Businesses will need to adopt broader early career recruitment strategies and a skills-based approach to thrive amid shifting demographics and advancing technology, says Stephen Isherwood, joint CEO, Institute of Student Employers (ISE)
The world of early careers is changing fast. Just ten years ago, only a few ISE members were hiring school leavers, but now it's the norm.
In the next decade, hiring strategies will need to evolve even further. Apprenticeships and graduate schemes, that have traditionally targeted those just out of education, will need to embrace career changers, older workers, and internal candidates.
Demographic and technological change are the driving force behind this shift:
- Changes to the availability of talent in the workforce driven by declining birth rates and increasing average life-spans. People are having fewer children and living longer in both developed and undeveloped economies.
- Economies, and the employers that operate within them, need a workforce that is higher skilled than lower skilled as technology changes the nature of activities most organisations undertake.
Organisations will increasingly focus less on a person's age, education and technical experience, and more on their skills, capabilities and aptitudes.
Skills-based organisation
These two forces of change will shape labour markets and make talent scarcer, driving a requirement for a skills-based talent strategy that works across various demographics.
Organisations will increasingly focus less on a person's age, education and technical experience, and more on their skills, capabilities and aptitudes.
Early career teams will work as part of a broader organisational ecosystem where greater integration through HR and the business will become the norm. Strategic workforce planning, learning cultures, technology and data will play a crucial role in how talent strategies are deployed.
While there are many reasons a skills-based organisation is desirable, there are many barriers to implementation. But, avoiding change is not an option - shifting demographics and tech progress are here to stay. Ignoring them will lead to insufficient talent to meet business needs.
In fact, forward-thinking employers are already moving towards this approach. A survey of our members found that 68% had adopted or partially adopted a skills-based strategy, and another 29% are considering it.
From early career to emerging talent
Apprentice and graduate recruiters have long taken a skills first approach, so they have a significant role to play in the skills-based organisation, but there will be a shift in definition and role.
Early career teams that have long-worked with school leavers, apprentices and graduates will open up their programmes to include career changers and those re-skilling or up-skilling - from either inside or outside their organisation.
As this field broadens in scope, the words used to describe these programmes and teams - such as 'early' and 'student' - carry education exit-point and age connotations that will increasingly be no longer fit for purpose.
ISE has adopted 'emerging talent' (pioneered by both HSBC and Rolls Royce) to describe the breadth of experiences our sector works with. Practice may change, but for now we think this is the best fit.
Implementation
ISE's report From Early Career to Emerging Talent sets out the business case for a skills-based organisation, recommendations for implementation and the role of technology.
It also considers the implications on the skills students seek to learn and how employers work with educators.
Educational institutions will play a crucial role in developing the skills needed for the future workforce.
Employers and educators must collaborate to ensure that students are equipped with the core skills required for career success. This includes fostering a love of learning, promoting adaptability, and providing opportunities for experiential learning that develop a broad range of skills.
For early career teams, there are four key steps they can take to evolve a talent strategy from early career to emerging talent:
- Continue to hire and develop young people entering the labour market through a range of pathways across vocational and academic routes with a long-term hiring proposition based on development and retention.
- Retain existing employees with a value proposition based on continued career development through reskilling, upskilling and flexible career options that evolve as individuals' circumstances change.
- Have a hiring strategy to attract external people based less on experience, more on skills and potential, with a view to long-term development and retention.
- Ensure all people strategies attract, develop and retain fully diverse talent.
Employers who can hire, train, re-train and retain a skilled workforce are those that will succeed in the long-term. Evolving early careers into a broader emerging talent strategy that places skills at its core is key.
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