5 ways professional apprenticeships elevate your entry-level hiring

Data shows that employers plan to hire nearly 15% more recent graduates(opens new window) from the Class of 2023 than they did from the Class of 2022. But what many organisations still aren’t seeing is that a robust early talent strategy isn’t just about recent graduates.

At Multiverse, our research has found that 76% of the individuals who choose not to enroll in university do so because of financial reasons. That is a large pool of skilled talent hidden in plain sight.

While 70% of large employers(opens new window) look for degrees when hiring, businesses and young professionals agree that it’s skills — not degrees — that deliver the greatest value to the workplace.

Here are five practical ways employers can level up their early talent acquisition strategies through the transformative power of professional apprenticeships.

There’s a reason the number of job ads that do not require a degree is increasing(opens new window) year over year. Even amid layoffs, the war for talent continues.

Companies have become more creative with their recruitment strategies, including the way they think about their early career programmes. But unlike an internship or short-term training programme, professional apprenticeships can deliver skills development based on real day-to-day workflows in high-demand areas like software engineering and data analytics.

Here are a few ways a skills-first talent strategy can help you fill in-demand roles faster:

Large multinationals like Unilever and others(opens new window) are beginning to see early careers as “an ecosystem of talent” — rather than a siloed cohort dedicated to generalised or low-impact tasks.

With the right programme in place, professional apprenticeships can help you close critical skills gaps by training ambitious early talent to meet your hiring needs.

From inflated compensation packages to expensive agencies and contractors, securing tech talent can be costly. Apprenticeships offer a sustainable and ROI-friendly alternative to relying on expensive third-parties by helping you build internal experts.

And now is the time. In the next decade, the vast majority of baby boomers will retire – in fact, 54% of them(opens new window) have already stopped paid work – leaving a huge gap at the leadership level. Without a plan to actively help talent advance into those roles, you risk getting left behind.

Professional apprenticeships help you develop future leaders by enabling you to:

Companies like Citi and KPMG are already paving a new path forward, actively using apprenticeships to build in-house junior talent for key data, software engineering, and digital roles — without relying on expensive third parties.

The Great Resignation, quiet quitting, and the new and troubling trend of employees ghosting a brand new job(opens new window) — it’s clear employee disengagement has reached an all-time high(opens new window).

Early career starters have entered the working world at a unique moment in HR history. In a world where business isn’t usual, it’s up to you to create an engaging early talent programme to help meet them where they are.

Here are some of the ways professional apprenticeships help you build enthusiasm for learning from the start:

Professional apprenticeships offer the best of digital and in-person learning, including built-in coaching and mentorship, and access to a community of peers to network and collaborate. This can have an important impact on employee loyalty(opens new window), while driving your transformation initiatives forward.

The number of software tools a single company uses has increased more than 10X(opens new window) in less than ten years, with the average organisation currently using 110 applications. But does your workforce know how to make the most of those investments?

Professional apprenticeships help increase your agility by empowering leaders to:

In our report, Making Every Data Minute Count, we found that 8.5% of businesses' annual revenue is lost on average as a result of poor data literacy. Through direct training on real workflows, apprentices have been shown to deliver a 50% decrease in time spent unproductively, saving the equivalent of nearly six working weeks per year.

Investing in early talent with a malleable skill set and mindset can help you drive greater impact for years to come.

Representation is especially low in the tech sector, with women and people of color highly underrepresented(opens new window) in technical roles. By offering debt-free and paid positions in in-demand areas, apprenticeships help you increase diversity from the start.

At Multiverse, 65% of our current early-career apprentices are from Black, Asian or multiple ethnicity backgrounds. 37% of the apprentices that Multiverse hires come from the 30% most deprived neighbourhoods as per the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).

Here are some of the ways early talent apprenticeships can help drive diversity:

“Recruiting truly diverse talent, and bringing in people with different perspectives and a range of experiences is vital to the success of our business, but also enables us to develop future leaders and build critical skills for Citi,” says Jacqui Lloyd, Senior Vice President and Apprenticeship Lead at Citi.

Hiring early talent based on potential, not the grades they got in school, isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also great for business.

Across all Multiverse programmes, we have tracked over £550M in cost-saving or revenue-generating activities resulting from the work of our apprentices during their time in our programmes. 69% of Multiverse apprentices gain new job responsibilities after they finish the programme and over a third saw a salary increase between starting and finishing their apprenticeship.

Early talent development must be about more than graduate hiring and internships. Active skills training in specialised areas is the way forward for businesses looking to compete in a talent-tight, tech-driven climate.

With an open mind and a clear plan, you can level up your entire workforce starting at the entry-level.

At Multiverse, we partner with over 1,000 employers across the UK and US to identify the need for skills, design a programme to systematically close skills gaps, and prepare your early talent cohort for lasting success in an increasingly digital climate.

Book a free consultation with one of our experts to learn more about our programmes.