About

Picture of Bizenko founder Nick Palmer
Nick Palmer, founder of Bizenko

“WHY bizenko?”

Bizenko has been created by Nick Palmer, a qualified teacher and experienced business executive, because of a strong belief that there’s a much better way than the status quo to prepare young people for their working lives.

At present the “voices” within the careers system only represent Education, Government and Employers. Sadly and perversely, this often acts against the best interests of individual job-seekers. Very often young people do not know the importance of what they do not know about career-planning, because of the influence of these other stakeholders.

In an age of student debt and cuts in public spending, it is, in Nick’s opinion, unfair to expect young people to accept this situation.

There are plenty of statistics to show the impact of this situation on youth unemployment, mental health, employer dissatisfaction at levels of work-readiness and rates of attrition of young people in initial employment. In the years that Nick has spent tracking the careers system, it’s become clear that the structural obstacles to equality are deep-seated and unlikely to resolve quickly.

Even those people lucky enough to get a good job will, most likely, get a training that meets only the employer’s needs. Therefore, in an age of rapidly changing employment landscape, even a good job can leave a young person exposed to long-term risk. Not good enough!

Bizenko is an attempt to reduce the time, cost and hassle it takes for individuals to “learn what’s going on in business”. The goal is that engagement with Bizenko will help those individuals become more commercially aware, make better-informed career decisions, and thereafter make more valuable (and contented) employees. It’s a resource to help them protect their own long-term career interests.

Background

Nick graduated from the University of Durham (UK) in 1995, with a degree in Ancient History and Archaeology. He then completed a PGCE (teacher training) from the University of Cambridge.

Nick worked for 8 years in a couple of large blue chip organisations, without always knowing what everyone was doing, or if he was really learning anything new (Nick really likes learning new things!)

Frustrated by the lack of “bigger picture” detail, Nick went back to Business school to study for an MBA (Masters of Business Administration). Nick emerged from business school with a plan to set up his own business. He ran this company for 7 years, and then sold it and was asked to run someone else’s company. After 18 months, Nick sold that company too (with the owner’s blessing!), and decided that, through experience, and having managed and employed people for over a decade, he’d eventually reached a position where he thought he might know what’s going on in business. In addition, he realised that he’d seen enough as teacher and employer to be able to identify which training young people missed when preparing for employment.

Bizenko is the place to find the bits employers want, but which don’t get taught in education.

When not working, Nick likes to pretend he still plays sport (rugby, cricket, golf, football) whereas in reality he spends his spare time reading farmyard picture books to his young children.