Celebrating 20 Years of Starting IT Careers

Over the last 20 years, we’ve helped over 12,000 people to start and progress their Digital Careers.

Founded by Simon Perriton in Stratford in 2001, our original focus was delivering Training in IT Support and Networking – something we still offer to this day. As we’ve grown as a company, we have also built expert teams that specialise in delivering apprenticeships, training, and recruitment services to hundreds of employers.

Throughout the last 20 years, the most important part of our success has been putting people at the heart of everything we do. We’ve always had a strong focus on finding the right people to join our team, and because of our success in doing so we’ve been able to realise our, and their, full potential. Our team is now over 100 strong, after starting off with just 1.

Francis Harker joined our Training team in 2005 as a Sales Consultant, and is now our Operations Director for the department.

“I knew Just IT was a special place as soon as I joined. It was a small business with stacks of potential and a fantastic product.”

Owner & Founder Simon Perriton congratulating one of our first learners completing the Network Professional Programme.

In July of 2002, our Recruitment division began, at the time as a standalone company. They’ve gone from strength to strength, originally supporting our training candidates into their first IT role but expanding to support employers across the country to fill roles from entry-level through to management.

James McAdam has worked as our Commercial Training Manager for 14 years and feels the focus on people has been essential to Just IT’s success.

“It’s all about the people. I think Just IT attracts a certain type of person, and it’s those colleagues that make working here so enjoyable. It’s the job satisfaction and the people that have made me continue my career here – and the company values of changing people’s lives for the better”.

In 2011 we expanded into the apprenticeship sector. Continuing our focus on helping people to break into Digital industries, our apprenticeships originally focused on giving young people a more practical pathway into a career. In August of 2016 we acquired Skills Team – a sister company offering Leadership and Management Apprenticeships – which are now a core part of our offering.

With the introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy in May of 2017, our focus shifted to helping employers to make the most of their Levy funding. To date we’ve trained over 10,000 learners across our training programmes and apprenticeship pathways. That’s not including the thousands of careers we’ve helped to progress through our recruitment services – many careers which originally started with our training or apprenticeships.

We’ve also been able to support multiple charities through our internal events – in 2016 alone we raised over £17,000 for Alzheimer’s Society. We’re currently partnered with MIND, and our internal events team The Network have found a number of innovative ways we can support them remotely.

Celebrating Successes

Richard Lambden, our Client Services Director reflected on his 8 years with the company.

“My proudest memory working with Just IT was winning an award for delivering great customer service, as voted by my colleagues. It’s been a pleasure to be a part of our move from a London focus working with mainly small employers, to a Nationwide provider of apprenticeships for companies like Facebook, Google and Sainsbury’s.”

We were proud to be recognised as one of the best companies to work for by the Sunday Times, 4 Great Place to Work awards reflecting our continued focus on people that we were working towards back 20 years ago.

We’ve also been recognised as the Apprenticeship Training Provider of the year at the Apprenticeships for England Awards in 2018. We also felt it was important to celebrate the achievements of our own apprentices, which we have done many times through our Just IT Apprenticeship Awards.

In November of 2019 we underwent a rebrand to encompass our full offering – with a revamped website to match but continue to offer a blended solution in supporting 16-18-year-olds all the way to upskilling Managers senior staff. This rebrand consolidated the services we offer to help employers and learners find the best pathway to growth.

The last year has been undoubtedly challenging for many employers, but we feel we are well poised to support the growth organisations of any size across the country, by putting our customers at the heart of everything we do. Find out how we can help your organisation.