Attracting and hiring young people is an ongoing challenge for many employers, and creating and implementing a robust early careers strategy can help. A good early careers strategy encompasses not just hiring and retention, but how your organisation engages with young people at every level from the first time they encounter you.
One activity that has proven to be tremendously effective for many different employers is virtual work experience. Surrey County Council and Haven are just some of the businesses you may have heard of that utilise it.
Virtual work experience simply refers to a work experience activity that is conducted remotely and online rather than in person at the business’s premises. It grew hugely during the COVID-19 pandemic, but its popularity shows no sign of abating.
Here are 5 great reasons you should consider adding virtual work experience to your early careers strategy.
Engage With and Attract Local Young Talent
The first hurdle in attracting young people to your organisation is reaching them in the first place. The best way to do this is to offer them something of value, and virtual work experience is a great way to do this. It creates a “way in” and allows you to begin building a relationship.
You can promote your virtual work experience in a number of ways. Create a prominent page on your website and work on boosting your search engine optimisation (SEO) so that it appears on the results page when young people search for work experience in your location. Use social media, particularly local pages and hashtags. And go out to local schools and colleges, inviting them to share your offering with their students.
Position Your Organisation as a Desirable Employer
If you want to attract and hire young people to your organisation, you need to show them why they should want to work for you. What do you offer that would entice them? Perhaps you can offer generous pay and benefits, exciting and varied work, opportunities for career progression, or a wonderful and youth-centric culture.
Whatever your unique selling points are, virtual work experience gives you a fantastic opportunity to show them off. The young people who come through your work experience programme will be able to see first-hand what a great place your organisation is to work. As long as they have a positive experience with you, they will think of you when the time comes for them to start applying for jobs.
Create a Talent Pipeline
A talent pipeline refers to a pool of candidates who could potentially fill a job role if one were to open up. Virtual work experience is a great opportunity for you as well as for the young people who participate because it enables you to understand their strengths, assess their work, and consider them for future roles.
Some organisations offer a guaranteed interview to any qualified applicants who have successfully completed their virtual work experience programme. Others keep in touch with their work experience pupils and invite them to apply for suitable positions when they become available. However you choose to handle this, virtual work experience is a great way to build a youth talent pipeline.
Make Work Experience More Accessible
In-person work experience can be inaccessible to many young people for a variety of reasons. Some may struggle to find the money it takes to commute to your premises (or, if public transport is poor and they cannot drive, be unable to get there at all.) Others may have caring responsibilities at home that mean they cannot leave for long periods of time.
And for some young people who are disabled or neurodivergent, attending physical work experience can sit anywhere on a spectrum from highly stressful to physically impossible.
Virtual work experience enables these young people to access opportunities that they may not otherwise have had. It also increases the diversity of your talent pool, which can only be a good thing for your organisation. With more and more jobs now operating in an entirely remote or hybrid structure, there is no reason these young people could not thrive working for you.
Get the Most Out of Your Work Experience Budget
Work experience can be expensive, resource-intensive, and time-consuming to run. This means that for many organisations, it is only possible to take on a very small number of work experience students each year.
Virtual work experience, however, enables your budget to go much further. Since you only need to create the materials once, and students can watch or use them in their own time, it is also highly efficient. You will be able to reach many more students and offer work experience to a larger group of young people, which can only be good news both for them and for your business.
Create Your Virtual Work Experience Offering
Here at Youth Employment UK, we have helped numerous businesses and organisations to create their virtual work experience offerings. Learn more about how we can support you with yours: simply email members@youthemployment.org.uk or complete the enquiry form.
