Building Engagement, Building Futures: An Empirical Analysis To Maximize Youth Engagement in the UK Job Market

It is evident that young people have been largely affected by the recession as companies have decreased their offers, complicating Youth employability and, consequently, reducing their chances to get experience and job connections. Moreover, current recruitment practices emphasise aspects which do not help and most young people today can no longer count on the prospect of a job for life‘. However, the market is changing and the picture looks quite promising. Companies financial statements have demonstrated this recovering specially in the UK and sectors such as Accounting, Investment Banking, and the Public Sector expect to recruit more graduates in 2012/2013. This report aims to understand how young people between 18-24 years old engage themselves in the UK job market and how Working for Youth‘, an initiative dedicated by Standard Chartered Bank and Experian can maximise this engagement through their online channels. Given the intricacies of youth unemployment in UK job market, what are the different ways through which youth engage while searching for jobs and vacancies? As there are few studies exploring youth attitude and behaviour regarding job search, a research was devoted to understand young people‘s experiences and difficulties during job search. The report initially used secondary data to study and examined gaps under youth unemployment. Then, through primary research, a questionnaire was elaborated in order to fill all the gaps from the literature analyses. The data from primary research was collected through semi-structured interviews to collect first-hand information. Research adopted qualitative method to ensure the depth of the information collected and a total of 20 participants were interviewed face-to-face in the month of August 2012 in Nottingham and Mansfield. The report analyses three core themes – The engagement strategies pursued by youth in UK to search jobs, their work attitude & behaviour and lastly how and if they engage themselves in seeking career advice and mentoring. According to the analysis, informal channels demonstrated to be the preferred and most effective ways used by young people to search jobs in the UK (word of mouth), a