Bombardier turn to ELBA for trio of roles
ELBA’s experience and expertise in recruiting great local talent was recently called upon by Bombardier, a multinational company which is delivering the high profile Crossrail contract for Transport for London.
Bombardier, looking to fill three specialist roles, wanted to draw upon ELBA’s expertise and community contacts to help recruit for the Train Preparation Team Leader roles.
The collaboration resulted in jobs being offered to three long-term unemployed people living in East London and, some eight weeks after the candidates started their roles and following a period of intensive training, Bombardier say they couldn’t be happier with the appointments.
One of ELBA’s main areas of work, in its wider remit of working to address social mobility, regeneration, poverty and inequality in East London and beyond, is its Employment Works programme. ELBA works to place people into employment in London, creating possibilities and bringing about positive change.
When Bombardier secured the Crossrail contract, the company established a series of targets around responsible recruitment – making sure jobs were offered to local people appropriate and helping to tackle the issue of long-term unemployment.
Siobhan Scantlebury, Skills and Employment Programme Manager at ELBA, said:
“It was clear from meeting with Bombardier that responsible recruitment wasn’t just a tick-box exercise – it was something they really wanted to get right and we were happy to help.”
The night-time roles involve making sure trains meet the high health, safety and cleanliness standards expected by Transport for London, Bombardier and the passengers themselves. Siobhan added:
“These are really great job opportunities working for an organisation that invests in the skills development of its people and their career progression. Because these are quite technical roles, and not ones that people would necessarily have done before, our job is to find candidates who have those important transferable skills.”
The opportunities were marketed to over 100 community partners with shortlisted candidates attending a recruitment event at ELBA’s offices. At the session, David Atkins, Train Presentation Manager for the Bombardier Crossrail project, delivered a short presentation on Bombardier and the Crossrail project before holding a Q&A session and informal one-to-one chats. The recruitment process concluded with a competency-based assessment centre held in Wembley.
The three successful candidates, aged between 33 and 58, had all previously been unemployed, in one case for over a year. They have been in their new roles for just two months but their managers at Bombardier say they are already big assets to the team.
Bombardier’s David said:
“As one of the world’s largest aerospace and rail companies it was very daunting for these three candidates. But for them to come in and have to deal with the intense training and come out of the other end was brilliant to see. I was very impressed and we’ve had some fantastic feedback from our engineering managers on the project… The recruitment process was great and we’re now working with ELBA with everything from more recruitment to school engagement.”
