In the fast-changing job market of today, bringing in and nurturing talent towards the start of their career journey is more important than ever. By connecting with early talent, your company can stay ahead of the game.
Still not convinced?
Well, here are 5 more reasons why Early Careers Recruitment can fuel long-term growth and success for your business:
1. Diversity and Fresh Ideas
According to the HESA, the UK university population is more diverse than ever before, giving you access to an incredibly diverse talent pool – in both demographic, and diversity of thought. Bringing in a diverse early careers cohort into your business is a catalyst for organisational change and an entry point for innovative ideas and fresh perspectives. Growing diversity from the ground up is a more cost-effective method of diversifying your workforce, and embeds it deep into your organisational culture quicker.
Did you know that Gen Z are the most diverse demographic? Tapping into this can help reduce unconscious biases within your business and promote diversity and inclusion. By virtue of the candidate pool being diverse as well as this generation being more clued up on the importance of these, it will only serve to bring more diverse voices into your business.
2. Building a Future Talent Pipeline
Early talent are blank canvases – bringing them into the business allows you to embed them into your culture, and successfully bolster your values. ‘Growth’ is the single largest motivation for Gen Z, which shows that they’re keen to learn and progress quickly.
Wisdom found that learning and development came in as the number one career priority. When you pair this with the fact that 94% of people are more likely to stay at a company that invests in their career growth, you see just how important it is to provide a platform to upskill early talent and retain them within your business. Build yourself a pipeline of homegrown future leaders, propelling your company of tomorrow.
3. Cost Effective Hiring and Long-Term Planning
It’s mostly cheaper to hire early talent. Hiring early talent and then training them up will cost you less than hiring at a more senior level. The peer-to-peer learning they can gain as a cohort means that there are benefits for more than just one employee. Also, investing in early careers in a period of downturn is a great way to plan for the future. While that period may be tough at the moment, as a firm you will need to be prepared for the upturn. Having that entry of talent early on will ensure that you have a good future pipeline for when you need all hands on deck for when the fair-weather arrives.
4. Digital Natives
Early talent have a natural proficiency with social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, keeping your company in tune with the newest trends and approaches. Their closeness to emerging trends helps you solve novel problems for your clients and your business. In an era where upskilling is crucial, early talent proves to be dynamic and agile, especially now in the advent of AI – it’s more important than ever to keep up with these changes to drive productivity.
5. Brand Advocates
Every company in the world has access to one of the most effective recruitment marketing tools out there… Brand Advocacy was voted Ogilvy’s Number 1 Influencer Trend of 2024. We’re living in the age of influence after all… so it only makes sense that people trust people.
This starts on the candidate journey when your future pipeline looks through your Glassdoor and LinkedIn before applying. 58% of female applicants stated that bad experiences and reviews from other applicants would make them likely not to apply for a role. Trust in people continues once you’ve hired them into your organisation. WERSM found that 84% trust recommendations from their peer group, with only 15% trusting a brand's own endorsement.
What your people share about you online has a direct impact on your reputation as an employer. So why not have more of a say on what goes out there? Early talent are natural-born networkers, and bringing them into your organisation as authentic brand advocates is one of the quickest ways to build your overall employer brand.
In short, hiring early talent is a smart move for any company to future proof their business. These young professionals bring fresh ideas, diversity, and tech-savviness that can boost innovation and brand visibility. They're also cost-effective and eager to learn, making them perfect for growth within the company. By hiring early careers, you’re hiring the most diverse pipeline and by getting this right, they will in turn bring in a steady pipeline of talent for years to come.
