50
DEBATE SKILLS
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Midnight, Friday 4 December 2026 Judging partner:
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PRESENT: Richard Slater, Lancashire Business View (Chair) Chris Brown, Brown & Co Zowi Whittaker, Fox Group
Edd Draper, The Calico Group Jen Briggs, James’ Places Gary Alker, Prolight Concepts Morgan Rothwell, D&M Creative Paul Colman-Smith, Hatfields Land Rover Jaguar Sarah Hall, B&FC Group for Business
ATTITUDE OVER APTITUDE
With our partners D&M Creative and B&FC Group for Business, we convened an expert panel of business leaders at Hatfields Jaguar Land Rover in Preston to discuss what employers want from recruits, lifelong skills and how AI is changing the way they do business.
Attitude, aptitude and technical skills: What are employers really looking for today, and how has that changed?
SH: What employers want is people who have those soft skills. They can problem solve, they communicate well, they have a really good attitude to work. Lots of employers need skilled staff and are struggling to find those experienced people.
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The speed of technology and how fast it is changing means employees need to keep up with that, so the learning journey doesn’t just stop when you leave education.
You also don’t want everybody with a degree level qualification, because businesses need
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those level two and level three roles fulfilling, despite what is said about AI, that it’s going to take entry level jobs.
JB: Within James’ Places, we have 40 to 50 different roles and we always say we want to educate generations of the future, which is why it’s really key we have relationships with colleges and training providers, because we want to show people there are so many opportunities.
One of the things we’ve talked about with some of our training providers is it can be frustrating because people say, ‘it’s just cleaners’, or ‘they’re just pouring a pint’. But actually, it’s customer service that goes behind it. It’s learning about those pints. It’s learning about
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the products. It’s doing the menu tasting. There are so many aspects to a hospitality role.
ZW: We face those same problems. There are misconceptions about what working in construction is, to the extent where we’ve created a two sided leaflet that lists every job role in our business. It’s then educating the educators and parents. Not everyone is a bricklayer. There are so many more opportunities. Parents don’t see construction as a good career, but a lot of these so called low skill roles command very good wages.
Not everyone is made to go to university, so we should be celebrating those entry level jobs because entry level doesn’t mean it’s unskilled or it’s not paid well.
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