The latest intake onto North East property, housebuilding and mining firm the Banks Group’s graduate training programme have taken up their new roles.
Six new recruits have embarked on a comprehensive two-year programme with the Durham-headquartered business which offers them support in building the key vocational, technical and professional skills needed for their respective roles, as well as opportunities to gain hands-on experience on live projects and evolving plans.
And as the new graduate trainees are starting their new roles, their immediate predecessors on Banks’ graduate training programme, Matt Bishop, Ollie Pocock and Matthew Noble, have all been awarded permanent jobs with the family-owned firm after successfully completing their training.
Five of the six new graduate trainees are working within Banks’ property development and housebuilding divisions, Banks Property and Banks Homes, while the sixth is working on site with Banks Mining.
Graduate development surveyor Jaja Inskeep and graduate project manager Muhammed Kasuji both studied at Leeds Beckett University, taking degrees in Real Estate & Property Management and Building Surveying respectively.
Matthew Newton holds a Civil Engineering degree from Teesside University and is now working as a graduate development engineer, while Shabbir Boksh has joined Banks as a graduate development engineer (housebuilding) after completing a master’s degree in Civil & Structural Engineering at Newcastle University.
Liam Young is now working as a graduate development planner after completing a master’s in City Planning at the University of Glasgow, with Macauley Duke, who is working towards a Real Estate Management degree from The University of the Built Environment, joining Banks Mining as a graduate site engineer.
The Banks Group’s graduate training programme gives recruits the chance to take on real workplace responsibilities with the support of an experienced team around them and to learn, develop and deliver across a range of disciplines that support the company’s planned and operational projects.
It’s the fourth cohort of graduate trainees that Banks has welcomed since launching the initiative in 2021, with the scheme being enhanced this year to provide focused training and coaching around ‘soft skills’ such as effective communication, teamworking and personal resilience which complement their business activities.
The graduates will also embark on a rotation programme, allowing them to spend time in each of the departments to build comprehensive knowledge of the full development cycle. The enhancements that have been implemented were identified through learning needs analysis and feedback from previous years.
Russ Hall, managing director at Banks Property and Banks Homes, says: “Finding, training and bringing through skilled young people is crucial to the long-term, sustainable success of any business, and our graduate scheme has proven to be an extremely effective way of doing so for us.
“It gives ambitious young people the chance to get real responsibility at an early stage in their careers, and to learn, develop and deliver across a range of projects, disciplines and locations, and we see the benefits of their input to our work on a daily basis.
“Enhancing the programme to include the softer skills that complement their professional learning will add an extra dimension to what our new recruits get out of their training and will equip them with knowledge that will be useful right through their careers.
“The dedication, skills and levels of achievement shown by our preceding group of graduate trainees means they all thoroughly deserve the permanent roles that they’ve earned with us and we hope our latest intake will be inspired to follow their example.”