Social Mobility in Early Careers
The Social Mobility Panel from Blackbullion’s session (From Left: Kaushika Patel, Winnie Annan-forson, Sam Turnpenny and Neha Shah).
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This article covers:
Social Mobility Challenges in Early Careers
What Corporations can do to Improve
Why Health Daley Cares about ‘Breaking the Cycle’
Social Mobility in Early Careers
I stuck around after work in Shoreditch, London to attend an event run by Blackbullion (Financial Health tools for young people) sponsored by Accenture (including a generous Accenture £25 scholarship contribution for every event attendee).
The panel discussion focused in on a topic very dear to my heart: social mobility. The panel discussion took me by surprise in terms of quality. The speakers illuminated the audience with the honest story on the ground at universities, during graduate recruitment, and as students enter the workforce. Stories on students working multiple jobs alongside studying and challenges with finding balancing while juggling paid work to continue to finance expensive academic courses.
This situation unfortunately limits success as a student and consequentially their ability to gain traction with major corporate recruiters and hiring managers for entry level roles vs. those that have the means to not need to commit to working alongside their courses.
Kaushika Patel eloquently described the social access contrast in ability to focus on studies and work experience opportunities with the question “How equitable is the ‘University Experience’ if access is hindered by finance?”.
This made me reflect on my own journey balancing the financial need to earn during late night security shifts at Loughborough University’s Students Union vs. keeping on top of studies and fighting to stay awake during early morning lectures. I was fortunate to have the support of my friends in conjunction with frugality and strict money management instilled from my mum (a lot of Sainsburys basics fish fingers!), but many aren’t as fortunate and the outcome is often unfortunately course dropouts or underperformance.
What corporations can do to improve
Sam Turnpenny commented that during recruitment events he realised students were being unintentionally excluded since they weren’t able to justify affording the time and money to catch a bus from their accommodation to the event. Sam said that this reinforced the need for corporations to take a ‘different approach’ with sourcing student talent to help ensure that capable, talented individuals aren’t being left behind from the right opportunity simply due to socio-economic disadvantage.
The panel recommended a number of ideas for how corporations can adjust to capture early career talent:
Apprenticeships to offer their own qualification routes to build loyalty earlier.
Proactively creating talent pools during the early years of university to help with knowledge of internships/ work experience opportunities.
Let young people know the variation of the job available on the market, which is a lot more than the traditional linear routes from previous generations
Championing visible role models for people that look like them to ease cultural concerns for those from non-traditional backgrounds.
“Breaking the Cycle“
Health Daley’s purpose is to bridge the gap in life sciences career knowledge for those that might not have access to key information that could unlock the door to their next role. That starts with offering coaching opportunities for candidates in particular need at the right time, catered at at the right level, available at the right price.
Ideally this price would be nothing for those in need, but for that to be a reality Health Daley is looking to establish strong partnerships with interested institutions to build a model for regular access to sponsored coaching sessions for their desired populations.
Like Winnie Annan-forson stressed, we want to help emphasise the importance of finding a good company fit with a business that’s willing to invest in their hires, not simply a job to clock into/ out of - this is achieved through maximising the offers and options available to you, which is enabled most successfully through professional level application, interview, and onboarding preparation.
Why Health Daley Cares
There are clear disparaties between those that can lean on familys, friends or networks to help prepare, coach and connect talented individuas to roles in industry vs. those that will need accessible guidance on what to expect from beginning to end of the hiring/ recruitment phase after university.
Our purpose at Health Daley is to save our clients the time and money lost in googling generic ideas for improvement or cold-calling style books, courses and other templated ways of reaching goals that are not fit for the clients specific needs. We do this by providing personalised, actionable advice that will not just make you a better positioned candidate during the hiring process, but will empower them to be more productive when getting their feet under the table with your new role.
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