Alexander Battery Technologies takes on four apprentices, thanks to partnership with East Durham College

Alexander Battery Technologies has been working alongside East Durham College (EDC) to promote their apprenticeship vacancies with a view to recruiting and growing their future talent.

The Peterlee based battery factory worked with EDC Business Development Advisor Emma Norbury to develop the best route for recruiting the four apprentices for their company.

It was decided that ten potential apprentices would get the opportunity to showcase their skills through a recruitment open event at the employer’s premises to secure the apprentice roles on offer.

Mark Rutherford, Managing Director at Alexander Battery Technologies said: “We decided to take on apprentices because we found it difficult to recruit the talent in the areas we needed. We decided to invest in the youth and talent in the local area and we are looking to bring that into Alexander’s.

"The open day was really good – the thinking behind it was we didn’t really see any value in interviewing the candidates because they would just tell us how they performed in their exams at school. We were more interested in how they interacted with each other, and with other people within the business. We thought an open day would be a more relaxed environment where we could evaluate them and gain a better understanding of their capability.”

As a result of the open day, four apprentices were hired at the company. Ben Groark joined the company’s quality department and the other three apprentices; Nicole Thompson, Ben Bedford, and Daniel Whitfield are working in the companies’ electronics department.

Mark added: “My advice would be to definitely consider taking on apprentices, and definitely use East Durham College to do so! The ten candidates that came for our open day were all very, very good and we found it very difficult to select just four of them. We’ll definitely be using the college going forwards to bring in apprentices on a more regular basis.”

To find out more about apprenticeships at East Durham College visit https://www.eastdurham.ac.uk/apprenticeships

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