Week 12 - Personal Development, Money 4 Life & Subway

"When life kicks you in the ass, at least you're moving forwards"

Personal Development Day
Personal Development Day allowed us to give them feedback on how everyone has progressed over the last 12 weeks. Anhar, my fellow trainer, also likes to use it as an opportunity to motivate people using one of 3 methods:

1. Criticise them - Tell them how much they have to improve on and how far they have to go
2. Relate to them - Tell them about when you've been in a similar situation as them
3. Praise them - Tell them how amazing they are doing

Different approaches were used on different people, depending on which we thought would work with them. On the whole, their attitudes have improved dramatically and interview performance is up but in order to keep them moving forwards, some needed to be kicked up the ass.

Money 4 Life
The group are taking part in a project funded by Money 4 Life, whereby they have to teach others on the importance of budgeting and saving using the magic of Facebook pages.

To increase their competitiveness they are being split into two teams with a budget of £50 for each team. The Facebook pages must be related to money management and after 2 weeks, the team with the most "likes" wins.

The winning team will get to go out on a trip worth up to £300. The losing team will get nothing (a lot of thought went into this decision).

The level of hard work, sneakiness and undercover espionage on this day was unrivaled throughout the whole program.

Team 1 immediately get to researching about popular
Facebook pages and what makes them work

Team 2 follow onto the computers shortly after seeing
Team 1 do it

Subway

Midway through the Money 4 Life project, Anhar enters the room talking loudly and causing everyone to stop their work...

"...you want to know if they'll be interested? I can find out for you right now"

(he holds up the phone to the room)

"Anybody want to work at Subway?"

The room erupts with noise as everybody tries to signal their interest in working at Subway. 

Anhar makes a sideways zipping gesture to silence them and exits the room.

He later re-enters informing them about 2 part time positions available, but they have to be ready to be interviewed in two days time.

They all rush to phone around, canceling plans and rescheduling appointments to be available.

The ones that can't are instantly out of the running and learn a valuable lesson: this is how fast the recruitment industry works, and you need to be equally flexible and fast reacting to give yourself the best chance of being hired.