The scheme was introduced by Spitfire to nurture future talent and to address a growing skills shortage experienced by the company.
Despite the recent economic downturn the company has found recruiting the right calibre staff challenging. This year graduates attended a recruitment day at the company's headquarters in London and participated in a number of exercises designed to evaluate their skills in negotiation and presentation. Successful candidates were then offered graduate entry sales jobs with the company.
Susie Ward, Spitfire's Marketing & HR Director commented, "Our continued growth means we now require a steady stream of new personnel across all departments of the business. Experience has shown that recruiting graduates straight from university produces better outcomes as they learn their craft the ‘Spitfire way' untainted by preconceptions and bad habits learnt elsewhere. Consequently retention rates are higher and career progression is faster. While this represents a major financial investment and a big commitment in staff mentoring time it has proved very worthwhile"