Europa Worldwide Group MD Andrew Baxter has announced a RAPID Career Development Programme campaign. As a businessman who didn’t go to university and started working straight from school, Baxter is a strong advocate of learning on the job.
Keen to give school leavers the opportunity to follow in his footsteps, he set up a pilot scheme and offered student Max Holbrook a training programme at Europa’s Nottingham branch in August 2018.
Following the success of the pilot, Europa launched the RAPID programme. Claimed to be the first of its kind within the logistics industry, the four-year programme offers school-leavers a career in logistics.
To manage the programme a team was recruited including head of talent Laura Watkin and early career talent manager Lana Jay. Together they whittled down hundreds of applications to find the final 19 recruits who will be split across the Europa Road and Europa Air & Sea divisions.
Europa Worldwide Group is a specialist road, air, sea and warehouse operator, with a £180m turnover and 900 staff across 16 sites in the UK, Belgium and Hong Kong. Bigger branches will have up to three recruits, with smaller branches taking on one.
To kick-start the new recruits’ careers, Europa held a two-day RAPID assessment day where directors explained the company’s key vision and values whilst offering training, guidance and advice.
“The programme was created to offer a unique, fast-track scheme for bright and passionate young people aged 18 to 21 to reach senior leadership roles within four years of joining the organisation, said head of talent Laura Watkin. “As a completely new campaign it’s unknown territory, so we knew it would be hard work to get to this point. I fully believe that we have some amazing candidates who when given the training and guidance provided will become promising individuals.”
Baxter (pictured centre in blue) added: “It’s been a long process to get to this point – from creating the idea to running a pilot scheme and holding assessment days – we’ve spent a lot of time and investment to ensure the programme is successful. Most importantly, we wanted to make sure we had the right people for the job. I believe we’ve hired some really strong individuals and I’m looking forward to see what they can achieve in the years to come.”