St. Andrews business praised for bucking the trend

By Brendan McHugh

A ST ANDREWS business has been praised for bucking the trend and taking on a young, inexperienced member of staff at a time when many other companies are shedding jobs.

And last week 16-year-old Stefan Fraser started training for the job he has always wanted when he became an apprentice electrician following a six month work placement.

Stefan left school last December and was becoming disillusioned in his attempts to find work with some companies not even responding to his applications.

He was advised by a friend to contact Rathbone, an organisation who work with young people to help them with their education or find training and employment opportunities.

They were able to get him the break he was looking for and give him the chance to show an employer what he can do.

Stefan was taken on by St Andrews based electrical contractors RB Grant who offered him a six month work placement.

“After leaving school l started looking for work straight away,” Stefan said. “By March I still hadn’t found anything and my mate kept telling me about Rathbone and how they can help out so I went along to see them.”

“I was getting pretty fed up at that point as I had nothing to do really. I told them how much I wanted to be an electrician and they began looking for placements for me.”

Rathbone contacted RB Grant in St Andrews who already had Stefan’s uncle working with them. They were interested in taking him on but didn’t want him to feel it was just as a favour to his uncle.

Ronnie Grant of RB Grant said: “We discussed it with him, gave him an interview and it went from there.

”We placed him with his uncle to start with and he went round some of our different projects to find out what the job is all about.

“He done really well and impressed us with his attitude so we got him back in for another interview and decided to offer him the apprenticeship.”

Maria Collie of Rathbone is delighted at the progress Stefan has made.
She said: “He is a really nice young man, but he had done nothing since he left school and was fast becoming fed up.

”He learned some useful skills on the Get Ready for Work programme at Rathbone but it was a spell at RB Grant that really built-up his confidence and helped him achieve.”

Anyone interested in learning more about Rathbone can contact their Fife office on 01592 623950.