Recruiters have risen to the challenge of youth unemployment over the last year, doubling the number of school leaver programmes, according to new research from The Forum for In-house Recruitment Managers.
Of the in-house recruiters who participated in The FIRMs Annual Membership Survey (2012 2013), 38% confirmed they have a school leaver programme in place, including apprenticeships, school leaver programmes, work experience and graduate programmes. This rise represents a significant increase on the previous years study that identified such schemes were only on offer in 15% of organisations.
Gary Franklin, co-founder of The FIRM, is impressed with the investment employers are making here:
Recruiters are proactively pushing ahead with their efforts to engage young people. Initiatives like National Apprenticeship Week will only serve to further promote the advantages of investing in younger workers to employers and enable even more companies to benefit from this creative and enthusiastic talent pool.
According to the National Apprenticeship Service, more than 130,000 workplaces already offer apprentice places and are taking advantage of the increased productivity and improved competitiveness that can come from bringing this group of new talent on board.