When one firm advertised eight places on its graduate programme, around 1,000 applications came in, and that was with the advert taken down early.
For the big brokers and underwriters that bring in 100 young people a year, that volume is what early careers teams are for. Across the long tail of smaller London market firms, where a handful of HR staff cover everything from bonuses and compensation to employment issues and replacing leavers, it is a different story, according to Caroline Wagstaff (pictured), CEO of the London Market Group (LMG).
“What happens is people go, who do we know?” she said. “Who’s got a son, who’s got a daughter, who’s got a cousin, because that feels easier than sifting through 1,000 CVs.”
LMG’s response is Talent Finder, launched today, a year-round pool of pre-assessed, entry-level candidates aimed at SMEs and firms that hire fewer than five candidates a year, many of which have no specialist in-house recruitment team.
Smaller firms currently have few good options. Adverts on LinkedIn or jobs boards are swamped, and applicants’ use of AI has pushed volumes higher still. The alternatives are a recruitment consultant, poaching someone with three years’ experience from a competitor, or the personal network, which Wagstaff calls “nephews and neighbours”.
Even when firms do sift, the CV of an 18-year-old offers little to go on. “You’re trying to decide, is the student who’s been a barista got more to offer than the student who’s done shifts at TK Maxx,” she said. “It’s really hard.”
It is a frustration Insurance Business has heard from independent brokers too, one of whom spent four months trying to fill a single role without finding a candidate they felt confident in.
Under Talent Finder, firms send LMG a job description and receive a shortlist of 10 candidates who have been assessed and scored on what employers look for in young recruits, and given work readiness training. The aim, Wagstaff said, is to move HR effort away from sorting applications and towards choosing, onboarding and keeping the right person.
Firms pay only if they hire, at a cost-covering £2,650 per candidate, which Wagstaff said is considerably less than a recruitment consultant would charge.
The pool is a London proposition. Candidates tend to live in and around the capital and, at 18 and on apprenticeship-type wages, are unlikely to relocate. Wagstaff acknowledged that limits its reach, and said she hopes others will pick up what LMG trials and take it to cities such as Manchester or Leeds.
Part of the pool comes from LMG’s Futures Academy, whose students have spent several weeks learning about the market before reaching an assessment centre. Wagstaff said that addresses a common worry for firms, that a recruit with no knowledge of insurance decides after three months it isn’t for them. LMG trialled the approach last year, placing 30 young people across a range of roles and firms, and Wagstaff said employers were impressed with the quality of the candidates. That trial, she said, means firms signing up now are not being asked to take on first-mover risk.
“By definition, it’s a bit of a gamble. It always is,” she said of hiring. “But if you’re at least talking to candidates who you’re confident really want to work in the industry, I think that will help tick a big box.”
Once a recruit is hired, where they work matters. Wagstaff said young people value flexibility but often lack the home set-up older colleagues take for granted, with some house-sharing or living at home without a proper place for homeworking. What they want, she said, is to be in the office alongside people they can learn from, with an employer that will flex for a plumber’s visit or a dentist appointment.
Wagstaff said that in the current job market, many entry-level candidates mainly want a job, a salary and the chance to progress, and may be willing to work five days a week in the office before earning more flexibility, though she was clear she was not suggesting employers take advantage of that. Quieter Fridays are often when they study for CII exams.
The same need for people to learn from applies before young people ever apply. Wagstaff said the market does too little to show what a working day in insurance looks like, particularly on social media, where young people go for information and she wants firms to be more willing to let young staff post. She would like to get 250 young people in the London market talking online about their day, their job and why they love it, which she said “would be a superpower”.
Efforts to get groups of young professionals posting have so far stalled, which she thinks may be because they don’t see anyone above them doing it and worry it is risky.
With an ageing workforce and too few entry-level recruits coming through, the London market’s skills gap depends in part on how easily its smaller firms can find young talent, not just on the graduate schemes of its largest.
