A public sector HR body has unveiled an Apprentice-style competition in a bid to attract new talent to the area at a time when recruitment is proving tricky.
Rising 2013, which is sponsored by recruitment consultancy Manpower, is the brainchild of The Public Sector People Managers’ Association.
Although it is open to anyone currently working in HR for an entry fee of £149 and is free for PPMA members or member organisations, the key target audience are those at any early stage of their career in the public sector.
Leatham Green, the PPMA’s policy lead for wellbeing and job creation and assistant director for HR at East Sussex County Council, said that attracting and nurturing the best talent early on in their career remained one of the “biggest challenges” for public sector HR.
“The entry level of talent needs to be better. Once we have the best talent, we need to be proactive in nurturing and developing that talent and creating opportunities for development,” he said. “The PPMA is seeking to pool resources to make this happen.”
The problem was that many organisations did not have the resources to invest in junior members of staff or to nurture their “aspirations to become leader in the future”, Green added.
Potential competition candidates will firstly be required to undertake and write a piece of original research on how to address the challenge posed by an ageing workforce and the under-representation of young people in the public sector.
The second step will be to attend the competition event on 11-12 February next year in Warwick. Here they will take part in a communications master class, present their work to a judging panel without the help of visual aids and go through a quick-fire Q&A session in order to assess their ability to think under pressure.
Three finalists will be selected by the judging panel on 12 February and the final round of the competition will take place at the national PPMA Annual Seminar on 18-19 April in Bristol.
There candidates will participate in a ‘head-to-head’ and present their reports to delegates, who will vote for an overall winner. The victor will be given a non-voting seat on the PPMA Board for a year as well as a personal blog spot on the PPMA website.
