It comes after the voice and broadband specialists polled over 200 business students in the region via an online survey, which revealed over 80% of university leavers looking to enter the telecommunications sector felt their chances had been ‘significantly reduced’ after global telecommunications giant BT reduced its graduate intake from 200 to 130 this year.
The survey also found over 70% of students felt more graduate opportunities in the telecoms field needed to be introduced.
Interactive Telecoms approached Graduate Advantage after its survey, and the two have joined forces to ensure graduates in the West Midlands have a new opportunity to enter the telecoms field via a well established regional graduate programme.
The partnership will open up and create new graduate roles at the Vittoria Street head office. The two hope to create 10 new graduate positions in the region over the coming months.
The roles will focus on voice and data telecommunications and cover two main learning criterias - business development and sales and marketing.
“With BT reducing its 2010 graduate intake to 130, we decided other regional telecommunication specialists would need to fill this significant gap to ensure a skills shortage does not appear in the future.
“By offering graduate internships we are taking a big step in the region to offer roles which will help students mould and develop a career in the telecoms sector. Graduates are the future of our business and we want to make sure we are working with the future talent in our industry by providing training and development opportunities.
“Graduate Advantage is a very well established internship provider and are very successful in the region. We could think of no better partner to work with to achieve our objective of creating these new positions,” added Neil Jelley, sales manager at Interactive Telecoms.
Interactive Telecoms has been a key business in the regeneration of the Jewellery Quarter since 2007 and was named Select Partner of the Year by global telecoms giant Cisco in 2009. It was one of the first telecommunication firms to achieve Select Partner status after such a short period of trading.
Julie Stonnall, business development manager for Graduate Advantage, said: “Interactive Telecoms are committed to creating graduate opportunities in the West Midlands.
“By introducing its own graduate placements it is taking action to ensure the future talent within the region does not slip through the net.”
Graduate Advantage has now placed over 1500 students / graduates into companies across the West Midlands.
The Association of Graduate Recruiters revealed last week the number of applications for each graduate vacancy has surged to nearly 70 while the number of available positions is predicted to fall by nearly 7%.