GC Career Story: Tim Jeffery

When I finished my post-grad in 2011, it was the height of the global financial crisis. And when unemployment peaked that year, it just seemed to me it was the biggest social injustice at the time – that needed fixing.

I’d also spent about three or four months out of work – which I know isn’t a great deal of time compared to some of the people we work with at GC, but it felt like such a long period at the time. I decided to find a way to work in the Employability Industry so that I could make a difference.

After working in a small charity in Sheffield as a Junior Consultant from the summer of 2011 I then worked as a Recruitment Consultant for about two and a half years – one small local agency, and another national one. I thought that the purpose of a recruitment agency was to help people find jobs, which they do, but I soon found out they are also very profit and sales driven. I did learn a lot of skills and it was very interesting, but it didn't align with my values, or what I wanted to do longer-term.

Joining GC and making every day count

I found an Employment Advisor role at GC (then called ‘Work Solutions’), through an employability sector specialist recruitment agency. When being interviewed, I just remember thinking this was a role much more suited to what I’m about. I started here in February 2014 on a 12-month contract.

Straight away I knew this was the sector I wanted to be in! It was before we’d developed the values and the GC brand that we live and breathe nowadays, but I knew I was working for a social enterprise, rather than one of our employability competitors. 

Going into work each day, I knew I might only get a year at this… so I needed to make every day really significant. The role really resonated with me, and even today, I can still remember many clients’ names, their circumstances and aspirations. Looking back, in many ways I think my first year at GC was my favourite, just because it was really simple and was about helping the person sat in front of me and having a really individual customer-focused approach.

Later that year, an opportunity came up and I successfully moved into an Employer Engagement Consultant role and was responsible for business development and account management of employers across South Yorkshire to source vacancies and place our participants back into sustainable employment. 

By January 2015, I’d progressed to become Lead Employer Engagement Consultant – responsible for leading a team of six colleagues across multiple contracts.

Pivoting into 'Partnership' and 'Sub-Contract' roles

As work programmes came to an end, we started bidding for other things, and my role naturally transitioned away from employer engagement into partnership work, and I started work as an Integration Co-ordinator towards the end of 2017 – to build the partnerships and relationships that we needed to win future contracts.

We bid for work and health programmes in South Yorkshire, and for a time, it did look at bit uncertain what the future landscape might look like, but we came though and won some exciting new contracts. That's when I moved to become Sub-Contract Manager in October 2019 on the ‘Skills Support for the Workforce’, ‘Skills Support for Redundancy’ and the ‘Kickstart Scheme’ in Sheffield City Region. Again, it was a bit of a pivot, and working in partnerships with employers and training providers in our supply chain.

Adapting and being reactive

In March 2020, everything changed with the Covid pandemic. To be honest, it was a really interesting and reactive, but uncertain few years.

In June 2021, I successfully transitioned into my current role, Partnership & Integration Manager and worked on ‘Kickstart’ – a crisis-response programme to support young people to find jobs during those difficult times. That same year, we also won the ‘Restart’ programme – and that’s when our activities and footprint across South Yorkshire began to really evolve. We went from being a team of 30, to around 200.

Over the next two years, I was also involved in setting up the ‘United for Ukraine’ initiative and ‘Jobs for Hongkongers’ programme, as we extended our support working with number of partners and businesses to support refugee, migrant and resettlement support. It’s something that should never have been needed, but I think, ‘United for Ukraine’ has been the best and most rewarding thing that I've been involved in and showcases what GC is all about.