With questions over student work readiness and AI use, face-to-face engagement at work is soaring. Stephen Isherwood, joint CEO at the Institute of Student Employers, reveals the key development trends to watch in 2025
ISE's Student Development Survey has been conducted annually for the past ten years in its current format. This year's issue ran in January to March 2025 and is based on the views of 148 employers, across a range of sectors and organisation types.
The report describes the current trends in programmes that develop school leavers and graduates, how employers retain and progress their early career hires and their future plans.
The survey reveals some important trends to consider if you're in the business of recruiting and developing school leavers and graduates.
1. Student work readiness in decline
ISE's survey found many employers are concerned that their student hires are less prepared for work than previous intakes. In particular, concerns over essential communication and interpersonal skills have significantly increased.
In 2025, 54% of employers reported that graduates did not meet expectations in self-awareness (up from 43% in 2024 and 35% in 2023), while 46% reported concerns about resilience (up from 37% in 2024 and 30% in 2023). Work-appropriate verbal communication was a concern for 22% (up from 17% in 2024 and 7% in 2023).
For school and college leavers, more employers reported unmet expectations in key areas. In 2025, 48% of employers highlighted concerns about resilience (up from 35% in 2024 and 25% in 2023), while 43% cited self-awareness (up from 31% in 2024 and 33% in 2023).
Additionally, concerns about work-appropriate verbal communication rose to 42% in 2025 (up from 29% in 2024 and 22% in 2023), and concerns about written communication rose to 46% (up from 28% in 2024 and 2023).
However, it's a different story for technical and analytical skills such as problem solving. Here the performance of graduates and school and college leavers broadly met the expectations of the majority of employers.
Concerns around AI use could be one reason that the perception of face-to-face training as the highest quality method of delivery has strengthened.
2. Concern over how student use of AI is misrepresenting skills
Most of those starting out on their careers in 2025 will have studied under lockdown conditions and had less access to essential work experience opportunities.
This lack of work experience is likely to adversely impact the performance of students when they embark on their careers. The survey found that most employers (77%) agreed that graduates who completed an internship or placement arrived with better skills and attitudes than those who hadn't had this kind of opportunity.
With students falling short in work readiness, they risk overselling themselves in job applications. ISE's latest Student Recruitment survey showed that candidates using AI to apply for jobs is leading to record job applications.
Our Development Survey has now reported that employer concerns are not just about how they manage soaring application numbers. AI use in recruitment may also be distorting students views on their skills and the ability of employers to accurately assess for them.
For the first time this year we asked about the impact of AI on hiring and development strategies. We found around half of employers are concerned that graduates (48%) and school and college leavers (52%) who use AI in the selection process misrepresent their abilities.
3. Face-to-face prevails
Concerns around AI use could be one reason that the perception of face-to-face training as the highest quality method of delivery has strengthened.
Following the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, a clear trend emerged where employers have increased their reliance on face-to-face development activities. In 2025, respondents reported delivering development programmes face-to-face 69% of the time, a significant rise from just 28% in 2022.
And this year we see the value of this has significantly risen. 67% of respondents reported that face-to-face delivery offered the best learning experience compared to only 47% in 2024.
While employers may continue to value the convenience of online learning, they increasingly acknowledge that face-to-face approaches provide a richer, more engaging, and ultimately more effective development experience.
This trend to increased face-to-face interactions is likely to continue as nearly half of employers (48%) strongly disagreed that more development activities will be delivered virtually.
The importance of in-person working extends to time in the office too - over a third of employers reported that they will require early career hires to spend more time working in the office.
New technologies combined with continued economic and geopolitical uncertainty will remain a challenge for those hiring and developing early talent and increase the focus on how we transition students through education and into work throughout the coming year.
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