The programme
Prove them first. Then forge them.
Every stage exists to answer one question a funder cannot answer from a CV: will this person still be doing the work properly in month eight, when nobody is watching.
Stage one and two · Intake and proving
Before anyone is offered a place, they volunteer.
Unpaid, for [CLIENT: volunteer phase duration in weeks], with no promise attached. Some are graduates, most are not.
Candidates come to us through NPO partners, from the surrounding community and from the graduate pool. The phase is built as real work with real beneficiaries, not as a simulation, and it starts with life skills, values and ethics.
We watch who arrives on time. Who finishes what they start. Who helps when nobody is checking.
It is the most predictive thing we have ever measured, and no psychometric, interview panel or assessment centre replicates it — because the moment a person is being assessed, they perform. Nobody performs for weeks, for free, for nothing.
Around one in ten of the people who come through this filter are engineering graduates. That is the whole talent pool. It is why we can only offer 200 seats, and why the firms that fund them get first right of refusal.
enter the NPO phase
of the qualifying selected pool are engineering graduates
seats available for 2027
Stage three · Selection
The filter does the work an interview cannot.
Selection is not a fresh assessment laid over the volunteer phase. It is a reading of what the volunteer phase already recorded — attendance, completion, initiative, how somebody behaved on the day the work was unpleasant and nobody senior was there.
Technical eligibility matters too: engineering seats require an engineering qualification, and the candidate has to want the practice, not just the placement. But the behavioural read comes first, because that is the part that has historically failed in the workplace and the part no other process can see.
Candidates who clear the proving phase but are not engineering graduates go into OneAll's other pathways rather than out of the door — the filter is not wasted on them, and they are not carried through a programme that isn't for them.
Stage four · Forging
A live floor, half the day, every day.
The learnership runs two cohorts on an inverse half-day rotation. One cohort is on the workplace floor from 08:00 to 12:00 while the other is in the classroom; after lunch they swap. Nobody spends a full day in theory, and nobody spends a full day without being taught.
The workplace phase is hosted by OneAll Human Capital across retail and wholesale sites. Theory and practical delivery run at The Wedge and Tlhabane Square. Training is delivered by MRC.
| Time | Cohort A | Cohort B |
|---|---|---|
| 08:00 – 12:00 | Workplace floor — live customer interaction, sales monitoring, mentorship in the moment | Classroom — theory and practical delivery toward the qualification |
| 12:00 – 13:00 | Break and handover | |
| 13:00 – 17:00 | Classroom — theory and practical delivery toward the qualification | Workplace floor — live customer interaction, sales monitoring, mentorship in the moment |
What the floor actually teaches
Hundreds of live interactions a week, with performance visible in real time. Reading a room. Hearing an objection without taking it personally. Holding a position without becoming defensive. Being corrected in front of other people and carrying on working.
These are the competencies engineering firms named when we asked why they stopped hiring graduates. There is no classroom in which they can be built at this volume.
What it is measured against
Sales performance is monitored continuously, so a learner's development is a curve someone can point at rather than an opinion formed at the end. That record travels with them into placement.
The external assessment for the qualification is set and moderated independently. We prepare learners for it; we do not predict its outcome, and no provider honestly can.
The mechanism
Correction in the moment, not at the review.
A quarterly review teaches someone that they were wrong three months ago. It does not teach them to be right this afternoon.
Every learner is on the floor beside a mentor who saw the interaction happen. Correction is delivered immediately, in front of whoever else is standing there, and the learner goes straight back into another interaction with it.
The repetition rate is what makes this work. A junior engineer in a consultancy might get corrected meaningfully once a fortnight. On the floor it happens several times a day, for months, until being corrected stops registering as an attack and starts registering as information.
The 35–55 cohort that used to do this inside engineering firms has largely gone. We are not pretending to replace their technical supervision — we are taking the behavioural half of it off the firm's plate, so that what remains is a mentoring load a thin senior team can actually carry.
Stage five · Placement
Then they rotate into engineering practice.
Placement is into a working consultancy, not a shadowing exercise. Our engineering workplace partner is Geotheta — consulting geotechnical and tailings engineers, Engineer of Record on tailings storage facilities across several regions, and a firm that already develops its own graduate engineers under named mentorship rather than by proximity.
It is deliberately unforgiving work to be placed into. Dam break assessment, slope stability, geotechnical investigation and facility design are disciplines where an error is measured in communities downstream. A candidate who holds up in that environment has been tested against something a funder recognises.
Inside a live consultancy
Real deliverables under supervision, with the firm's own quality process applied to the work rather than a training version of it.
First right of refusal
The firm that funded the seat decides first, within a defined window, before a learner moves to the general pool. Seats are commitments under agreement, not guarantees of employment.
A second destination
Where a placement doesn't fit, African Engineering Intelligence continues the development track into managed deployment, including internationally. [CLIENT: confirm the contracted scope of the AEI agreement]
What you get
Your engineer, on day one of employment.
Not a finished professional. A candidate whose behaviour has been observed continuously for over a year across two demanding environments, with a documented record rather than a reference call.
- Has been on time, unpaid, for weeks, before anything was offered.
- Has handled thousands of live client interactions, including hostile ones.
- Takes a red-lined drawing as information rather than as an insult.
- Has worked inside a consulting engineering practice on real deliverables.
- Comes with a continuous performance record, not a reference.
- Has been chosen by you, from people you watched, before you employed them.
The obvious question
Why an NQF 3 qualification for an NQF 8 graduate.
Because the level describes the complexity of the task being certified, not the person doing it — and because there is no accredited South African qualification that certifies client-engagement competence at professional level. This is the vehicle that exists.
What matters is what the year does to the person, not the number on the certificate.
The qualification, factually
- SAQA 99669 — Occupational Certificate: Sales Assistant (General) / Retail Sales Advisor
- NQF Level 3, 54 credits, curriculum code 522301000
- Quality partner: W&RSETA
- Workplace and classroom components, delivered on the inverse half-day rotation above
- External assessment is set and moderated independently of the provider
Accreditation is under application. This programme delivers toward SAQA 99669. We do not describe it as accredited, we do not describe MRC as an accredited training provider, and we make no claim about registration status until accreditation is confirmed in writing. We do not predict or guarantee external assessment outcomes.
2027 seat allocation
The filter is the constraint. Not the ambition.
200 seats, allocated on a first-committed basis, with first right of refusal attaching to the seats you fund. Next intake 2028.