We change futures for the better
Youth Marketing. Future Talent. Early Careers. Emerging Talent.
Whatever you call it, we help organisations find talent and young people find their way. We use our understanding of what clients need and what our audience wants to uncover new ways to connect people and businesses with opportunities. Through insight and expertise, we attract talent, champion diversity, nurture potential and promote social mobility.
We can change yours too
Developing future talent strategy
Our insight, experience and expertise bring clarity to your thinking, so you can tackle early careers’ biggest challenges, from future talent attraction and boosting diversity in your pipeline, to improving candidate engagement and experience.
Attracting talent
Strategy, media, targeting, reporting, branding, creative campaigns and social. We do it all. From high volume to niche skills, our powerful data driven end-to-end campaigns can help you achieve all your attraction goals.
Targeting top talent
We’ve got the tech, tools and expertise to navigate the challenging education market and tell you who’s studying what, where. Stop casting your net wide and use YWare to start identifying untapped talent pools, exploring diversity characteristics, making your budget work harder and reaching more of the right candidates.
Championing diversity and inclusion
Using a combination of strategic thinking, creativity, insight and innovation, we can help you change the composition of your talent pipeline. We’ll spot gaps, reveal bias and identify key challenges. Then we’ll work with you to drive positive change.
Bringing your story to life
Our creative team will mix the right words with compelling visuals to capture the imagination of your audience. Whether it’s a full youth brand, or next year’s creative campaign, we’ve got the creative spark to bring your unique story to life.
Planning, buying and tracking media
We excel in everything from developing comprehensive media plans and media buying to sophisticated monitoring and analysis. Our experience and agility in this area mean we can react swiftly to ensure every penny is always working hard to promote the right opportunities to the right people at the right time.
Building your online presence
Our early careers websites give candidates a real glimpse into your organisation, your culture and your values. Giving you the perfect place to show candidates who you are, what you stand for and why they should join your business.
Turning colleagues into ambassadors
Young people care about authenticity. And it doesn’t get more authentic than hearing directly from your people. We’ll recruit, engage, support and equip talented from your business to share their experiences and promote your brand.
Creating compelling content
We find out what your audience wants. And then we give it to them. We build content strategies and personas around your audience’s drivers, motivations and online habits, in order to create content that inspires, engages, shift perceptions and drives action.
Providing meaningful experiences
In-school. On-campus. Online. Every experience matters to youth audiences. From engagement strategies to candidate journeys, we’ll use experiences to shape the way your audience sees your brand both before and after joining your business.
Bringing clarity to data
We look beyond the spreadsheets — using detailed analysis to spot trends, predict patterns and understand opinions. We’ll find gaps in your data and fill them with bespoke research that gives you the full picture and provides actionable insight.
What we’re up to
Insights. Opinions. Bright ideas and beautiful work. We find and create new things all the time, and we’re happy to share.
How to connect with the Gen Z audience
We use search engines every day – to ‘Google’ is now a verb. But Gen Z are a little different – they’re using social media to search. For this generation, the internet is second nature. To engage them, having a strong presence across your channels is key when it comes to early careers and apprenticeships.
Catching the eye of your future apprentice
Apprentice week is lurking around the corner. Competition is fierce. And if you’ve got an apprentice programme, you’re probably wondering how do you catch the eye of your kind of future colleagues.
We asked our brand and content team to share the things they bear in mind (and think you should bear in mind too) when creating a quality apprentice campaign. Here’s what they said.
The 3 ways to attract and engage apprentice talent in 2022
At SMRS we have been surveying 2,000 young people aged 16-21 over the last year, to gather insights about how the way young people think and behave in relation to career and education decision making has been changing. I recently shared some insights at the ISE’s Apprenticeship Conference, along with three core recommendations for engaging school leaver talent about apprenticeships.
Sharing the news about Future First's new platform
As everyone’s career journey starts in school, every child should be set up for success – no matter how much help they need.
Unlocking a client’s potential
Unlocked is tackling one of society’s toughest challenges. They’re fighting to break the cycle of reoffending in the nation’s prison population. This means they need to attract people with potential who’ll influence and change society for years to come in the prison industry. They’re passionate about prison reform, and proud of the work they do.
YWare
Youth market insight made better
‘Where?’ is the biggest question in youth marketing. Where are your future graduates and apprentices? Where do they plan to go next? And where do you need to be, to engage with them? YWare – our market-leading insight tool – knows all the answers.
Youth in Focus
We understand the youth audience
We know who they are, where they are and what they want. We know what they like and what they don’t. Who they follow and what they dream of. We know what connects them to a brand and what turns them off. We know what excites them about the future – and what worries them too.
We’re already changing businesses for the better
Unlocked
Read the full Unlocked story
Deloitte
Read the full Deloitte story
easyJet
Read the full easyJet storyEvents
IHR Youth Marketing Webinar
4th July, 2023
Join us in this interactive webinar and be inspired by our Youth Marketing experts, case study presentations and discussions. The sessions are bound to leave you with a multitude of valuable insights and knowledge to drive your Early careers strategy forward!
Student Recruitment Conference (Manchester)
12-13th June, 2023
Are you ready for the next generation employee?
ISE Student Recruitment Conference
Thursday 19th, January 2023
The ISE Student Recruitment Conference & Awards event offers a unique two-day experience where ambitious delegates can discover, learn, celebrate and shape the future together.
NUE RateMyApprenticeship Awards
July 2022
Celebrating the outstanding achievements of apprentices, schools, employers and training providers in apprenticeships.
Together, we can change the future
Whether you use one or all of our services, our team are committed to making a measurable difference. We’ll provide you with the expertise, ongoing support and agile and proactive management that your campaigns and projects need.
Jackie Grisdale
Youth Marketing Consultant
Jackie is experienced in future talent and early careers marketing and loves the fact that she’s helping young people to find their way in life.
Vicky Green
Client Marketing Consultant
Vicky loves a problem. In fact, the bigger the challenge, the higher Vicky’s satisfaction levels are, when she solves it.
Ed Layt
Head of Consultancy
Ed drives organisational change by embedding collaborative approaches to strategy development and implementing sophisticated targeting methods.
Jayne Hughes
Lead Client Partner
Loves getting under the skin of what our clients need, and bringing together the right mix of experts to deliver the best solution.
So, let’s get started
We’ve delivered some of the most complex, global early careers projects around and we’d love to rise to whatever challenge you’ve got for us. Please get in touch:
