Employer and candidate research from Amberjack provides valuable insight for early careers hiring in 2025.
At Amberjack, we have run our annual Insights research for the past 12 years. Insights analyses two sets of data; from our Employer Survey exploring the trends and challenges of early talent recruitment, and from the 350,000+ candidates that apply to employers through our Volume Hiring Platform.
We explored how our 2024 Insights can inform early careers hiring in 2025. Here are some of the key trends.
Attraction trends
Last season, high volumes of applications were once again prevalent across campaigns. It’s easy to take comfort that you’ll be inundated with applications, but are these applications the right ones?
Our Insights research reveals interesting findings across the attraction spectrum. From events and media sources to the use of artificial intelligence, we asked our employer survey respondents about their experiences.
Despite the majority of respondents experiencing ‘no issues’ in 2023 or 2024 when it came to their event schedule, the biggest area of concern remained student sign-up and attendance numbers, with 26% of employers voting this as their biggest challenge.
When it comes to events and their level of success though, this has continued to change dramatically.
Running events face-to-face has grown in success from 28% in 2022/2023 to over 40% in 2023/2024. In tandem, the success of virtual events has declined from over 11% in 2022/2023 to just 4% success rate in 2023/2024, perhaps explaining some of the causes behind challenges with student sign up and attendance numbers.
Additionally, we explored where organisations are hosting their future talent opportunities online. Most employers choose to host their roles on their own-branded early careers website vs. other website options. For social media, LinkedIn continues to assert dominance.
Finally for attraction, we asked respondents to indicate to what degree they felt AI could be used in tandem with attraction campaigns, to which 37% of early careers employers answered that they were unsure how AI could fit into attraction activities.
Assessment trends
This was the year where we would start to see the impact of the mass adoption of generative AI on early career selection processes, yet changes have not been as widespread as expected.
More than half of employers are reporting that they had not made changes in response to the threat of candidates using generative AI to improve their performance.
However, in our Employer Survey, we asked organisations which areas were the most at risk to the impact of AI. Results show that CVs and online assessments are areas where improvement in candidate responses can be seen as a result of the use of AI.
Artificial Intelligence was a big topic last year, but diversity and inclusion maintains its place as the biggest challenge for employers and their candidate assessments. This is similar to the 2022/2023 season previous, where this was also the main challenge and retaining diverse candidates throughout was voted the biggest challenge by 52.52% of employers.
Assessment was one of main focuses in our employer survey, with recruitment practices their effectiveness, and the face-to-face vs. virtual debate, also being explored.
Learning and development trends
For the first time as part of Amberjack’s Insights research, our Head of UK L&D explored the findings from the L&D section of our Employer Survey.
With application rates at record highs, in part due to a competitive market, use of AI in applications, and economic uncertainty, we have seen renege rates stabilise over the last few seasons at around 10%. However, we are anticipating this to rise. This is why we explored the timing and delivery of assessment, candidate skills, and programme focus areas.
We’re encouraging clients to utilise the post-offer pre-joining window to run development sessions to support early talent in making a smooth transition into the workplace. The good news is that over half of our respondents are already using this time to run development sessions as part of their keep warm offering. With a further 37% bringing those sessions onto campus.
The majority of employers view this onboarding and induction period as the key area of focus for their programmes, but this is followed closely by on-programme development with the interventions and workshops to continually develop hires.
Candidate trends
When it came to analysing the candidate data from this year’s research, we partnered with Fearless Futures to anonymously examine data from 386,000 applications across 32 organisations in 11 different sectors, from September 2023 to June 2024.
Using applicant data, we have been able to aggregate trends and establish an overview of progress through recruitment stages, allowing us to provide informed recommendations.
We saw that nearly 60% of applicants identified as men, specifically cisgender men, with a further 38% identifying as cisgender female. This leaves a minor percentage of non-binary gender identities. We also captured data related to socioeconomic status, race, and disability. The webinar and full Insights Reports take a look at all these demographics in more detail.
Other data examined in our candidate population included media sources, stages reached, university applications, sector breakdowns, and more. Some key findings included:
- Internal referrals were the most successful media source in terms of offers, but lowest for volume of applications. This story reverses for job board applicants.
- Construction, retail, and professional services have the highest offer rates.
- Russel Group universities still disproportionately represent the highest amount of offers. Candidates from Russell Group universities are twice as likely to receive offers than those who aren’t Russell Group.
- Women are 20% more likely to receive an offer than men.
Next, Fearless Futures looked at findings like these with an intersectional approach. Analysing the data to reveal where key differences occur when multiple demographic groupings are considered together. These findings are not only eye-opening, but incredibly insightful, providing actionable areas of focus for organisations looking to deep dive into their recruitment process.
Explore more in our ISE webinar
This data along with further analysis is discussed in our webinar with ISE. Amberjack’s Head of Attraction, Head of Assessment, Head of UK L&D, and the Director of Consultancy and Data Solutions at Fearless Futures, provide actionable tips for organisations looking to up their game in 2025.
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