AJP Recruitment comes to the rescue for workers of failed GB Group
13 March 2015
Newcastle-based engineering and construction recruiter AJP Recruitment has offered to help find work for about 350 people for free after one of its clients went into administration.
Fri, 13 Mar 2015Newcastle-based engineering and construction recruiter AJP Recruitment has offered to help find work for about 350 people for free after one of its clients went into administration.
It was announced earlier this week that national construction firm GB Group had gone into administration with the loss of 350 jobs.
AJP director Andrew Paton told Recruiter the vast majority of people affected were in the North of England, where AJP is based, and the firm wanted to help without “profiting from other people’s misfortune”.
He said there was no warning over the administration – some people had started a new role with the company and then two days later found out they no longer had jobs, so there was a lot of frustration and anger. “We thought we would try and help those guys out,” Paton said.
The firm went to its other clients and said it would pass on the CVs of those workers without charging a fee: “So it just started from that and got bigger and bigger and bigger, and more and more contractors got in touch.
“I think some of the [other] recruitment agencies didn’t do themselves any favours in their approach… it was more kind of a feeding frenzy, trying to get in there first.
“We didn’t do this to try have some kind of recruitment agency point scoring thing… we just thought why don’t more people do it; it’s a relatively small thing to do.”
He said AJP had received calls from companies across the UK and Ireland, including some offering additional work – one company “gave us 500 jobs to work on because of this”.
The company started finding new jobs for GB Group workers yesterday [12 March] and has so far managed to secure interviews for 16, though Paton thought that number could be higher as, in some cases, the companies have opted to arrange interviews directly based off the CVs AJP sent them.
“As a small agency we’re probably the wrong people to do it because our days have been given over now to answering this, but we said we’d do it and we’ll do it.
“If recruitment agencies did more things like that, perhaps we wouldn’t have a bad name that we have in some circles.”
The initiative will continue through April, possibly longer if required.
“We’re also looking to extend the initiative to any person who has lost their job through a contractor going into administration, although that might mean we’d need to take on more staff.
“As an industry I think we’d all benefit from realising that perception and goodwill are really important and will continue to be so.”
It was announced earlier this week that national construction firm GB Group had gone into administration with the loss of 350 jobs.
AJP director Andrew Paton told Recruiter the vast majority of people affected were in the North of England, where AJP is based, and the firm wanted to help without “profiting from other people’s misfortune”.
He said there was no warning over the administration – some people had started a new role with the company and then two days later found out they no longer had jobs, so there was a lot of frustration and anger. “We thought we would try and help those guys out,” Paton said.
The firm went to its other clients and said it would pass on the CVs of those workers without charging a fee: “So it just started from that and got bigger and bigger and bigger, and more and more contractors got in touch.
“I think some of the [other] recruitment agencies didn’t do themselves any favours in their approach… it was more kind of a feeding frenzy, trying to get in there first.
“We didn’t do this to try have some kind of recruitment agency point scoring thing… we just thought why don’t more people do it; it’s a relatively small thing to do.”
He said AJP had received calls from companies across the UK and Ireland, including some offering additional work – one company “gave us 500 jobs to work on because of this”.
The company started finding new jobs for GB Group workers yesterday [12 March] and has so far managed to secure interviews for 16, though Paton thought that number could be higher as, in some cases, the companies have opted to arrange interviews directly based off the CVs AJP sent them.
“As a small agency we’re probably the wrong people to do it because our days have been given over now to answering this, but we said we’d do it and we’ll do it.
“If recruitment agencies did more things like that, perhaps we wouldn’t have a bad name that we have in some circles.”
The initiative will continue through April, possibly longer if required.
“We’re also looking to extend the initiative to any person who has lost their job through a contractor going into administration, although that might mean we’d need to take on more staff.
“As an industry I think we’d all benefit from realising that perception and goodwill are really important and will continue to be so.”
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