The Event Suppliers and Services Association (ESSA) has formally announced the appointment of an apprentice membership administrator to assist the membership secretary with processing new members, communicating with existing members and to provide general administrative support.

Nicola Crawford joined the organisation as an apprentice in time to help ESSA with its 10th Anniversary Conference and Snow Ball on December 7, 2017, and as Andrew Harrison, ESSA director remarked, “Nicola has shown herself to be capable, assiduous and a great addition to the ESSA team. She was appointed on the basis of a strong interview, and she is already exceeding our expectations.”

Crawford has started work at ESSA under an apprenticeship scheme, as Harrison explained, “We’ve been campaigning to get young people into the event industry, setting up our talent and recruitment hub to promote it as an exciting and rewarding career choice. Considering our vacancy, our first thought was to seek out an apprentice at a local college and to practice what we preach! It’s essential to the campaign for young people to have multiple entry points into the industry, commensurate with their skills and passions, and this seemed to be the perfect opportunity to lead by example.”

Crawford has been enjoying the chance to make use of skills gained during her Level 3 Journalism studies, and she has been gradually getting to know the members and how the association works. She described her decision to opt for an apprenticeship, saying “I felt like university wasn’t for me as I didn’t want to get into debt for a degree that I might not use, so I felt like an apprenticeship was my best option … the description of the ESSA apprenticeship interested me with its variety of roles and opportunities, and I was really pleased to be awarded the place.”