Programme

This session responds to a clear tension: students want meaningful, human interaction with employers, while early talent teams face squeezed budgets, reduced travel and increasing pressure to demonstrate ROI. At the same time, leading employers are targeting fewer universities and relying more on AI‑driven selection, fuelling student demand for high‑quality face‑to‑face engagement that builds confidence and clarity.

Anchored in Aon’s recent early careers activity, this masterclass will explore how to design in‑house events that:

• Align closely with what students say they value: authentic insight, skills development, and access to real decision‑makers.
• Improve ROI and conversion across apprenticeship, internship, placement and graduate pipelines.
• Reduce travel and support more inclusive outreach and social mobility goals.

In this candid and practical panel session we will explore recruitment operations and good practice through a rare dual perspective provided by a former apprentice hire who is now a senior stakeholder responsible for influencing and improving the hiring approach that selected him. This session tells the story of Mondelēz’s Early Careers transformation through Jack’s lived experience - from candidate to system owner - and the partnership journey with Talogy to evolve and redesign the assessment strategy across multiple European regions.  

This session debuts brand new, original 2026 research into what we call the Triangle of Trust: the relationship between candidates, talent teams, and hiring managers… and how their expectations and lived experiences are drifting apart in an AI-enabled recruitment market. The aim is not to blame any group. It’s to surface the misalignment that is subtly driving poor experience, and puts our ability to hire quality candidates at risk. 

Employing disabled students and graduates should be a straightforward process - after all, the goal is simply to identify talent and provide equal opportunities. However, for many Early Careers professionals, navigating disability in recruitment & development feels anything but simple and, despite good intentions, meaningful progress often feels slow.

Why? Because many recruiters, hiring managers, and early careers teams lack confidence in how to approach disability in a way that is both legally compliant and genuinely inclusive.

This will be a highly interactive, discussion-based session where delegates can share real-world challenges, work through case studies, and debate how best to handle complex or sensitive situations. Delivered as a safe and supportive space, it will encourage open discussion about areas of uncertainty, including appropriate language and behaviours, enabling participants to ask questions, explore different approaches, and build confidence without fear of judgement or reprimand.

Seven hundred thousand graduates are on benefits, degrees are ten a penny and AI is wiping out entry-level jobs. What a time to be working in early careers! 

It’s easy to be demoralised by pessimistic media messaging. The reality, of course, is very different. Yes, the graduate labour market is facing a lot of challenges. But outcomes for graduates are still strong, demand for university-educated labour continues to grow and, whilst there is no question that AI has been a disruptive factor in recruitment, there is absolutely no evidence that it is destroying graduate job prospects.

Using the latest HESA Graduate Outcomes data and other key data sources, and drawing on two decades’ experience in graduate labour market research and analysis, Charlie Ball will cut through the myths, nail the realities and set a course for what we can expect for the rest of 2026 and beyond. Key areas for discussion include regional employment characteristics, graduate unemployment rates, the further study factor, international graduate destinations, skills shortages and, of course, AI.

Early talent teams are securing acceptances earlier than ever - yet increasing numbers of students are not arriving on Day One. In a landscape shaped by earlier recruitment cycles, longer gaps between offer and start, AI-enabled mass applications and heightened competition, commitment is increasingly provisional. Students are navigating academic pressure, financial uncertainty and multiple competing opportunities - often making decisions months before they can fully test them. Rather than framing reneges as a problem of student loyalty, this masterclass reframes them as a signal that the pre-start experience requires redesign.

Drawing on established behavioural science about commitment, uncertainty, belonging and confidence, the session presents a practical, ethical and student-centred framework for strengthening follow-through between offer and arrival. The session explores how early talent teams can rebuild trust and strengthen the psychological contract between offer and arrival.

In our session, we'll explore Waves 1 and 2 of Tonic’s quarterly Early Talent Sentiment Study, a proprietary study of 4,000 students across 5 key markets; the UK, the US, Germany, Sweden and China.

The research explores evolving student sentiment and examines how they interpret recruitment experiences in 2026, including:

• The emotional impact of automated and high-rejection processes
• How AI-assisted applications are reshaping candidate behaviour
• Growing anxiety around employability and career security
• The sentiment around in-person engagement and meaningful human touchpoints

Students increasingly interpret an employer’s actions (or inaction) as a promise about the kind of organisation they are joining. When any of these expectations are not met – slow communication, inconsistent messaging, impersonal processes, reality not matching marketing – students feel that the “promise” has been broken. This session will provide a rare end-to-end view directly from NatWest Group, and their graduates, giving delegates a grounded, evidence-led approach for how they engage with their EC cohorts and look to reduce dropout.

Panellists will explore:

• How NWG embedded the student promise across the whole candidate lifecycle
• Student expectations, and the aspects of the experience that mean the most to them.
• How to combine employer expectations with what students actually want
• The role of technology in this process and the impact it can have
• Practical steps early career teams can take to enhance their candidate experience

AI is reshaping not just recruitment processes, but candidate confidence, career decisions and trust in employers. While headlines warn of disappearing graduate jobs, many students and graduates are left uncertain, anxious and questioning whether their chosen path remains viable. This session presents exclusive new research from Prospects, in partnership with the Institute of Student Employers, combining insights from more than 700 students and graduates alongside employer perspectives on how AI is influencing entry-level roles. 

The session will explore how AI is influencing candidate behaviour, confidence and expectations of employers. It will highlight the growing demand for transparency around AI use in recruitment, and the importance of maintaining human connection in high-volume processes where rejection is common. 

This interactive workshops brings Gen Z directly into the room as co-design partners. Rather than talking about what students want, delegates will work side-by-side with members of Amberjack’s Gen Z Board to redesign the highest-risk points of their early careers lifecycle. The session combines honest insight, live critique and practical outputs that employers can implement immediately. 

In 2026, the hiring landscape is being reshaped not only by shifting candidate expectations, but by a surge in application volumes and AI-generated submissions. With tools making it easier than ever to auto-apply at scale, many employers face record numbers of applications – yet with diminishing insight and growing screening fatigue. Traditional CVs and cover letters now struggle to differentiate genuine intent from algorithmic optimisation.
This panel explores how Vizzy is responding to this reality – reimagining talent discovery to prioritise quality, authenticity, and fairness in an age of automation.

Featuring leaders from Puig, VML, and Beazley, alongside two graduates who secured roles using their Vizzys, the session offers a 360-degree perspective, from enterprise recruitment strategy to lived candidate experience.

Early careers recruitment is undergoing significant change. Employers are facing record application volumes, rising candidate drop-out, skills mismatch and increasing scrutiny around fairness, accessibility and social mobility. At the same time, traditional attraction channels - particularly university-only pipelines - are no longer sufficient to meet workforce needs across many sectors. 

This session explores how employers are responding by shifting from a purely selection-based recruitment model to a pathway-based talent model. Through collaboration with Movement to Work and employer partners, organisations are embedding structured pre-employability and work-experience programmes as an upstream entry point into apprenticeships, graduate schemes and direct-entry roles. We will share practical examples of supported work placements, mentoring and employability training that prepares participants for recruitment processes and workplace success. The session will demonstrate how this approach addresses multiple emerging-talent challenges simultaneously:

• creating more predictable and prepared talent pipelines
• widening access beyond traditional routes
• improving retention and engagement outcomes
• reducing recruitment risk and drop-outs
• supporting ESG and social mobility commitments