SMEs across the North East can now receive up to 12-hours of fully funded recruitment support to help with scaling.
Delivered by Sunderland Software City and funded by up to £1.4m from the European Regional Development Fund, the new business support programme is part of the Digital Innovation Partnership Project, which delivers a series of activities designed to drive the region’s digital economy.
The Sunderland Software City team will work closely with trusted marketers, talent acquisition specialists and tech developers to provide tailored support to businesses, addressing the current recruitment challenges they are looking to overcome across the digital sector.
Support is available with a range of activities from helping businesses to build their employer brand and create strong propositions to potential employees to refining talent search and onboarding processes.
Alex Mouat, business support manager and project lead at Sunderland Software City, said: “In the North East Digital Skills Audit 2022, we found that almost half of the organisations that we surveyed struggled to fill positions in the last year. That is something that we need to change, and we hope to start bridging that gap with our new support programme. The SMEs coming for support can be either within the digital sector themselves, or those outside of the sector looking to fill digital positions.”
He added: “One of our key objectives is to help businesses fill up to 120 roles by Spring next year, retaining talent within the region.”
The programme is one of several new projects initiated by Sunderland Software City with the long-term goal of helping drive forward the North East’s digital economy.
