HOW DO YOU ATTRACT EARLY CAREER TALENT?

In her latest blogpost for Training Zone, Erica revisits her time at university and reflects on the choices she made as a teenager. She considers what decision she may make now, in light of higher-level apprenticeships and vocational-based qualifications. Gold-dust insight for organisations wanting to attract early career talent!

I had three of the best years of my life at university. I went to Cheltenham College of Higher Education which became the University of Gloucestershire whilst I was there. I spent three years with 11-hour-per-week lectures, playing football, drinking £1 pints and Vodka Red Bulls, and making some friends for life.

I also came out with £38k worth of debt. And this was in 2002. I was the first year of students taking repayable loans as opposed to grants, so the connection between large debts and attending university hadn’t consolidated itself. Now we are hearing of students leaving university with a non-skills related qualification and over £50k worth of debt.

You can certainly understand why vocational and other routes are becoming more attractive to the future workforce.

Providing early talent with skills they need

What I learnt during my three years in Cheltenham included skills in living away from home, budgeting and paying bills, leadership skills through captaining the football team and living in the real world. What I don’t remember from my time at university is anything to do with the curriculum, content, or anything I could take into a real job, right now.

You’ve probably picked up through research from McKinsey and LinkedIn that employers are now seeking skills which give employees more power than they’ve ever had.

I’m not completely divorcing degrees from skills, but there is a gap between the academic position that a degree from a university once provided, versus a skills-based toolkit which you could get from an apprenticeship, minus the debt.

It’s clear there’s not one solution which is going to suit everyone, but if I was making my career decisions as a 16-18-year-old right now, I think I’d be looking at a higher-level apprenticeship or vocational-based qualification with a large employer.

We know the benefits – earn whilst you learn, no tuition fees or related debts, skills in the workplace, and more opportunities to find a career you can fall in love with. By the way, my degree was in Sport and Exercise Science. A tenuous link to L&D if a link must be made, but I very quickly realised I didn’t want to be a PE teacher or physio during my university days. But I believed I was stuck in three years of the same course and the debt which came with it.

How do you attract early career talent?

So, if you are an employer looking to snap up this young talent who may be put off by the university experience, you need to be on your game. You can’t just sit back and expect them to come to you.

Future talent – build it and they will come

There is huge competition for the best talent in the market. Historically we’d look to graduates to provide this, but more and more apprenticeships are playing their part.

I know many corporate organisations that are apprenticeship levy payers and have no idea what’s happening to that cash. If you haven’t set up key items such as a governance committee, provider procurement strategy, deliverables and KPIs, and quality assurance of the training delivery, you are missing a trick. Plus, you could be losing hundreds of thousands of pounds in your levy with the money expiring after 24 months.

We see a huge amount of time and effort focused on attraction, but then an expectation that the apprenticeship training provider will pick up all the slack. You wouldn’t do this with a £100k leadership development programme, so why do we think this is OK when working with apprenticeship providers?

In this blogpost, I talk about more steps you need to take to set up apprentices for success in your organisation. And if you need more support then get in touch.

Attracting early career talent - don’t just pay them lip service

It’s so easy to jump into skills needs, with AI being a classic example of this currently.

And with the acceleration of change and pace of digital transformation, your business needs new ideas, innovations, and fresh ways of doing this.

But this comes at a price.

Your talent management strategy must be able to identify how your apprenticeship programme can deliver value, what the investment from the levy is monthly, and what return you are getting from your providers. This means you work hand in glove with them.

You must have all the key stakeholders not just engaged but fully committed to making apprenticeships work.

And most importantly those who are line managing your early careers folk – whether that’s graduates, apprentices, work experience or any other – must be the right people who understand the additional pastoral care and effort needed to support those who might be experiencing things in the workplace for the first time.

Getting started with a talent management strategy

Sounds tricky? Well like anything, nothing worth doing is easy, and it’s much easier when you know what you’re doing.

But many don’t. And many are missing the opportunity to attract those who may be wavering when it comes to their next steps. If you take away anything from my ramblings, take these key points;

Understand what other great organisations are doing – examples being the NHS, Costa Coffee, Miller and Carter, Jaguar Land Rover, I could go on….
Don’t just expect young talent to come to you because you are a big brand. You need to make it clear, through a great programme and opportunities, why talent should come your way.
Your relationship with your apprenticeship training providers only starts with the attraction activities. You need to be fully invested and collaborate with them as a two-way partnership to get it right.
And engage with specialists in the market who can help you cut through the detail and the jargon.

You need to make this a priority.

Take the resource you have in this area and think about doubling it. Every organisation I have ever worked with looking to scale up their early careers proposition has been drastically under-resourced.

That might cause you to take a breath, but it will make things better going forwards – for you, your organisation, and those who go on to join you and have a wonderful career.