Simondo Robinson, Creative Director of GigsandFestivals talks Youth Unemployment, expectations and what we can all do…

The number of young adults out of work has reached an all-time record high with 21.3 per cent now unemployed that’s’ a rise of 74,000 over the last quarter. This means that nearly one million young people* are out of work and are feeling left on the scrapheap.

The government is spending millions of pounds on campaigns on getting the younger generation back into work but seriously are their enough jobs in the UK to put one million young adults back into work? I don’t believe so….

I believe the government need to spend our hard earned taxes on supporting young adults into business training programmes that can prepare them for a career as an entrepreneur as this is going to start up new business and that’s not just good news for the economy but it’s also good news for the job market creating new jobs for generations to come.

I would never of imagined when I was growing up that I would be running my own business I say the same about attending and completing university. One of my most powerful memories of high school was attending a one to one session with my careers advisor and telling her I wanted to work in the media and her reply to me after a short silence was ‘how do you feel about joining the Army?’

I wasn’t the brightest person at school and I didn’t achieve very well academically but creatively I thrived and I believe this was overlooked. My advice to any young person wanting to start up his or her own business is that if you believe in yourself and have a passion for what you want to achieve it will happen if you put the work in.

It’s not going to happen overnight it might take months or years to achieve your goals but it doesn’t matter if your lower, middle or upper class or have little or no academic achievements or a 1st class business degree. Thinking positivity about yourself and your business is key.

A lot of people say to me I would setup my own business if I had the money, my reply to this is you don’t need thousands of pounds and a string of investors to setup a successful business. I started my business on a very small scale with only £300 that I had saved up as capital for the business. Setting up small scale is a start of a very long and successful journey. I also believe setting up on a smaller scale helped me manage and grow the business quicker as i was new to running my own business and had many lessons to learn.

To summarise my post on Global Entrepreneurship Week, I can’t stress enough how important it is to believe in yourself, think positivity and don’t take into count where you are from, but where you want to be in business and life and success will follow.

*now over 1 million from figures released 16/11/11

TheEmployable thank Simondo for his timely comments. Today (16/11/11) new Unemployment figures have been announced which confirm that Youth Unemployed is now over 1 Million. 

Please take some time to look at TheEmployable and navigate yourself around the site to see what is happening, right now, that is making a difference….