Early Careers Conference, London 2026

More than ever, employers are reporting a widening gap in how different groups of students engage with job opportunities, from who feels supported, to how they apply, to whether they even show up.

Young Professional's latest survey of thousands of students reveals surprising trends: male candidates feeling left behind, school leavers showing stronger engagement than graduates, and shifting behaviours that are reshaping what “good” early talent recruitment looks like. This data-driven session uncovers what’s really happening in the student landscape, and what TA leaders must adapt to next.

What to expect:

• Fresh diversity trends revealing how current outreach may be unintentionally sidelining male students, and what a more balanced approach looks like
• How students are actually finding and applying for roles, and the channels gaining (and losing) traction across different groups
• A candid look at the school leaver vs graduate attitude gap, including new data on reliability, expectations, event attendance, and entitlement, and what this means for your attraction and selection strategy

The graduate job market is shifting. Falling vacancies, applications surging, increasing competition amongst graduates, and economic uncertainty reshaping how early careers hiring works...

Using Jisc’s Graduate Outcomes data, alongside wider labour market insights, this session delivers a data-rich, forward-looking analysis of what’s really happening in graduate recruitment, and what’s coming next. Expect clarity amid the chaos, practical forecasting, and actionable ideas to shape your 2026 early talent strategy.

What to expect:

• The current state of play: A deep dive into graduate outcomes, industry trends, and the realities of the early careers market
• Cutting through the noise: How to distinguish credible labour market insights from misleading messages circulating the graduate labour market
• Predictions for the year ahead: Data-driven forecasts revealing where demand, supply, and candidate expectations are heading next
• Strategic takeaways: How to use market intelligence to future-proof your graduate hiring and adapt to shifting conditions

Headlines talk about a graduate “jobpocalypse” and disappearing entry-level roles. The reality on the ground is very different: early careers teams aren’t dealing with empty pipelines, but overflowing ones, AI-polished CVs, application windows that fill in days, and growing questions about fairness.

In this practical session, we'll reframe the doom narrative and focus on the real challenge: how to hire AI-enabled graduates in a way that’s scalable, equitable and sets them up to succeed. We'll explore what leading employers are doing differently, and how TA can redesign, not remove, the first rung of the career ladder.

What to expect:

• How to spot genuine potential when every CV looks immaculate (and probably written with AI)
• How to keep your process fair while managing huge volumes
• How to redesign junior roles so early careers hires become your AI-era “scouts”, not casualties

The session focuses on how workplace culture plays a critical role in both attracting and retaining early careers talent, beyond benefits, job titles or recruitment messaging. We'll explore what early career talent looks for in a workplace today, the factors that influence their decision to stay (or to leave), and key considerations in shaping their experience to build their commitment and advocacy.

What to expect:

• The shift in the socio-culture expectations of work and how to lead through it
• The evolving talent value equation and what it means for current people practices
• The power of culture as a retention and attraction driver for early careers talent
• What it really takes to build an enabling environment for the early careers; including processes, leadership behaviours and the value exchange

The leaders organisations need in the next 5–10 years will be shaped by volatility, AI, shifting career paths, and the capacity to reskill. But traditional hiring approaches for graduates and apprentices prioritise academic success, experience, and cultural fit indicators that worked for yesterday’s leadership models.

This session explores how organisation can identify future leadership potential early by taking a model dimensional view of leadership skills. You'll learn how to design early-career hiring that builds a sustainable leadership pipeline, reduces risk, and future-proofs their workforce at scale.

What to expect:

• Understanding why leadership gaps are widening faster than succession plans
• Why high potential looks different now as automation and constant change reshape early leadership capability
• What really predicts future leaders in early talent, the strengths and mindsets that signal long-term potential without experience
• How early hiring decisions shape leadership pipelines and the long-term cost of getting early talent wrong
• How to design future-ready early careers hiring with evidence-based assessments that identify adaptability, resilience, and growth at scale

Early careers programmes succeed when interns and apprentices feel connected, supported, and motivated, not just trained. This session explores how employee-led communities can enhance early talent experiences by fostering belonging, development, and engagement throughout placements.

You’ll learn how regular feedback and simple data points can be used to track sentiment, spot disengagement early, and continuously improve programme impact, without adding unnecessary complexity.

What to expect:

• How employee-led communities strengthen engagement across early careers programmes
• Practical ways to structure and sustain community initiatives
• Using regular feedback to track motivation and improve outcomes

Most organisations leave the majority of their apprenticeship levy untouched, but Expedia flipped the script. Moving from just 6% utilisation to 96%, they transformed the levy into a strategic engine for upskilling and reskilling existing employees, all without hiring a single new apprentice. In this session, we'll share how the business aligned levy investment with critical capability areas like AI and data, the complexities of applying this model in a global organisation, and how reinvesting in internal talent is accelerating workforce transformation.

What to expect:

• How Expedia scaled from 6% to 96% by focusing on upskilling rather than hiring
• Using apprenticeships to build critical skills in AI, data, and other future-facing areas
• The challenges of operating levy-funded programmes across borders, and how to overcome them
• Why reskilling existing employees delivers faster, more sustainable capability growth than external hiring

Early careers programmes don’t have to be slow-burn pipelines. They can be powerful drivers of innovation, capability, and business impact from day one. This session challenges traditional models and explores how organisations can design early talent initiatives that solve real problems, accelerate learning, and deliver value now, not years later.

It’s a call to think bigger, move faster, and reimagine what early careers can achieve when we push beyond the expected.

What to expect:

• How to move early careers beyond ‘development programmes’ and into real business impact
• Why problem-led, project-based models unlock faster value for both talent and the organisation
• New ways to integrate early talent into teams and business units, not just graduate cohorts
• What it takes to get leadership buy-in for more experimental, high-impact early careers approaches