Mitel

The competitive and growing world of business communications, collaboration software and services means Caldicot based Mitel must recruit and retain staff who know the sector and customers well.

Mitel, a Nasdaq quoted company, has more than 60 million user in 100 countries, is the market share leader in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and is a recognised leader in unified communications.

Mitel recruits and trains apprentices within its customer services division to plug the skills gap, training young people with no previous technical skills. Current apprentices focus on IT technical support and follow the IT Telecoms and Professional Apprenticeship framework.

Our Apprenticeship programme is an integral part to Mitel's core strategy, which is linked to growing our cloud business and business in the contact centre market," said Tim Gwatkin, human resources manager.

"We had been finding it increasingly difficult to find candidates with the right mix of technical skills in addition to the ability to effectively support and interact with customers."

Working with training provider Acorn Learning Solutions, the company has developed an effective two-year Apprenticeship programme.

"The Apprenticeship programme gives young people the oppportunity to develop their skills within the IT sector and in return they add real value to the business," said Sean Driscoll, corporate development manager at Acorn Learning Solutions.