Five New Graduate Opportunities

9th May 2013

Highland Council offers five new graduate opportunities.

Five graduates will soon get the opportunity to conduct a six-month internship with The Highland Council under the pilot ‘Graduate Intern Programme’ developed and led by the Council’s Planning and Development Service.

Placements have been established across Council Services and will be available to anyone who has graduated from a degree or HND in the last four years and is either unemployed or ‘underemployed’ in a role that does not reflect their skills.

The new roles are:

Customer Service Intern with the Chief Executive’s Service;
Estate Management Officer with the Housing and Property Service;
Graduate Intern with the Health and Social Care Integrated Children’s Service;
Policy Assistant Intern with the Chief Executive’s Service; and
Service Information Officer with the Education, Culture and Sport Service.
Future interns will join a team of four graduates who recently started their internships in other Council Services. Each lucky intern will get valuable transferable experience of working in a local authority and will benefit from a bespoke development programme to enable them to maximise their training and professional development.

This scheme is part of the Council’s wider strategy to tackle unemployment and support more people into sustained employment in the Highlands. The pilot Graduate Intern Programme builds on the success of the Council’s ongoing professional graduate recruitment scheme which employs vocational trainees – such as planners, teachers and accountants – across Services.

The new internships differ as they are shorter and have been designed to focus on time-restricted, project or research-oriented tasks with targeted outcomes and measurable results. New projects include: reviewing the Council’s operational property leases; developing online school profiles; and evaluating social care provision. Graduates therefore get a chance to make a real difference to both Council Services and local communities.

Councillor Thomas Prag, Chair of the Council’s Planning, Environment and Development Committee explained: “These short internships mean that trainees will quickly integrate into and contribute to the different teams. The Planning and Development Service previously developed two similar six-month placements to promote the national ‘Adopt-an-Intern’ scheme and this worked very well.

“The outcome-focused internships emphasize the transfer of knowledge and skills between Council staff and graduates. Not only will the intern develop valuable skills through training by working with staff, we also anticipate that Services across the Council will be able to enhance their current work by incorporating the results of the graduates’ projects.”

For more details on the five new Graduate Internships, and to apply to join The Highland Council team, visit myjobscotland.

The Highland Council is also committed to tackling unemployment through the Graduate Placement Programme which gives financial and business support to local organisations to employ graduates, and the Employment Grant for businesses who recruit a new permanent member of staff. For more information see www.highland.gov.uk/employgrants