Recruiting young people and non-graduates

Accessing youth recruitment schemes

There are several different targeted approaches for bringing young people into an organisation including apprenticeships, T-Levels, internships, graduate schemes, work placements and work experience.

Contacting your local Growth Hub or Careers Hub can be a good first step to take when looking to employ a young person. Careers Hubs seek to offer employer encounters for young people and may be able to put you in touch with education providers or support you with advice and guidance on how to integrate youth schemes into their talent planning approach.

Apprenticeships: An introduction

Employers in Birmingham and Solihull, East Midlands, Greater Manchester, Hertfordshire and Essex, Central and East Scotland, Southwest and Southeast Wales could also look into the Jobs Guarantee. This is only available in these areas for now but it is intended to be rolled out more broadly.    

Linking with education providers

Developing links with local schools, colleges and universities can have many recruitment benefits for organisations (look at the case studies to see how this can work in practice). Employers who have developed good links with education providers and participated in events such as careers talks have been able to:  

• Inform young people about their organisation, broadening young people’s knowledge of their work options and presenting themselves as a potential employer. 

• Shape young people’s perceptions of vocational routes such as apprenticeships, which may support future recruitment. 

• Speak to specific groups of young people to support diversity in the talent pipeline. 

• Engage young people on real world project briefs. 

Schools and colleges have an obligation to provide their students with opportunities to engage with employers to meet statutory guidelines around careers guidance, specifically Gatsby Benchmarks number five (encounters with employers and employees) and six (experiences of workplaces). The Gatsby Benchmarks of Good Career Guidance, developed by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, comprise eight principles that are intended to provide a framework for career guidance in schools and colleges. The benchmarks are non-statutory, although the DfE expects schools and colleges to work towards implementing them. Meeting these guidelines can take a variety of forms, for example, having a stall at a careers fair, giving a talk, holding enterprise competitions, offering mock interviews and providing mentoring. These activities can offer employers a pipeline of young people to target for recruitment. One large employer interviewed by the University of Sheffield was able to recruit directly from a college after running careers talks with students at a local college. 

There may also be opportunities to provide work experience for young people. Schools and colleges must facilitate this for their students. Work experience can be beneficial to the organisation and the young person. Organisations might enhance their reputation as a good employer and have opportunities to recruit young people who perform well during their work experience, while young people may have opportunities to enhance their CV, develop skills and connections and make themselves more ‘work ready’. See Making work experience work: Guide for employers | CIPD for more information. 

Your local council may run programmes which link education providers with employers. For example, Sheffield-based programmes such as ‘See It, Be It’ advertise opportunities on behalf of education providers seeking employers to contribute to their careers work. 

The Youth Futures Foundation offers a youth employment toolkit developed specifically to help employers support marginalised young people to find and stay in work.

It is important to advertise roles in the right place so that young people will see them. The Youth Voice Census 2024 shows that around three-quarters of young people said that an employers’ own website and ‘find a job’ websites are useful for finding a job, while around half of young people said that social media, LinkedIn and apprenticeship websites were useful. Many young people interviewed by the University of Sheffield named Indeed as the main place they look for jobs. 

As outlined in the CIPD guide on inclusive recruitment, job adverts can be made more inclusive for young people through some simple steps and checks. For example, specifying a number of years of experience may be off-putting to young people and can also be potentially discriminatory. Evidence also shows that years of experience is not a good predictor of a candidate’s ability to do a job role. Including jargon or acronyms can also create barriers for young people. Jargon-busters are available to decode job adverts. 

When advertising jobs, certain features may be particularly appealing to young people. Positive features of work mentioned by respondents to the Youth Voice Census included variety, flexibility, work-life balance, being part of a team, social and networking opportunities, supportive and welcoming colleagues, training opportunities and doing work ‘that has a positive impact on other people’. It may be beneficial, therefore, to highlight such benefits, where they are available, when advertising jobs, as well as the organisation’s core values, mission and vision.  

Young people also appreciate the opportunity to progress and develop their skills within an organisation. Alongside low pay and increased workload, a desire for more interesting work with progression pathways was one of the three most common reasons given by respondents who were considering leaving their current job to the Youth Voice Census. When advertising positions, it might therefore be helpful to highlight how the role supports opportunities for further developing skills and careers and the opportunities that might be available to young people as they progress within the organisation (see Case Study 5).       

Young people may also prefer flexible and hybrid working styles. Consider whether a new role could be offered on a hybrid basis. See Assessing roles for hybrid working | CIPD for more information. 

There are a number of ways to make the application process more inclusive for young people. Not asking candidates for their date of birth or to state the years of their previous employment can help remove potential sources of bias against younger people.  

Lengthy application forms where candidates are required to respond to long person specifications may be off-putting to younger candidates. The Youth Voice Census 2024 showed that 46% of respondents decided not to apply for a job because the person specification had too many requirements. Asking a few situation-based questions may be more fitting. For example, instead of asking candidates about their work experience history, it would be better to ask a question such as ‘give an example of a time you have worked well in a team’ or ‘tell us about a time you have planned and completed a project’. 

Some of the employers interviewed by the University of Sheffield in 2025 had experienced success with alternatives to lengthy applications, such as inviting candidates for face-to-face interviews after a short application form and interviewing students who had attended careers talks by the employer at their college (see Case Study 2).     

See also our Evidence review on recruiting young people facing disadvantage.

Young people typically have fewer years of work experience than older candidates. Employers can accommodate this by allowing or encouraging young people to draw on other forms of experience (for example, experience gained through education or involvement in clubs) in interview situations. It may also be beneficial to focus on skills rather than experience. Structured interview scripts may negate potential bias in the process. Probing questions may also allow young people to more easily demonstrate their capabilities. 

Employers may wish to consider alternatives to interviewing that might better enable young people to demonstrate their abilities. The use of situational judgement tests, cognitive ability tests or work samples may give candidates the opportunity to shine outside of a traditional interview. Work trials may also be beneficial for young people to show their ability to do a job, without the need for lengthy recruitment processes. 

If there is a need to fill multiple roles, employers can find it beneficial to recruit more than one young person to start at the same time. This may be easier for large organisations with a scheduled apprentice or intern intake, although even an SME employer interviewed by the University of Sheffield said that they found it beneficial to hire apprentices two at a time as this meant they were able to support one another as they experienced a similar situation at the same time. 

Managing young workers is not necessarily different to managing older workers. However, there are some areas in which young people may need additional support and time to develop. 

Young people may need additional time to learn acceptable workplace behaviours and be given extra leeway to get up to speed with the culture and processes of an organisation. The youngest workers may benefit from training on ‘work basics’ such as development support in relation to appropriate work etiquette, appropriate dress, timekeeping and/or engaging with customers. Younger workers can be less familiar with writing professional emails or using key applications like video conferencing and shared calendars.  

Young people may also need support in developing their communication skills and acquiring confidence. This can be particularly important in customer-facing roles, for example where communicating by telephone is required. If this is an important part of your business, then additional support with making phone calls can be advantageous. This could include: providing a particular script to follow; being on hand to support if calls become difficult during the initial period of employment; role playing specific phone scenarios; or even using AI to simulate difficult phone calls so that young people can practice.

Allowing young people the opportunity to move around the organisation and shadow other colleagues can have several benefits. It can allow the young person to get to know their colleagues and give them a greater understanding of what other staff members do and how the organisation runs more broadly. It can also support development by allowing the young person to gain greater awareness of what opportunities are available and the progression routes that are in place within the organisation.  

Helping young employees to get to know their co-workers may help them feel more included  in a team, improve their confidence to liaise with colleagues and help them become familiar with the roles that others do.  

It can be helpful to assign a young person a ‘buddy’ for their initial period of work. Information on how to do this is provided in the Youth Employment UK guide on setting up a buddy system. This can provide a more informal form of support than a mentoring relationship and can help a young person integrate more quickly and feel more confident in the team.  

Pastoral care - which can be defined as advocacy and wellbeing support - can be important for younger workers. Some employers note that some young people may need ‘an arm round the shoulder’. If this pastoral care comes from someone who is not the young person’s line manager it may allow them to express themselves more freely and might enable mediation between the young person and their manager, if needed (see Case Study 3). If capacity allows, it can also be advantageous to nominate a young people’s ‘champion’ - a named member of staff who is responsible for representing the needs of young non-graduates and acting as a point of contact if they have any issues to raise.  

Young employees, like older employees, may benefit from specific coaching and mentoring. Coaching can allow for enhanced development of workplace skills whilst mentoring can pair a more junior colleague with a senior colleague. These approaches can allow for self-directed development and can be useful for succession planning. See Coaching and mentoring | Factsheets | CIPD for further information. 

It is important to note that organisations may also be able to learn things from the young people they recruit. Reverse mentoring schemes may be beneficial for highlighting how the organisation can better develop young people. They may also provide an opportunity for young people to help upskill older workers, particularly in areas such as digital skills.  

Learning from the way younger employees carry out their work may also allow for positive workplace changes. For example, younger workers may prefer instant messaging over email, which could improve efficiency. Younger employees may also be more knowledgeable about technological developments, such as the use of AI. Keeping up to date with their technology use can help the organisation stay on top of technological change.