2 minute read
Resident’s view
Kickstarting my career with my landlord
By Emily Feltwell, Sovereign resident
Kickstart launched in September 2020. I was one of the first young people to start on the scheme at Sovereign.
At the time I was unemployed. I’d gone to the Jobcentre just to tell them about my change in circumstances and they introduced the idea to me right there and then.
The part I liked was that the scheme was designed to help people start out in jobs they might not have considered before. Most of my jobs had been in retail or catering and so the thought of trying something new was interesting.
I initially applied for an admin role at Sovereign and didn’t get it. But only a few hours later, they called me back and told me they had a job that they felt was a much better fit, in the Communities team. I was intrigued.
Although I pay service charges to Sovereign, and have friends who live in Sovereign homes, I didn’t really know what a housing association did. I also didn’t really know how an office job that wasn’t in the office would work, but I was ready to find out.
It might sound weird but the last time I did a PowerPoint presentation was at school in about 2011, so even getting to grips with programmes like that again has been beneficial. All the basic stuff that needs to be learned on Excel, Word, Outlook and that kind of thing is handled through the Kickstart training, which is a few hours a week and has to be completed and handed in, separate to the job.
My role has been as a communities communications assistant. I support all of the different communities teams if they need admin help, setting up meetings, chasing up emails to customers, making presentations, that kind of thing. Every day is different.
What I’m looking forward to now, with a little bit of nervousness too, is getting into the actual office. More or less my whole working experience with Sovereign has been online, through Teams, so actually meeting real people and shadowing them in their jobs is going to be great.
I’m also really pleased that I got an extension to my role. I know that having a year’s experience on my CV will make a huge difference in showing that I’m committed to employment, as well as displaying all of the different skills I’ve learned and projects I’ve been involved with.
At my initial onboarding they said “there’s a possibility that you’ll be taken on at the end of your placement” and I thought ‘yeah, yeah, fake news,’ but it’s actually amazing.
I’ve very much been reassured that it takes six months to learn about an organisation, about the job you’re doing. But when we had the open days here at Sovereign, I came to all six of them and soaked up the atmosphere and the knowledge in the building. It’s my ambition over the next few months to set up lunchtime networking sessions for Kickstarters with different areas of the business – and maybe even with Kickstarters from other organisations, who knows? I feel like there’s so much potential ahead of me.
