Maximise engagement with a wide range of prospective applicants.
Are you reaching the widest possible pool of talent? You could look to explore partnerships with Further Education colleges or target geographic ‘coldspots’. Watch the video for more top tips or read our full guidance below.
Developing
Activities at each level are related, but distinguished by scale, detail or commitment.
Develop a clear overarching strategy for outreach work involving:
Take advantage of the numerous existing mechanisms for outreach to schools – don’t invent it all yourself.
Optimising
Activities at each level are related, but distinguished by scale, detail or commitment.
Involve employees in the design and implementation of the outreach programme.
Target activities at the most suitable young people, including in social mobility cold spots, using publicly available school and college data.
Ensure success measures are overseen by senior colleagues.
Link outcomes for pupils engaged in early outreach to the Gatsby Benchmarks.
Developing
Deliver complementary activities – e.g. mentoring and work experience together rather than separately.
Draw on teachers’ views of what will benefit pupils most.
Make outreach participants aware of opportunities to progress into the organisation and expectations about what is required.
Seek to develop sustained relationships with activity participants.
Ensure internships and other work experience opportunities are targeted at a diverse range of applicants.
Ensure these opportunities are publicly advertised and paid.
Optimising
Develop materials and guidance that wider influencers can draw on, including teachers and parents.
Deliver activities in collaboration with other employers and the FE/HE sectors.
Include digital activities to promote scale, access and breadth in engagement.
Provide specific opportunities for participants to maintain engagement:
Analyse data to examine how participation converts to appointments, and how this varies between groups.
Ringfence internships for applicants from under-represented groups, including by socio-economic background.
Developing
Use your strategic plan to identify key impact metrics and measure against these.
Collect data on participant characteristics to assess whether those engaged meet eligibility criteria.
Gather feedback from participants to understand:
Optimising
Use your strategic plan to assess impact of the activities against outcomes identified at all stages in the model.
Validate and refine the strategic plan by tracking key behavioural and destination outcomes for participants, and verifying these against the outcomes highlighted in the model.
Youth Employment UK is a not-for-profit, independent organisation that puts young people at the heart of its work, all of our services have been co-designed with young people and our research and insight is based on the direct responses from the thousands of young people in our network.
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