I sat watching Dave the other night and there’s a bit in it where Kevin Kline simply states that he wants to give everyone in America a job that wants one.  I’m not sure if our the MD of Microsoft, Gordon Frazer has seen this, but he’s just announced that we plan to get to 500,000 people into work by 2012 through an initiative called Britain WorkstitleElevate 

So how do we do that?

  • A new national IT apprenticeship (with 700 new Apprenticeships before the end of the year and 3,000 by 2012).
  • Targeted skills and employability training (for which Microsoft is making available ££millions of training vouchers over three years).
  • A new job matching service called MSEmploy (which matches industry vacancies with skilled applicants)
  • Working with our partners, as well as a host of other NGOs and local government – including Leonard Cheshire, UK Online Centres, The Wise Group and Jobcentre Plus
  • Support from all the major political parties as well as Lord Digby Jones (former government skills envoy and Director general of the CBI).

Hopefully this will grow to be much bigger than Microsoft and I have already had the SQL Bits organisers contact me about this to see how they can get involved. The various Microsoft user groups not only provide good free training, they are a great place to network to find and fill vacancies as well.

So if you have friends or family looking to get into IT, point them at the site and if you think you can help out then please contact me.