Hotel group Novotel is benefiting from a scheme that helps employers find good local candidates.

Speaking at an event in London yesterday, Christine Schmidt, Novotel’s HR co-ordinator, described how a job brokerage scheme aimed at getting local residents into work had helped the hotel chain to find 17 staff.

The scheme called Employ SE1 is a brokerage service that runs in the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth. Yesterday’s event was to highlight the extension of the free at point-of-delivery service into Lambeth.

Since Employ SE1 launched in November 2011 around 130 local employers have signed up for the service, with SE1 promising to submit “the right number of the best local people who are fully briefed about the roles,” according to Helen Santer, chief executive officer of Waterloo Quarter, an organisation that is working to improve the area as a place to do business. So far 74 local residents have been placed, with most having previously been long-term unemployed.

Novotel ran an open day attended by 130 local residents from which 17 were placed into a range of jobs from entry level to more skilled roles such as maintenance and chefs, in two of the hotels group’s local hotels, said Schmidt. 

“The quality of the candidates was impressive,” she said, adding: “We were able to access a pool of talent that normally we wouldn’t have had the resource to spend time on.”

Schmidt tells Recruiter that because many of those hired lacked work experience, Novotel had needed to invest some time in training them and bringing them up to the required skill level.

Rutie Mupfurutsa, co-ordinator for Employ SE1, who liaises between employers and local agencies, such as community and voluntary groups and Jobcentre Plus that put candidates forward, tells Recruiter that the biggest concern of employers is whether local residents will have the right skills and experience. However, she says they are often “pleasantly surprised”. She adds that an important part of her role is to check that only suitable candidates are put forward.

Giles Semper, executive director of Vauxhall One, a group representing local employers, tells Recruiter that informally he is aware that employers find local people more reliable and have lower absence rates.