Hiring early careers talent
Success stories from leading global organizations
Future-ready: The strategic imperative of early careers hiring
Early careers hiring plays a key role in driving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) initiatives, injecting new skills and perspectives into the workforce, nurturing future leaders and addressing skills shortages. It also meaningfully enhances an organization's Employer Value Proposition (EVP), making it a more attractive destination for top-tier talent.
Gen Z brings tech-savviness, a passion for diversity and inclusion, an entrepreneurial mindset, and a strong demand for purpose, collaboration, self-development and work-life balance.
In 2030, Gen Alpha will enter the workforce and with them they will bring a tech-native mindset, seamless AI integration, and a strong demand for purpose-driven work, reshaping the workplace with innovation and digital fluency.
But getting your hiring programs right for these generations isn’t easy—it’s a very competitive market, there are seemingly unlimited applications, candidates need to be kept engaged for a longer period and prepared for work. The ISE (Institute Student Employers) reports application ratio to vacancy has increased by 52% across 2024 at an all-time high up to 140:1. This means for every 140 applications only 1 person is hired. High volumes make it harder for organizations to efficiently assess and select the best talent for their business, as well as ensuring candidates feel connected to our organization and don’t drop out of the process. Candidate well-being is also a focus against the context of mass rejection, particularly when much of the process may be delivered virtually.
Despite these challenges, some organizations have found solutions to deliver notable results in EC&C hiring and AMS has helped drive outcomes for young talent at every stage of the recruitment, hiring and onboarding process.
In this eBook, we explore examples of companies that have worked in partnership with AMS to achieve success in early careers hiring and its subsequent impact on business outcomes.
1. Becoming candidate obsessed
“We became ‘candidate obsessed’. Our process focused on engaging candidates so they wouldn’t drop out and giving them a realistic expectation of what a ‘day in the life’ in the role was like. Our focus also remained on DEI, particularly females and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, to align with the bank’s wider strategy of diversifying its workforce.”
Outcomes
Challenge
Attracting new talent was a top priority for the firm, particularly for its retail and risk departments. The Talent Acquisition (TA) team recognized that the most engaged talent often applied early in the process but would drop out due to long wait times until offers were made. Maintaining candidate excitement and engagement was crucial to prevent this attrition in the process.
“[Success stories were] an effective way to keep our talent interested and excited through relevant graduate stories and pieces on life at [our firm], as well as give updates on the process. It was also used to feature schemes like Retail and Risk, raising awareness and encouraging applications.”
Solution
With guidance from AMS, the firm implemented several strategic initiatives:
- Regular communication: It rebuilt its talent pool by sending regular update emails and a monthly newsletter to candidates throughout the entire process. These communications included relevant graduate stories, pieces on life at the firm, and updates on the application process.
- Engagement events: The firm held ‘Get Connected’ events, including online drop-ins and webinars, where 166 students asked questions and received answers. These events helped keep candidates engaged and informed.
- Showcasing success stories: The firm produced a popular video that followed two apprentices throughout their first year on the job. The video highlighted their progress and demonstrated how the firm fulfilled its promises to young professionals.
By leveraging AMS’s expertise and innovative solutions, the firm achieved outstanding business outcomes and enhanced its candidate attraction and engagement processes.
2. Transformational assessment
“With our TA technology partner SOVA, AMS was able to transform how the company assessed new early career candidates in a timely and accurate manner. We then provided its TA team with the necessary training and upskilling on the new approach.”
Outcomes
Challenge
As a British multinational consumer goods company with an established global early careers program, the company faced several challenges. Following the end of a five-year contract with a third-party candidate assessment provider, they wanted to focus on Efficiency, Experience and Ethics (The Three Es). The goals were to reduce the cost of assessment per candidate by 30%, modernize the process, manage job market volatility and provide a better candidate experience across one seamless platform. Additionally, they needed to incorporate branding, engaging content and complete assessments in one sitting.
Solution
AMS provided the company with the necessary assessment consulting expertise through a phased approach to ensure a smooth global rollout, testing, refinement and support for business-as-usual (BAU) operations.
Phase 1: Design, test and set-up
- Introductions to assessment partners.
- Job analysis and mapping.
- Validation on current UFLP and Adverse impact check.
- Design of a Sova screening solution that blended cognitive, motivational, and behavioral questions into the Sova Digital Interview.
- Go-live implementation in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and ANZ, where 11,505 candidates took the assessment.
Phase 2: Integrate and expand
- Integration with the Workday platform.
- Reaching wider candidate markets via an enhanced recruiter playbook.
Phase 3: Consolidate and improve
- Deployment of new video interview questions accessible to all groups, regardless of previous work experiences and knowledge, encouraging personal and authentic responses.
- Implementation of an automatic rotating bank of questions to improve the ‘shelf-life’ of questions and mitigate cheating concerns.
- Shortened time to complete assessments and for assessors to evaluate.
This structured and phased approach enabled the company to enhance its assessment process, resulting in better business outcomes and an improved experience for early career candidates.
3. Revving the diversity engine
“At Rolls-Royce, we have the aspiration to be the early career employer of choice, not just in the UK, but globally. We’ve refreshed and redesigned how we attract, recruit and onboard our early career talent. The whole AMS team has played a significant role in shifting us from traditional methods and has been influential in how we assess based on skills and behaviors, embedding technology into our processes, and ultimately improving candidate experience.”
Outcomes
Challenge
Rolls-Royce, a renowned engineering and manufacturing firm, faced the challenge of increasing diversity within its ranks to maintain its position in high-tech manufacturing and innovation. Despite having an established global early careers program, the company sought to attract and retain a diverse pool of EC&C candidates through purposeful engagement, assessment and process transformation.
Solution
AMS provided Rolls-Royce with the expertise and strategies needed to transform its diversity hiring initiatives through a comprehensive approach:
Diversity diagnostic
- Conducted a diversity diagnostic across the full RPO service (Exp, ECR, Contingent) to identify areas for improvement and opportunities for enhancing diversity.
Neurodiversity assessment project
- In 2022, AMS launched a neurodiversity assessment project aimed at neurodiverse Early Careers candidates. This initiative was rolled out across all hiring processes to ensure inclusivity and broaden the talent pool.
Partner collaboration
- In North America, AMS collaborated with partner organization WayUp to create a more diverse hiring pool in key locations, further expanding the reach of diversity initiatives.
Targeted attraction and assessment redesign
- AMS implemented targeted attraction strategies, redesigned assessment processes, and made process enhancements to drive diversity. These efforts resulted in significant increases in female graduate and apprentice hires, as well as ethnic diversity.
Through the collaborative efforts of AMS and Rolls-Royce, the company successfully enhanced its diversity initiatives, leading to better business outcomes and industry recognition.
4. The power of tech optimization
“AMS was able to help this professional services firm attract and retain new talent in a competitive sector where high-paying jobs and prestige are the norm. AMS helped to make this firm even more attractive to new candidates, and we cannot wait to help hire the next generation of consultants and analysts.”
Outcomes
Challenge
The firm based in London, England, aimed to reduce its time-to-hire while adding new graduates to its ranks. Despite having an established hiring process, the firm sought AMS’s support to optimize its early careers technology and processes. The goal was to reduce time-to-offer, save time and costs, and enhance the overall candidate experience.
Solution
AMS provided the firm with a comprehensive Technology and Advisory diagnostic to create a roadmap for improvements. This phased approach ensured a smooth implementation and substantial results:
Technology and advisory diagnostic
- AMS proposed a Technology and Advisory diagnostic to identify areas for improvement and create a roadmap for transforming the firm's early careers technology and processes.
Implementation of Avature platform
- AMS and the firms Resourcing COE and Early Careers leadership team developed a business case for implementing the Avature platform. This platform aimed to improve the candidate experience, streamline processes, and enhance recruitment data.
- The implementation resulted in an eight-day reduction in the duration from candidate engagement to offer, improved candidate NPS, significant cost savings and an annual reduction of 6,000 hours in time for both the firm’s teams and candidates.
Enhanced video interviews
- AMS helped the firm create enhanced video interviews to standardize evaluation feedback and decrease evaluation time from 4 minutes to 2.5 minutes without affecting the quality of evaluations. This resulted in a savings of up to 833 hours of evaluation time across 20,000 evaluations.
- AMS aimed to reduce the established 5-day evaluation SLA to 4.25 days by the 2027-28 intake.
Strategic recruitment approach
- In response to market volatility, the firm adopted a “hybrid block and rolling” recruitment approach for the 2024-25 campaign and beyond, ensuring flexibility and adaptability in hiring.
4-Year plan for improved satisfaction scores
- AMS designed a 4-year plan to incrementally improve satisfaction scores received from stakeholders year-over-year. Strategies included overhauling the communications library used by delivery teams and focusing on candidate touchpoints to enhance both virtual and in-person experiences.
Swift and substantial improvements
- During the summer of 2024, AMS identified several areas for swift and substantial improvements, including implementing standard action logs, enhancing monitoring of SLA and KPI performance, refining processes for alignment with the “way of working project” and restructuring the monthly governance structure to highlight partnership strengths and offer market-wide insights.
Through the collaborative efforts of AMS, the firm successfully optimized its technology and processes, leading to better business outcomes and an enhanced candidate experience.
5. Creating a globally consistent and scalable process
“In the healthcare space, hiring new talent is a must because the need to satisfy the demands of healthcare clients never stops. With our help, the company is taking the lead in hiring the smartest and most promising talent in this space.”
Outcomes
Challenge
The company faced the challenge of hiring early careers interns across 27 countries using a disparate approach. Local hiring managers, in-country HR teams, or local agencies handled the process, resulting in inconsistent practices that differed from country to country. Candidate assessment was unstructured, potentially leading to biased hiring decisions. The company defined early careers hiring as targeting individuals aged 30 and below, typically those leaving full-time higher education with limited or no professional experience.
Solution
AMS provided the company with a comprehensive solution to transform its early careers recruitment process:
Global recruitment strategy
- The company and AMS developed a global early careers recruitment strategy tailored to meet the demands of the next generation of talent and offer meaningful opportunities for young individuals from diverse backgrounds.
Simplified and streamlined processes
- AMS simplified and streamlined recruitment processes, introduced templated communications and leveraged technology and data to effectively manage the recruitment team’s priorities.
Year-round support and expertise
- AMS provided year-round candidate and business support with a scalable team to manage hiring demands. They also established a dedicated early careers expertise hub focused on continuous improvement, talent pipelining, reporting and improving awareness of external market conditions.
Through the collaborative efforts of AMS, the company successfully enhanced its early careers recruitment process, leading to better business outcomes and a more diverse and satisfied workforce.
6. Retaining the best early careers talent
“The screening for all summer interns, including Quantitative [traders and analysts], has been completed four weeks prior to the start. I've been involved in at least seven cycles of onboarding, and I've never known this to happen. A massive thanks to the AMS team for all the hard work, chasing and tracking this group. What an amazing result!”
Outcomes
Challenge
Our client faced the challenge of ensuring that new talent remained engaged, inspired, and set on a rewarding career path after accepting an offer. The goal was to create a robust and engaging “keep warm” approach to reduce renege rates by 15 to 20%.
Solution
AMS provided a comprehensive solution to enhance its EC&C retention strategy:
Coaching platform
- We implemented a digital coaching platform that supports candidates throughout their journey and after the offer. The platform included digital engagement content and in-person support, such as the popular and effective summer intern onboarding video.
Weekly coaching webinars
- All candidates were invited to a series of weekly Coaching Webinars from the point of application. These webinars helped EC&C candidates make the most of their applications, boost their confidence for interviews, and navigate "The World of Work".
Intern Welcome Hub
- The Welcome Hub provided engagement and education once candidates accepted the offer and entered the onboarding phase for interns, apprentices, pipeline programs, and more. The Welcome Hub featured curated content to engage and educate candidates throughout their onboarding journey.
Through the collaborative efforts of AMS and our client the bank successfully enhanced its EC&C retention strategy, leading to better business outcomes and a more engaged and prepared workforce.
AMS: Your partner in EC&C success
Connecting with new graduates and young people starting their careers will always be a priority for forward-thinking organizations around the world. Whether it’s creating new aerospace technology, brewing the latest tasty beverage or assessing financial risk in uncertain times, young minds can bring your company into the present and beyond.
During these challenging and overwhelming times, AMS early career and Campus experts know how to reach, relate to and retain the newest recruits at every stage of the recruitment, hiring and onboarding process.
Contact
If you find yourself facing these challenges outlined in this paper and want to find out how AMS can help please do contact us
Built with Shorthand