates the growth and development of skills in the North.

I am hoping that by the end of this week we’re all a little more confident and we’re all a little more sure that we actually have the answers which make us realise that the #SkilledNorth we seek is not an impossible task at all.