Promoting Apprenticeships: Reaching Teenagers and Parents

It is tempting to describe the apprenticeship the way you would like it to be: outdoors, in a team, with a visible result. All of that is true, it is simply half the description. The other half is rain in November, a trailer loaded in the dark, block paving that nobody carries for pleasure, and days when the crew leaves at half past six. Leaving that out brings applications from people who expected something else, and you lose them again in the first year. A drop-out costs the business induction, exam preparation and a place in the team that was blocked for a year.

So write the working day down as it is, and put it next to what the trade otherwise offers. An honest run through the day from departure to return says more than any list of qualities you would like to see. Name the times, the typical journey, the break arrangements, the clothing you provide and what happens in winter. Winter is of particular interest, because many teenagers assume there is no work in landscape construction between December and March. How the annual cycle is presented to clients follows the same logic as the training section: there is work, it simply looks different.

Honesty does not mean deterrence. Part of the physical side is what you do about it: machines instead of muscle wherever possible, lifting aids, rotation between tasks, fixed breaks, proper instruction. Describing how the business handles physical strain is more credible than not mentioning it at all. And for parents, that is the single most important paragraph in the whole text.

Pay is the question asked last in conversation and first in people's heads. In landscape construction, training pay is set by collective agreement and renegotiated regularly (BGL). From that follows the only rule that really matters: state the amounts per training year together with the date they refer to, and update them when a new agreement applies. An out-of-date figure on the website is worse than none, because it has to be corrected in the first conversation and leaves the impression that other details may be wrong too.

Alongside the basic amount, list the components that teenagers and parents cannot look up anywhere. Do you cover the costs of vocational school or the inter-company training centre? Do you provide work clothing and safety boots? Is there a contribution towards travel, a driving licence, exam preparation courses? Is overtime in the third year paid or taken as time off? This list is unspectacular and still answers half the questions that otherwise arrive by phone.

The third part concerns what is paid after the apprenticeship. You do not have to publish a salary table, but one sentence of orientation helps: that pay after qualification follows the collective agreement, that certain activities carry supplements, that further training changes the picture. Stay silent and you leave the orientation to the internet, where what is written rarely fits your business.

A training page is not a job advert with pictures. It is a page of its own with its own address, one that can be sent on — to the teacher, to an uncle, to the friend who is also considering it. That is what happens in practice: the link gets forwarded, not the home page. So the page has to stand on its own and make sense without prior knowledge. How to build job adverts more generally is covered in our article on landscaping job ads; the training page follows a logic of its own.

The order on the page follows the order of the questions. First what it is about and what you do all day. Then photographs from real sites. Then the application route with a named contact person. Only after that come pay, working hours, vocational school and prospects for the parents reading along. The formalities sit at the bottom: closing date, documents required, how data is handled. Requirement lists with a dozen qualities do not belong at the top, because they put off people who could do the job perfectly well.

Expect the page to be read almost entirely on a phone, in the evening, with patchy reception. That decides the type size, the loading time and whether the phone number can be tapped. A video that only works in portrait format is an advantage here, not a drawback. And the application route has to be completable on a phone, without a covering letter and without a printer.

A dependable route to an application runs through a work placement, and the route to a placement runs through the school. Secondary schools have careers coordinators, fixed placement periods and a recurring problem finding businesses that offer places. A call to the school office asking for the right person takes ten minutes and starts a connection that lasts for years. Timing matters: those periods are planned in autumn, not in spring.

Make it easy for the school. One page with the placement periods, the duration, the minimum age, the equipment needed and a contact person with a mobile number saves the teacher several follow-up calls. If the school needs a form that the business fills in, provide it as a file to download. That sounds trivial, but it decides whether your business appears on the list handed round the classroom.

The placement itself needs preparation, otherwise it does harm. Someone who sweeps leaves for a week does not apply afterwards. Decide in advance who looks after them, what will be shown across five days and which task the young person may finish themselves. A small completed result on the last day, one that can be photographed and shown at home, works harder than any brochure. Observe the rules on working hours and permitted activities for young workers throughout.

Teenagers search differently from clients. They type short terms, often with a place name, and they ask their friends. Both can be influenced: the training page should carry the place name in its title and mention the surrounding villages in the text, because the journey to work is made by bike or bus. How local visibility works in landscape construction generally is covered under local SEO.

Second, the apprenticeship belongs in your business profile, in the training vacancy register of the responsible chamber and in the notification to the employment agency. These routes cost nothing but time, and they reach the advice centres that teenagers and parents turn to. Make sure the same contact person and the same phone number appear everywhere as on the website.

Third, the business itself acts as a multiplier. Apprentices and young employees tell people around them whether it is worth it. A bonus for successful referrals is common and effective, but it does not replace the reason someone recommends you. Often the route to the next apprentice runs through the previous one, provided they stayed and are content.

Everything described so far only works if it happens at the right time. Take the start of the apprenticeship as the fixed point and plan backwards from there. In the autumn of the previous year, schools are approached and placements registered. In winter the placements run, and that is precisely when the training page should be up to date, because it gets opened at home after the placement. In spring the applications arrive, and then response time counts. In early summer the contract and the preparation follow.

Several months usually lie between signing the contract and the first working day. In that period signed contracts are dissolved more often than at any later point (project experience). Stay in touch: a message after the school reports, an invitation to the summer gathering, a short call in July with the practical details for the first day. It costs little and prevents the place from standing empty in August after all.

Write the sequence down once, with the month, the task and the person responsible. The following year the plan already exists and the work reduces to updating figures and dates. If you would rather not do that upkeep yourself, it can sit within ongoing website maintenance — what matters is that it happens, not who does it.