READY TO WORK
Gerard Eadie, who took charge of a glazing firm aged 22 and turned it into an institution, explains why he wants to help young people with no jobs and give them a bright future
MORE than three decades ago, a youngster came to the offices of CR Smith for an interview but he was despondent, shy and scruffy round the edges.
The company’s millionaire boss Gerard Eadie never forgot him.
He said: “I thought who would employ this boy? I felt sorry for him. The other boys had bounced in but he had no confidence.
“I didn’t employ him but I have employed plenty like him since. I didn’t realise then that he should have been given a chance.”
The memory of the boy sowed the seed of Gerard’s project Hand Picked, an employer sponsorship programme designed to give young people a better chance of securing a job.
Hand Picked works with employers to deliver on-premises work training academies – paid temporary and permanent jobs for young people aged between 16 and 24, looking to kick start their working life.
For the employer, it is a means to recruit the right young people for their business. For young unemployed people, it is a means to learn essential skills to find and secure a job.
For three months they are paid, usually above the minimum wage, and they are assigned a mentor.
Since Hand Picked started five years ago, 265 young people have either been “sponsored” on a 12-week paid work placement or through an academy.
The overall numbers going on to full-time employment or further education is 82 per cent.
Gerard said: “Young people shouldn’t be given shelf stacking jobs, they need to learn.
“There is no point in sticking them in a place like a call centre where they get no training and never get out of the bit.”
The academy is for any young person, including those with a rough start in life, jobless graduates and those too mollycoddled by parents to be motivated.
The course instills a work ethic and prepares youngsters for interview, from how to dress to how they should sell themselves.
Gerard said: “We had one lad and it took until the Wednesday of the first week to get him out of his hoodie. By Friday he was in a collar and tie but he said to me, ‘I won’t get a job, I’m from Cowdenbeath, my accent is against me.’
“I told him I was from there and I got a job. In the end, I got him a job as an apprentice joiner.
“A lot of the struggle is a lack of confidence.”
He had been involved over the years with charities for disadvantaged children but he believes a life is only turned around by employment. Youth unemployment stands at 8.8 per cent in Scotland
Gerard said: “It doesn’t matter whether they are seriously disadvantaged or graduates, if they don’t get a job, it will have a seriously detrimental effect on young people.
“You have to get them working for the sake of their selfesteem, mental health and welfare.”
Success wasn’t handed to Gerard.
The son of an official in the pits in Kirkcaldy, his mother was a teacher and he was raised in a council house in Cowdenbeath. It was a community of football on the street, doors open to neighbours and the pit’s first aid man patching the kids’ skint knees in his kitchen. Some of those same families now work for CR Smith.
Gerard’s mother fostered hopes of her three sons and daughter becoming academics but he left school at 15.
It was his younger brother George who won the scholarship, got the degree and qualified as an accountant but as he pointed out: “I now work for Gerard.”
Gerard wanted to be a professional cyclist and, when he got his first job as an apprentice glazier for Fife Council, it was to raise enough money to go travelling across Europe on a bike.
He was 20 when he started working on his own, thanks to a
You have to get them working for the sake of self-esteem and mental health GERARD EADIE