Refugees & Mentors supports refugees and vulnerable migrants to improve their employment prospects and get jobs. Through their Returner project, they support refugee engineering, architecture, IT, telecoms and business service professionals to restart their careers in the UK. The Returner Project focuses on collaborating with employers to secure a skilled 3-6 month paid work placement in their sector, which helps the employer to fill skills gaps and enable a highly skilled refugee professional to gain paid UK work experience in their industry.
The Returner Project process:
One Refugee & Mentors member of staff said, “I had a progress review meeting this morning with one of our candidates who is a degree qualified structural engineer who had to flee his home country and is now in Manchester and wants to re-start his engineering career in the UK. Today we picked up the action points from the last meeting; we looked at finalising his CV and looked at what was left to do before we forward it to potential employers. We also helped him sign up with the Institute of Civil Engineers, the professional body for engineers in England. We reviewed his progress with drafting covering letters and also used the time to coordinate the support he’s receiving from a dedicated professional engineer mentor through another project we run.
“The meeting took place via a Zoom video call. If it wasn’t for Covid-19, we’d be meeting face to face. Some candidates have concerns around the data usage of video calls so we need to be mindful of this – not everyone has access to wifi and a laptop. We use phone calls instead if we need to. Overall though, it’s been easier than we expected to move online and has worked better than hoped”.
The Returner Project also benefits employers by helping them to diversify their workforce. Their candidates’ skills and experience are often invisible to employers in mainstream recruitment processes. It also means these candidates are able to contribute to the economy and utilise their professional training. The candidates are highly qualified and want to get back to the industries they are qualified in.
So far, Refugee & Mentors have supported 15 participants on the Returner Project. The impact for participants is absolutely huge. Explaining the different processes and obtaining UK work experience in their field is so valuable. The impact it has on people’s confidence is a huge one. Having someone to support you, to guide you really boosts confidence and strengthens applications and interview skills . It’s having someone to believe in you as well – that matters.
The member of staff continues, "Our funding and the pilot of this project finished in June. After a few months break, we were able to secure some further funding to continue. We are working on expanding awareness of the project and the number of employers we collaborate with. We’re hoping to grow this project so watch this space!”.
A participant stated that, “The Returner Project has helped me with preparing and improving my CV, and helping me learn more about using Linked In for job searching and networking. They have also helped me to register with the UK professional body for civil engineers. Recently Refugees & Mentors have also put me in touch with a professional mentor who is also a civil engineer and they have provided me with interview practice which I think will help me a lot. Refugees & Mentors are always available whenever I need advice.”
If you would like to read more about the Returner Project run by Refugees & Mentors, please follow this link:
