Employability Skills Programme
Employability Skills Programme (ESP) is a free course to help Jobcentre Plus customers improve their jobsearch and job-readiness skills. Learners will also improve literacy and numeracy, or their speaking and understanding of English.
You will receive training, advice and support to help you improve your job prospects:
- Confidence building and motivation
- Developing or improving your CV
- Completing job application forms
- Developing interview skills
- Presenting and selling yourself
- Finding jobs and networking
- Health and Safety in the workplace
- Developing a better understanding of your own skills and abilities and how to use them in your career
- Improving your reading, writing and speaking of English
- Helping with your maths
All referrals are made via Jobcentre Plus. If you would like to join ESP, you can download this flyer to take with you to the Jobcentre, or just ask your Personal Advisor.
If you have any further questions, contact Robert or Nayna on 020 8426 2666, or send us an e-mail.
A learner's story
Shaukatali Hirji’s new confidence comes from having completed the Employability Skills Programme (ESP). He had no problem with numeracy and his English speaking was fine, but he needed to improve his written English and ESP has made that possible.
Having spent twelve weeks with JGA on ESP, Shaukatali passed an exam to show the improvement in his written English. “The tutors do a brilliant job,” he says. “They are understanding and always encouraging and make sure that we are learning every day.”
When I met Shaukatali to talk about his experience with JGA, he first told me about his inspiring arrival in England in 1974:
When I arrived in England from Uganda in October 1974 it was a Friday night at ten o’clock. My parents were already here under their British Protectorate passports and my wife and one-year old child were with them. But, because I had been trying to keep the family tea plantation going in Uganda, I had been forced to give up my British passport for a Ugandan one. When the Immigration Officer saw this passport, he said I would be deported back to Uganda unless I could get a job by the time of the next flight on Monday night.
On my way to see my parents, I saw a poster for a fitter’s job at Nestlé’s factory in Hayes. I thought that I would be able to do the job because I had taken machines from a decommissioned Nestlé’s factory in York and re-built some of them in Uganda, but I had no documents or any way to prove it. I went there, but was told the factory would not open until five o’clock on Monday morning.
I went back at five on Monday morning, but the offices did not open until nine. When they arrived, I tried to persuade them to let me show what I could do. I said if they took a typewriter apart and put all the pieces in a sack and shock it up, I could put it together again, but they said no. In the end they asked if I could fix a machine which was jamming every five minutes. I did it and they offered me a job.
Then I had to get my passport stamped in Piccadilly and race back to the airport with my passport and the letter saying I had a job. Two hours before the flight which would have taken me back to Uganda, I was granted Indefinite Leave to Remain.
With the help of ESP, Shaukatali has gained enough confidence to begin a new business venture. "I am confident in my abilities as a businessman and in my new found writing skills for letters, plans and other forms." With ESP, you could do the same.
