The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) has called for a radical change in the way businesses go about recruiting young people, hrmagazine.co.uk reports.
In its latest ‘Scaling the Youth Employment Challenge’ report, UKCES complained that a lack of experience is still shutting many young people out of the job market and making it difficult for them to secure jobs at which they may otherwise have excelled. Then, there is a vicious circle in that having no experience makes finding a job difficult, but experience cannot be gained without first finding a job.
In light of the claim, UKCES urged businesses to not just think of recruitment alone but instead to pair it with development, whereby young people are taken on with a view to providing them with on-the-job training and experience.
This, it was claimed, could not just help deal with unemployment but also underemployment, as close to one in five youngsters today working at jobs in London and around the rest of the UK would like more hours.
Commenting on the findings, recruitment analyst and chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, Charlie Mayfield, told hrreview.co.uk: “Work experience and apprenticeships are ways to bypass these closed doors, providing valuable experience that is otherwise hard to obtain.
“However, our whole attitude to young people needs to change. Helping young people get a step on the employment ladder should be at the heart of every employer’s business strategy. And tapping into young talent makes good business sense.”