Frequently Asked Questions
1. For those candidates coming from Eastern Europe, is this not exploiting Eastern European labour?
No, on the contrary. Our workers apply to our programmes in competition with other opportunities at home and abroad, because they find our offer attractive.
To the individual Professional, we offer an attractive financial package which ensures a good income, often 2-3 times higher than what is offered for corresponding work at home. In addition, all relevant social charges and taxes are paid for.
Moreover, we provide our workers, free of charge, with thorough on-campus training (including housing, food, tuition) as well as welfare support and service once they have started work.
2. How do you overcome the language barrier?
In some staffing situations, mastering a foreign language is absolutely vital for the workers to work effectively within our client’s organization. In other cases, only basic knowledge of a foreign language (or languages) is required.
The training programmes are tailor-made to provide our workers with the language skills needed to do their job well, but (unless required for the job) not to master the language to perfection.
3. Is it legal and ethical?
Yes. All our solutions are fully compliant with EU and national legislation.
Our set of guiding principles have been adopted from running large recruitment programmes in the healthcare industry for the UK Government. We believe that, in many ways, this sets higher standards than national legislation in this emerging industry.
4. Are you an agency for temporary staff?
No. We do not sell our services on very short term assignments, i.e. per day or per week. Our solutions are typically based on 12 to 18 month contracts.
Moreover, our process is designed to supply large volumes of staff, where we provide 10s or 100s of qualified personnel to one client.
5. How long does it take from order until your workers start the job?
This depends on the duration of the training, which in turn depends on the job requirements. However, most often, our Professionals can start working within 6 – 10 weeks after client order.
6. What professions do you offer?
We specialise in labour intensive industry sectors, which include among others:
Logistics – lorry drivers, technicians, support services
Utilities – gas operatives, specialist electricians, engineers
7. What are your rates?
Our rates depend on the type of profession, level of qualifications, the extent of training and preparation needed and level of welfare services offered.
As soon as we have had an opportunity to discuss the conditions around a specific assignment with you more in-depth, we will quote a price within 48 hours.
May we add that our clients typically realise a substantial cost saving from working with Milestone.
8. This sounds too good to be true. Where is the catch?
Our model works for most client situations, but not for all.
In the light of the personal sacrifices required from our workers in order to participate in our rigorous recruitment and training process, we typically ask our clients for contracts of a minimum 12 months. For the same reason, we need our clients to sign up for a rather substantial number of working hours per week and position.
Moreover, given the upfront investments in tailor-making a training programme for each client, we typically ask our clients for orders of a minimum 20-40 positions. (However, usually we operate a pilot project with the client to get to know each other and fine-tune the training and staffing processes.)