ISE researcher Nicola Thomas explains why gender and AI are new for this year’s ISE Student Recruitment Survey.

Each year ISE releases its Student Recruitment Survey. We answer important questions about the graduate and school leaver labour market. Among them are what is the average salary, how many recruiters are there in a recruitment team and what are the trends in selection activities?

This year we are reporting on three new, important areas that support our members in enhancing their understanding of the early career labour market.

These are: AI, gender differences, and demographic differences.

ISE’s Student Recruitment Survey 2022 is open for members to complete

Is AI used in the graduate labour market?

Dr. Grace Logan from the London School of Economics made headlines this year when she said, “There is evidence that current hiring processes are plagued by cronyism and bias. It is time that humans hand over the hiring process to machines”.

A recent study of Dr. Logan’s found that AI hiring improves efficiency by being faster, increasing the fill-rate for open positions, and recommending candidates with a greater likelihood of being hired after an interview.

However, there are very few datapoints that show how prevalent the use of AI is in the recruitment of graduates and school leavers.

Are recruitment teams making the most of technology to enhance their recruitment processes? Or is introducing AI into their recruitment process not something they are interested in? This year, for the first time, we will find out in our Student Recruitment Survey.

Differences in graduate and apprentice cohorts

We know from the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data that gender pay gaps exist among graduates. However, other studies have also highlighted that women have a higher employment rate than men.

The impact of gender and other demographic differences such as race, sexual identity and religion has a big impact on the performance of business, with more diverse organisations outperforming less diverse companies.

However, we have previously not asked our members to report on the demographic breakdown of their graduate and apprenticeship schemes. This year, we have asked all members what percentage of their schemes were women, LGBT, ethnically diverse, and neurodiverse.

We will be able to show these demographics across sectors to provide members with a good benchmark to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the recruitment approach on diversity.

Want to benchmark your organisation? We need your data now

The ISE Student Recruitment Survey 2022 is now open to complete. This is one of the most important surveys that we run each year as it gives us an overview of the student labour market.

We invite you to complete the survey, which will give you a great benchmark on how other organisations are approaching recruitment in 2022.

Following feedback from last year, we have launched a new survey platform, which enables you to save responses and return when you are ready to complete the survey. No organisation will be identified in the results.

Data collected through this survey will be analysed for ISE research publications, blogs and articles and provided in an aggregate way in response to member and stakeholder queries. The raw data will be stored securely and only be available to ISE staff. 

The deadline for completion of the survey has been extended to the end of the day on Friday 16 September. We hope that you will be able to participate in this year’s survey.  

Please complete ISE’s Student Recruitment Survey 2022

If you would like to receive your organisation’s responses from last year, please request these from research@ise.org.uk