(Not just) London Calling

Employers report an ongoing challenge in attracting early careers talent to roles based outside of London.

There is certainly no shortage of regional opportunities for graduates. Data from targetconnect, university careers platform , shows that from 500,000 graduate-level opportunities posted in the last 12 months, over 65% of were located outside of London.

Whilst Cibyl research shows London’s magnetism has reduced in recent years, it is still the preferred destination for 45% of students.

So, there is not a problem of opportunity but more a challenge of student supply and some considerable “cold spots", where talent is most likely to have barriers to achieving education and employment.

The article looks at this challenge and some possible solutions.

Thank you to the July 2024 Breakfast News speakers, Sam Turnpenny at Accenture, Vicky Pryce, Stephen Isherwood at the Institute of Student Employers, our student panel and Clive Myrie, at the BBC, from which this article was put together. You can access video content below.

 

Explaining the challenge to the business and hiring managers

Talent leaders often have a difficult time educating and influencing upwards internally. They often struggle to manage business expectations around the likelihood of being able to hire into different programmes and roles, across non-London locations.

Take this example of an employer working with GTI, where they have lots of varies roles in different locations across the UK. The supply of talent in each location and role is unlikely to be consistent and, in some cases, not favourable, in order to meet the demand.

Armed with data from the likes of Cibyl, HESA and the Institute of Student Employers, employers can find a data-backed reality to challenge these perceptions and support their cause.

Recommendations

We’ve seen for example how Accenture have done just that working with Cibyl data to show their business just how difficult hiring in Newcastle can be for around 100 software engineers (with a 50% female hiring aspiration) with no existing presence and pipeline.

With Cibyl’s support they were able to challenge this hiring expectation.

The data showed a holistic niche talent pool of around 7,500 local students, which they filtered down by:

• Finalists
• Relevant degrees
• 5 local universities
• Those wanting to work in the North-East post-university
• Those aware of and who want to work for Accenture

This gave them a guesstimated pool of just 60, with only 15 females . With a demand of over 100 to hire, this data enabled the Accenture recruitment team to push back the business’ expectations.

However, it also earned them the right to plan long-term, by focusing on three core remedies with the business:

• Set different expectations: Adapt the long-term view to focus on internships and apprenticeship demand instead of solely finalist graduates.
• Build the Accenture brand: Despite being more well known to a London seeking audience and some other large regional cities, Newcastle needed sustainable attention. Investments were made in hiring a dedicated North-East recruiter to provide more engagement with local talent.
• Data-driven and agile approach: Revisit the data regularly to show progress, highlight areas for change, review drop-offs in process, provide support via employability skills and identify synergies with social mobility and EDI agendas.

Students and graduates aren’t as geographically mobile as we think

There’s long been an assumption and perhaps expectation than students and graduates are geographically very mobile. But recent data shows this isn’t quite true. Cibyl research shows that 45% of students at university have a preference to work in London. Whilst this figure has been declining in recent years (down from 64% in 2022) it is still significant.

Moving away from their home location, where many students may have social ties and familiarity, can be daunting. Concerns also include housing, lifestyle, social integration and of course rent and living costs. Even when armed with offers, many have to decline largely because of financial restraints and a lack of relocation support offered by employers.

Overcoming candidates’ reluctance to relocate or consider regional roles requires tailored strategies and persistent engagement.

Recommendations

Employers should consider investing further in branding, content and role models to showcase the unique benefits and opportunities available in the regional location. Featuring local employees with familiar experiences or dialect in marketing campaigns.

Weaving in regional relevance and cultural quips into your marketing copy, messaging and activity to gain attention but importantly show attainability, as in opportunities can be nearby and worthy.

Highlighting success stories and case studies of professionals who have thrived in roles outside of London.

Developing strong local professional networks and mentorship programs to provide students with support and connections in regional areas.

Developing relationships with university career services, to actively promote regional opportunities and educate students on the benefits of pursuing careers outside of London.

All the future jobs will be in London, won't they?

Students often perceive London as the hub for career opportunities, leading to a belief that roles outside of London are less prestigious or there are less of them in volume.

But, from the GTI targetconnect UK-wide university network of over 500,000 opportunities in the last 12 months, 67% of those opportunities were based outside of London. This includes a range of sized companies from startups to global enterprises.

Universities may find it challenging to convince students of the benefits of exploring careers outside of London due to ingrained perceptions and student preferences. Ensuring a balanced distribution of placement and internship opportunities across the UK requires building strong relationships with a diverse range of employers.

The Institute of Student Employers data from 2023, illustrated a similar regional majority, with 60% of employers’ school and college leaver roles in the regions and 52% of graduate roles outside of London. It’s worth noting though that the 60% referenced here is the lowest it has been in recent years, from 72% last year, and 76% the year before. So, it could be worth seeing the ISE's 2024 data, and if the regions continue to lose more school and college leaver roles to the capital.

ISE’s data also shows that a large proportion of students are returning home post-university, and those who stayed at home to study are generally staying local after university too. So, it’s making it difficult for employers to attract students in from other locations.

Students worry about the potential for slower career progression and fewer networking opportunities in regional areas compared to London. Regional companies may not have the same brand recognition or perceived prestige as London-based firms, making it harder to compete for talent.

There may also be misconceptions about the quality of work environment and life outside of London and a tendency to look at more ‘hard power’ factors such as the degree, course, city, finances and more. This is especially the case in times of financial hardship and economic uncertainty which default student and graduates’ mindsets, towards biased barriers and misperceptions which understandably can be based on a lack of information, research and knowledge.

It begs the question, do students and graduates need to make hard location-based decisions with a long-term view in mind?

On a broader macroeconomic level, UK cities and regions are enjoying ever-greater devolution of resources and decision-making from Westminster. With Labour’s manifesto committing to widening and deepening English devolution and resetting the UK Government’s relationship with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, this is set to continue. The change in government also brings the opportunity for places to develop local growth plans aligned with unique local values and heritage, business and community needs, existing industrial strengths and future growth opportunities. Universities can – and should – be central to shaping such strategies. (HEPI)

Recommendations

Cibyl data allows employers to know not just where their target groups are studying but also where they may have an unexpected fan club!

Recently, we shared with an Insurance firm the surprising news that a couple of East Midlands universities had a higher proportion of candidates interested in them as an employer compared to the universities local to their head offices in South Wales. So, unearthing this kind of data can allow employers to broaden their horizons on where to go and how to engage with new talent audiences.

Strengthening your partnerships between regional universities can ensure a steady pipeline of talent and increase awareness of opportunities.

Birmingham City University’s BCU Advantage programme. supports local SMEs to grow, while the University of Derby works with Rolls Royce on projects like training nuclear submarine engineers, most of whom remain in the region. (HEPI).

Employers, educators and careers advisers could encourage students and graduates to think about additional factors such as culture, environment, new experiences and non-geographical associated links when considering a place of study or work.

Encouraging more short-term decision making to introduce the idea of regional residency and working might influence early talent to be drawn towards a scenario of being a bigger fish in a smaller pond locally, as opposed to a small fish in an ocean like London.

Employers have the opportunity here to really drill down into these soft power factors and convey messaging and a narrative which helps to make their opportunities more appealing to those less familiar with the locality, culture and network. Serving up this content in digestible formats and on channels they consume should help influence them to consider more regional areas of work.

Around 5 years ago a large tech consultancy (as part of their aspirations to achieve 50% female hiring across early careers) used a method which included the use of local imagery and familiar references to cut through the social media and online noise with the intent to influence existing local students and school leavers to consider roles in West Sussex, Shropshire and South Wales. They were also able to use location preference and postcode residency data to programmatically target those personas with multiple touchpoints across numerous channels. These methods helped move the female hiring dial around 10% increasingly in consecutive recruitment seasons, to surpass the 50% female hiring target.

Bespoke communication, offers and candidate experience - student and graduate preferences differ regionally

Review ing an employer’s end-to-end recruitment process and overlay which persona (in this case region base/preferred) is wanting, expecting and preferring at different stages, plus which steps they’re more likely to drop out of the process is such an operational efficiency gain for employers. Not forgetting, the opportunity to enhance the candidate experience (CX).

We find some interesting results when dissecting Cibyl research data. If we take for example, those students and graduates who are from the North-West, attend a university in the North-West, or want to work in Manchester, we see some distinctive differences which could impact how employers plan and execute their recruitment. Using this Manchester sample example vs the UK, we found the below outcomes:

• Financial factors: Manchester has seen a greater change in career aspiration factors, whereby Manchester respondents are more focused on the starting salary, will more likely move for a higher salary and now considering broader careers interests than the UK as a whole.
• Salary expectations: In 2023, Manchester respondents expected to be within just over 5% of the starting salary of their UK peers. Now, it’s within 0.5%. But are employers providing the same near parity now across the country? It appears not. ISE’s data for 2023 (with 2024s coming in October) shows graduates on average are earning nearly 19% more in London as a starting graduate salary, vs their peers in Manchester and over 23% than those in Wales. A similar story exists in the school leaver space with a disparity of over 13% between London and Manchester and nearly 19% for London vs Wales.
• In-person employer engagement: Manchester respondents preferred careers fairs and brand ambassadors more than the UK overall.
• Online engagement: Manchester respondent s are more likely to engage with careers sites, direct messages from employers and use LinkedIn.
• Assessment and selection: Manchester respondents are less likely to use AI in the recruitment process than their UK peers. This could be linked to socioeconomic differences and the affordability of the paid versions such as ChatGPT 4.
• Onboarding: Manchester respondents preferred phone calls and LinkedIn direct messages when joining a company, compared to the UK sample.
• Support: Manchester respondents were more likely to expect relocation support, in comparison to the UK respondents.

Recommendations

To read more about CX and ways of improving CX across any part of your process, click here to access the resources from the last Breakfast News.

Reviewing salaries per programmes would allow you to gauge whether your business is in line with the expectations of your talent pool as well as regional expectations.

Analysing each stage of the candidate journey will help you understand where you may be losing candidates in the process. It may show a difference by location and a UK-wide change could help your overall pipelining.

Once recruited, it’s vital to not lose offered candidates through reneges. Employers could consider offering relocation packages, housing assistance, or other incentives to retain those offers made.

Get in touch to find out how Cibyl can help shape your regional strategies as well as diversity approaches, skills gap remedies and much more.

Regional channels and activations

Here are the main ways you can engage face to face and digitally with your hiring regions and campuses:

• University careers platforms: Posting your roles on university careers service platforms is simple and effective to show students you are a credible employer and to post your vacancies. Most careers portals are easy to access, and some can even feature your ad or send it out as via email to those who have opted in. GTI’s targetconnect platform enables you to reach all/any of our partner universities with one-click, saving your team’s much-valued time to be focused elsewhere.
• Jobs and career sites: There are many job sites and aggregators out there that specialise in volume, regions, diversity among others. Popular graduate intern and placement sites like targetjobs (and gradireland, its sister platform in Ireland), also offer careers advice and guidance, provide online learning opportunities and host events with leading employers. Filters on regions allow students to find your roles easily and better still, preferences selected will push your opportunities into their feeds and alerts.
• Career and subject specific jobs fairs: These are great for activating your brand to a broad audience or a more targeted one when focused on a faculty/industry. Some companies will use registration details to build into their candidate communications and nurture or alert them in the subsequent weeks and months. You’re likely going up against many employers in the same industry and, in some cases, regionally, so make sure your representatives are fully briefed on your USPs, Employer Value Proposition (EVP) and reason for being there on the day.
• Pop-up events: You could work with a faculty or students’ union to hire out a place on campus to engage with footfall and provide 121 conversations, gather research or hand out branded merchandise. Make it clear on approach why a student would stop to speak and what’s in it for them.
• Sports clubs and societies: Societies are a great way to raise awareness of your brand and opportunities with large, targeted groups of students. These can be on campus per university, by topics, interests, or identity – such as environmental, computer science or black heritage. These societies aren’t limited to universities. Further afield there’s broader industry memberships regionally and nationally. You can engage with these audience through mailers, newsletters, events, shout outs, or social media. They know what works for their members, and they can advise you on how best to target them. However, though effective , they can be quite expensive so do try to justify your spend with engagement and tracking ROI.
• Guest lectures: This is a good way to target specific students you’re looking to attract, benefitting from their full attention and offering an element of exclusivity. It’s important to do your research on which universities and courses to target by size, curriculum, and time of the day. You could look at presenting some interesting trends in your industry or show the application of theory, linked to the curriculum. Subtly you can sell the expertise your company has and indirectly show you’re keen to hire people in the audience. Although do remember you’ll need to dedicate time to preparing, travelling, and delivering.
• Employability skills sessions: There may be skills you want your graduate hires to have, so what better way to add value and heighten your brand’s reputation than giving something practical and useful to students? This could be collaborating with other local employers on a set topic like communication, or even delivering mock Assessment Centres to mock Assessment Centres to give students an insight into how they work, which in turn will help them practice and gain confidence. CV surgeries and interview tips are other ways you can provide value to students.
• Faculty / careers service engagement: You could look at targeting specific students via careers services or academic contacts within your target/local university departments. Careers advisors and academics may refer individual students who may have already expressed an interest in your industry sector or send an email to students about your opportunities, events and other engagement. Our targetconnect university network enables us to provide support, information and guidance to over 4,500 careers professionals who can then refer on your opportunities to prospective candidates.
• Paid internships: Hiring interns to work for weeks, months or even a full year, allows you to reap the benefits of brand advocates back on campus, helping to raise the awareness of your brand. Many firms use internships to offer graduate roles sometimes a full year or more in advance – which brings down their time to hire and cost per hire. An additional by-benefit of this is new intern-turned-graduate joiners who can hit the ground running on day one, making the induction process much quicker and easier for you.
• Short-live projects: Working with careers teams and faculties/schools in universities, colleges and schools to provide short ‘real’ projects. These can be optional or assessed as part of the curriculum. University of South Wales provide a series of virtual work experience programmes with SMEs via our targetconnect Pathways technology provision.
• Brand ambassadors: These can act as extension of your team, helping to share your messages online or verbally and visually on campus. They can promote your upcoming presence on campus as well as run events and hand out merchandise. Ambassadors have the added benefit of bringing you intel on local trends as well as referring possible applicants to your positions. Some firms even use these opportunities to provide a candidate pipeline for their graduate programmes and roles.
• PR: Positive press coverage on things you’re doing around diversity and inclusion policies, attention to societal issues and environmental pledges will no doubt appeal to students. Similarly, if you’ve won awards for being a leader in your field you will find it much easier to hire students interested in that area.
• Sponsorship: This could range from supporting course fees of underrepresented groups you’re trying to recruit into your company or sector, through to events, societies, guides and more, that you can synonymise your logo and brand towards. This is a great way to make a statement to your audience of your intent and belief in the activity you’re associating with. Note: this doesn’t always have to be monetary based, it could be dedicating time, resources and tangible items like technical kit or use of offices for students.
• Competitions: Offering students a chance to compete for prizes such as mentoring, monetary prizes and work experience/roles, will showcase your brand to students who’re keen to demonstrate their skills to you. These can be run as online assessments, video presentations or face-to-face finals, hosted on campus or in your offices.
• Employer events: You could host events online through webinars or onsite in your office and invite students to come to listen to current graduates as well as senior managers – gaining an insight into what it’s like to work at your company. These events can take some organising and may need some light budget – but you’ll likely experience great conversion rates from attendance to application and then into hires and retention.
• Programmatic ads: These go deeper into the feeds and eyeballs of your target audiences who may not currently follow you. This allows you to broaden your following but provide a more direct narrative to prospective candidate networks. TikTok and Instagram lead the way for Gen Z usage and receptiveness for seeing careers related content. We provide this method via Gradfuel with significant success in the UK and across Europe too with a huge focus on location and geo-data.
• Virtual job simulations: Demystify your roles sector by giving students the chance to understand the day-to-day role, answers some questions and engage via a mix of video and written content. Our own data shows these tasks are 40% more likely to be completed by those from diverse communities. Why not look at our GradSims offering or book a demo to find out more and how we can distribute your branded GradSims to universities of your (local) choice.

Schools outreach and engagement

• For employers who are looking to drive awareness, increase applications or support social impact commitment at a localised level within schools, we recommend conducting a thorough mapping exercise on all educational establishments within scope. And analysing social and demographic information and depending on objective can filter or prioritise schools based on:
• Location and proximity to employer
• Student numbers
• Gender split
• Free School Meals and social deprivation data
• Ethnicity, cultural identity and religious character
• Ofsted results and school performance
• Distribution data – destination of school leavers (work / higher education etc.)

Managed early careers attraction

Leveraging agnostic and well-networked partners allow employers to leverage the best collective solution for their needs across the schools and graduate market. Whether its driving diversity of applications, improving brand and attraction in regions, Europe and globally or understanding which platforms could help achieve different goals, GTI are very well placed to bring a creative solution to employers under one managed relationship and data-driven campaigns across platforms and face-to-face on campus and in schools.

To discuss any of these options and strategies in this paper please get in touch.