Apprenticeships or graduate recruitment – is there hope for the new generation of students?

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Overview

The future of young people in the UK has never felt more uncertain with rising unemployment rates, massive competition for every single job vacancy and a high proportion of students with degrees unable to secure themselves a desired career. But the recent CBI Education and Skills Survey 2011 suggests a more positive picture of businesses’ intentions to invest in skills, stating that more employers plan to increase investment in training during the coming year, whether in apprenticeships or graduate recruitment. From our experience as an IT support business, I would advocate that enlisting and nurturing apprenticeship and graduate talent gives small and medium sized businesses another approach to growing as well as energising their business.

Our graduate recruitment

In August 2010, we recruited six new graduates - all from non-IT degrees. We received hundreds of applications, interviewed 46 candidates and eventually put their chosen six recruits on a structured 26-week training programme. The most effective route has been the creation and implementation of this rigorous training plan which has had the support and input of the whole company’s staff. We consciously took the decision not to set targets for the first nine months of the programme because we didn’t want to create unreasonable expectations on what the graduates could deliver.

Nearly a year on, the decision has already paid off – four of the six original starters are still with us and two of them are already involved in field-based sales work.

I would argue that companies are just playing a numbers game if they expect new starters to go straight into professions such as sales and learn on the job. It is critical to develop the graduates’ sales skills without exerting too much pressure.

It’s undeniable that our recruits’ facility with social media has given us additional options on researching and targeting potential market opportunities or particular prospects. It has restored my faith in people – both new recruits and experienced personnel - having seen enhanced commitment to the business generated so quickly.

Our apprenticeship programme

Spurred on by the success of the graduate recruitment programme, we decided to supplement the maturing graduate team with apprenticeships. The CBI has for a long time been calling for apprenticeships to be ‘promoted as a positive choice for young people and a route to a successful and rewarding future’. With fierce competition for university places and even tougher job seeking circumstances for degree achieving students, there is certainly an argument for some school leavers to consider taking the apprenticeship route to securing a rewarding career. Many apprenticeships provide practical, business-focused training that helps individuals develop the required skills they need to kick start their careers.

The government’s extended support in February 2011 of employer-led apprenticeship programmes has encouraged some organisations to consider taking this route. Many businesses can still be dismissive of apprenticeships - unless they are from the traditional apprenticeship-strong sectors of construction or engineering. But a large proportion of apprentices are now working in business administration, customer services, sales and telesales.

We set up a sales professional apprenticeship in May 2011 for two new recruits with the backing of the government’s National Apprenticeship Service (NAS). After a successful ten months of its graduate programme, it has been an eye-opening experience for the company.

The skills we were looking for in graduates were equally present in 18-20-year-olds, mostly ambition and determination. We are only eight weeks into the apprenticeship programme and I can’t see any real difference in terms of progress compared to the identical graduate training we started last year. The apprentices may have a little less in the way of ‘life skills’ than the graduates but, surprisingly, the raw material is pretty much the same in both cases.

The graduates and apprentices are also integrated within the sales team and work together for the wider benefit of the company. Despite being in their ‘rookie’ year, the graduates are proving to be good coaches for the apprentices – perhaps because they have trodden such a similar path only months before.

There has also been a clear improvement in the way our sales function operates. It is often the case that even though a group of salespeople are called a sales team, they don’t actually act much like a team. But this is the first tangible example for the company that members of the sales team are working together for mutual benefit.

Taking on new graduates and apprentices has been an enlightening experience for us and the younger employees have injected a greater level of enthusiasm and energy to the sales team and are starting to make a contribution to the sales pipeline. We’re planning to initiate another graduate programme in the future.