INFLUENCE THE INFLUENCERS Attraction and


Marketing Location 45.83%


Student Loan Repayment 52.5% Benefits 55% Salary 63.33%


Work/Life Balance 78.33% Reputation 85%


Training & Development 91.67% Progression 91.67% Enjoyment 93.33% Figure 1


Deborah Edmondson Talent Director, Cohesion


The student recruitment market is evolving. The scope of student recruitment has gone far beyond 16 to 22 year olds being placed in either an apprenticeship or graduate role. In the wake of the recent Apprenticeship Levy, there are more options for recruiting Future Talent into your business than ever before. There are now more levels, functions, and opportunities for employers to consider. Deborah Edmondson, Talent Director, Cohesion explains why now is the time to look at how to influence the influencers.


“Parents have a unique insight regarding their child’s personality, skills and potential, and so it’s natural that they can offer guidance with future career choices. However, there is always the cautionary tale of parents attempting to influence their child’s career choices without listening to what they want, or giving them room to figure that out. We are seeing a rise in portfolio careers, and rapid changes across a wide variety of industries which means the millennial generation have hugely exciting opportunities and new career paths. It’s important that parents also consider these shifts, in order to give their children the best information from which to make their decisions. The results of this report allow recruiters insight into why parents choose to influence their children.” Dr Laura Chamberlain, Principal Teaching Fellow at Warwick Business School


Given the increase in options available to students it’s becoming clearer as to why it’s becoming more difficult to recruit into vacancies and, as you may have been experiencing over the past few years, the student recruitment market is becoming increasingly volatile. A candidate-driven market has led to a decrease in applications across the board, matched by an increase in offer reneging. According to the High Fliers 2017 Graduate Market Report, graduates turning down or reneging on job offers that they had previously accepted meant that over 800 graduate positions were left unfilled last year.


32 TheStudentEmployer ise.org.uk


On the other hand, according to government data, the number of apprentice starts in England have decreased by almost 70,000 starters between the 2015/16 intake and the 2016/17 intake. Whilst this may have been in anticipation of the much-maligned Apprenticeship Levy, there is room for speculation as to whether or not the trend in graduate offer reneging is translating into an apprenticeship trend too.


Given the infancy of a graduate’s experience in the workplace, it’s no great surprise that they seek advice from those they trust, who have the working knowledge of a career. The advice they seek directly influences the decisions they make – meaning they are more susceptible to adopting the opinions and ideologies of these influencers.


We carried out this research because there is no other research available specific to the parents of graduates. We’d noticed an increase in parental contact on our recruitment phone lines and email accounts for our Future Talent campaigns. When having conversations with these parents, it became apparent that their queries and concerns were around areas not always presented or acknowledged on careers pages. For example, the wellbeing strategy or financial stability of the organisation their child had applied to – which led us to question whether increased parental involvement in graduate recruitment was needed and, therefore, should be encouraged.


The above was supported by some of our findings – 49% of our respondents hadn’t attended university themselves, and the majority of them influenced at least one of their child’s main career decisions (84.75%). It was also supported by the parents who had attended university– 51% of our respondents – with the majority of those also acknowledging that they had influenced at least one of their child’s main career decisions.


The above begs the question – what drives parents to influence their children? What’s important to them? What leads them to discourage their child from a particular company or industry?


There are any number of aspects to a role – these can differ greatly between organisations, sectors, and job functions. However, when considering your Future Talent roles, you must consider how each of these factors will influence a student’s decision to apply for the role and, subsequently, accept it.


A number of the questions we asked surrounded the individual factors that may influence a parent’s decision to advise their child on whether or not to accept a role. These questions were answered on a scale of 1-5 (5 being really important; 1 being not important). In the graph below we have ranked each factor in order of how many times it was ranked as either 4 or 5 by respondents (i.e. very important).


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