HEART North East Region Boasts 100 Percent Job Placement for 2013/14

The HEART Trust/NTA North East Region is boasting a record 100 percent success rate in its trainee placement programme for the 2013/14 academic year.

Regional Director for Employment and Career Services, Althea Smikle-Martin, said that the 800 trainees for the period were all successfully placed in permanent employment solutions shortly after graduation.

Ms Smikle-Martin was delivering her report at the certification ceremony for the North East Region held on November 12, at the Moneague College in St. Ann.

Some 350 graduates from the five HEART skills training centres in the region, covering the parishes of Trelawny, St. Mary and St. Ann, received certificates of competence in 17 disciplines at levels one to three.

The region, during the review year, also surpassed its enrolment target of 2, 646 with 6, 501 trainees, and its certification target of 2, 255 with 2, 466 graduates.

Senior Director for the Workforce Development and Employment Division, Denworth Finnikin, noted that research conducted by HEART Trust/NTA on Skills Demand and Employers’ Satisfaction  in August 2014, revealed that employers were 90.5 per cent satisfied with HEART trained graduates and the services offered by the Trust.

This is welcomed news as the HEART Trust intensifies on-the-job training to meet labour market demand.

“Research also showed a high level of employer satisfaction with employees, who are graduates of the HEART Trust /NTA, particularly in areas such as communication skills (oral and written); productivity; quality of work (ability to meet quality demands); computer skills; co-operativeness (ability to work with others); acceptance of advice and supervision; technical use of  tools and equipment; ability to use own initiative; and problem solving skills,” Mr. Finnikin pointed out.

HEART Trust/NTA graduates , he noted further, continue to reap many social benefits from their training and it has been found that “more training through HEART Trust/NTA leads to reduced vulnerability, increased employment opportunities, and greater security for the family.”

Keynote speaker and Managing Director of Future Services International, Yaneek Page, charged the graduates to be bold in pursuit of their dreams, noting that “fear has killed more dreams than failure ever will.”

She related that when she started Future Services International, she had resigned “a fantastic job” at a well established private sector company.

“I had so many people who said, ‘it is not going to work. You are going to spend money to finance justice, how that is going to work’. My business is six years old today… We have helped thousands (of) Jamaicans (to) access the formal justice system. I have had people from the Caribbean and all over the world …asking me how I can help them (to) create something similar in their country,” she said.

She urged the graduates to “work for a cause and not for applause, live life to express, not to impress. Don’t strive to make your presence felt, (but strive to) make your absence felt.”