A leading employment services provider has been awarded a big new contract to help Job Centres get people back into work. The deal, one of the largest recruitment contracts of its kind, will see Manpower helping to find thousands of staff this year.

The contract, awarded after a competitive tendering process, comes as Jobcentre Plus is investing in additional customer advisors across the country to help people to get back into work during the economic downturn. Manpower will support the process by delivering assessment centres to assist in the recruitment of more than 10,000 new staff over the next six months.

Jobcentre Plus Chief Executive Mel Groves said: “We want to continue offering people real help and support them to move off Jobseeker’s Allowance and back into work. By increasing the number of customer facing staff we can make sure we more than match demand and continue to deliver a good service to all our customers.”

James Hick, Sales and Marketing Director from Manpower UK, said economists were predicting that unemployment would be more than three million in 2010 and recent research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development had found that nearly half of firms would not be looking to hire graduates or school-leavers this year. That meant it was important that Government initiatives to support those looking for work were a success.