The British International Freight Association (BIFA) is supporting this week’s National Careers Week 2023 with events aimed at demonstrating its commitment to promoting careers in logistics.
National Careers Week 2023, which runs from 6 to 11 March, is a celebration of careers guidance and free resources in education across the UK.
The aim is to provide a focus for careers guidance activity at an important stage in the academic calendar to help support young people leaving education.
With youth unemployment remaining high and BIFA members concerned about the shortage of certain industry skills, there has never been a bigger need for careers guidance to be promoted. Later this week BIFA will be involved in two events.
On Thursday 9th March – BIFA executive director, Carl Hobbis, who is responsible for all elements of BIFA’s Freight and Customs training, will be presenting at the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, in conjunction with Seetec, talking about BIFA’s experiences in employing its first apprentice and encouraging others to follow suit.
Friday 10th March will see him hosting an online members event, aimed at SMEs that may be thinking about hiring apprentices, but need some help navigating the apprenticeship landscape. During the event, BIFA will showcase its own recent experience in hiring an apprentice, with both the apprentice and her hiring manager providing members with their perspective on the process.
Industry promotion is one of BIFA’s key roles and part of that is encouraging logistics as a career path and attracting new talent to the freight forwarding and logistics industry. National Careers Week 2023 is the perfect platform to advise and inspire the next generation as they enter the world of work.
Recently, we have joined up with the Manpower Group to launch the Freight Development Pathway to offer career guidance to individuals looking to switch from other sectors. It complements BIFA’s schools programme; as well as the specific apprenticeship standard for International Freight Forwarding, that BIFA was instrumental in establishing.
BIFA executive director, Carl Hobbis
