Why We Created Early Careers

Starting your career should be exciting

Starting your career should be exciting. It should be a time to discover what you're good at, meet new people, learn new skills and start thinking about where you want to go. For many young people, however, getting that first opportunity can feel like the hardest part.

You're told to get experience, so you apply for a job and discover that the employer wants experience. You apply for another and find that they are looking for someone who already has the skills. It can feel like a bit of a catch-22, and it can make you feel hopeless because you need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience.

At the same time, employers are facing a challenge of their own. Organisations across different sectors are looking for talented people to join their teams, yet many struggle to identify and attract emerging talent with the right skills, attitude and potential.

Everyone has to start somewhere

Nobody begins their career with five years of experience; every experienced professional, business owner, developer, designer, engineer, marketer and manager once had their first day at work. They all had to be given an opportunity before they could build the experience employers now value.

That first opportunity matters. It can provide much more than something to put on a CV. It can give a young person confidence, introduce them to a new industry, help them discover what they enjoy and provide the practical skills they cannot learn from a classroom alone.

But finding that opportunity can be unnecessarily difficult. There are apprenticeships, internships, graduate roles, work experience placements and entry-level jobs available, but they can be spread across countless websites, company careers pages and recruitment platforms.

For someone trying to work out where to begin, it can be overwhelming.

This is where Early Careers comes in

Early Careers exists to make that first step easier. We've created a platform specifically for people at the beginning of their careers and the employers looking to recruit them.

Young people can discover apprenticeships, internships, graduate opportunities, work experience and entry-level jobs, alongside practical advice to help them understand the world of work.

That includes guidance on things that might seem obvious to an experienced professional but can be completely new to someone applying for their first job.

These are the sorts of questions Early Careers is designed to answer.

• How do you write a CV when you have no work experience?
• What actually happens in an interview?
• What does "pro rata" mean?
• How much of your salary will you actually take home?
• Should you go to university or consider an apprenticeship?
• What should you ask an employer before accepting a job?

Helping employers find potential

Early Careers isn't just about helping young people find opportunities. It's also about helping employers find the people who could become their next great employees.

For employers, recruiting early careers talent can be an opportunity to look beyond traditional measures of experience.

A school or college leaver might not have a long CV, but they might have demonstrated leadership through sport, problem solving through a personal project, communication through volunteering or determination through responsibilities outside education.

A graduate may not have the exact experience listed in a job description, but they may have the curiosity and ability to learn that makes them an excellent long-term employee.

Early careers recruitment is about recognising potential as well as experience.

The first step matters

We don't believe every young person needs to follow the same route.

For some, university will be the right choice. For others, an apprenticeship will make more sense. Someone else might discover their career through an internship, work experience or an entry-level job.

There is no single definition of a successful career, and there is no perfect route into one. What matters is having access to opportunities and the support to make the most of them.

Young people are told to get experience. Employers say they're struggling to find emerging talent. Early Careers exists to make that first step easier.