Recruiting and retaining the very best early and new talent is the lifeblood of any successful organisation, but in today’s world companies face chronic skills shortages.
It’s a fact that was acknowledged by the new Labour Government when it announced the need for a new Skills England body with a brief to bring together businesses, unions, providers and national government to help create a highly-trained workforce.
Labour was responding to figures which show a doubling in the number of skills shortage vacancies across England, from 226,500 in 2017 to 531,200 in 2022.
To delve into this subject area further, we conducted three surveys to inform our eBook: one of 1,000 HR managers/hiring managers at organisations with more than 1,000 employees, a second survey of 1,000+ workers between 18-25 years old - defined as early talent - and a third of the same amount of workers, aged over 25, who have recently changed career or returned to work - defined as new talent.
Results from these surveys revealed more than half (51%) of hiring managers are finding it more difficult to recruit now, compared to the previous five years, and that almost half of early talent find moving from education to full-time employment difficult.
Other key stats include:
Three-quarters (75%) of hiring managers believe there’s a gap between the skills their organisation has and those it needs to meet their goals
Three-quarters (76%) would be very or fairly likely to consider hiring based on soft skills
On the other hand, only 23% of workers said they had been offered soft skill training
Almost half (47%) of HR managers believe career advancement is the most important way to attract and retain early talent
Yet early talent are looking for salary (58%), flexible working (31%) and job security (31%) over career advancement (29%)
More than a third of early talent said financial pressure and handling expenses were a challenge
A third (34%) of new talent said they changed career to take on a new challenge or to learn new skills
Alongside these survey results, our eBook includes insight from expert commentators from across the worlds of education and business.
They consist of:
Stefanie Gustafsson, Associate Professor in Organisation Studies at the University of Bath
Elise Hunt, Head of Talent Acquisition, Admiral Group
Michele Everitt, Assistant Director of Student Experience at the University of Bedfordshire
Louise Reed, Reed Talent Solutions’ Solutions Director – Future Skills
To learn more about how your organisation can best recruit and embed early and new talent to solve the skills conundrum, download our eBook, ‘Recruiting and embedding early and new talent into you organisation’ now.
