A recent survey, carried out on behalf of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), reveals that employers are pretty satisfied with their young recruits’ abilities and that the number of vacancies that had been particularly difficult to fill, in that requiring particular abilities, have significantly dropped.
Nonetheless, the percentage of employees who are not totally able to properly carry out their job (skills gap), grew from 15% in 2007, to 19% in 2009.
During the year 2008, 23% of employers, compared to a higher 26%, had recruited young people to their first job.
Considering young recruits, employers were more likely to have taken on:
- under-24s from higher education (10%)
- 17- to 18-year-olds straight from school or college (11%)
- 16-year-olds straight from school (6%).
The investigation reveals that the overall degree of satisfaction amongst employers is rather encouraging.
In fact, 66% of the employers who recruited 16-year-olds found them to be well or very well prepared for work, almost 75% thought that 17- or 18-year-old college or school leavers were well prepared for work, and 84% of employers recruiting new graduates found them to be well prepared.
The research was carried out amongst 79,152 employers across the UK.
