Programme

In this session, Lisa Patel, Head of Health & Talent at Aon and Robbie White, Partner, Innovation & Data Hub at Forvis Mazars will discuss the practicalities of AI in their business today, painting a picture of how work on the ground is truly changing due to AI. 

(Full session details released soon)

Chloe has interviewed over 20,000 young people around the world, using the data collection to help schools, companies and governments understand how to best prepare for the future generations.

(Full session details released soon)

Growing disconnect has emerged between what students are encouraged to expect and what they actually experience engaging with employers. Young people are told to build skills early, follow guidance, make informed decisions, yet the hiring journey too often feels opaque, inconsistent, misaligned with these messages.

This session explores the root causes, outcomes of that trust gap and introduces a practical model for restoring confidence across the lifecycle. Drawing on the partnership between Rolls Royce, AMS, SP and SOC, the panel will demonstrate how early engagement, skills development,  assessment can be integrated into a transparent, end‑to‑end ecosystem. 

Nichola Robinson, Client Director, AMS
Jon Mallot, Head of Partnerships, Spingpod
James Austen, Director, School Outreach Company

Early careers has a volume problem. More applications. More noise. More AI-generated submissions. And yet, less certainty about quality, diversity, conversion and ROI. Those most proficient in AI tools are rising to the top of the funnel, but are they always the best match?

So, we want to ask a provocative question: Is this the beginning of the end for the traditional job board? This panel session will challenge the assumption that more applications equal better outcomes. Instead, we’ll explore whether the future lies in smaller, more intentional pipelines, smarter channel strategies, and two-way engagement at scale.

Cassie Sissons, COO, Amberjack
Karen Handley, Head of Future Careers, Virgin Media O2
Ellie Simpson, Founder and COO, Sixty Learn
Sara Dalsfelt, CMO, Adway

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.

Most early careers leaders lose budget conversations they should win.

Not because the numbers do not stack up. Because the wrong argument goes to the wrong person.

Finance needs cost and return. Procurement needs social value and compliance evidence. Legal needs to know whether your recruitment systems can be audited and defended. Most early careers teams bring the financial case to all three and wonder why only one of them is convinced.

This masterclass builds a three-argument framework for a business case that holds up across finance, procurement, and the board. Practitioners from Severn Trent and E.ON share what these conversations looked like in practice: which stakeholders they had to move and what evidence actually worked.

Delegates leave with a practical toolkit for their next internal budget conversation.
 

David Allison, CEO, The Talent People

Christos Orthodoxou, Director of Innovation, The Talent People

Kellie Emery, New Talent Lead, Severn Trent

Naomi Furlonger, E.ON

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

Sarah Wardle, Client Partner and Early Talent Lead, Tonic 
Sam Hunter, Brand Strategist, Tonic

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.

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

Rupert Dunlop, COO, Movement to Work
Richard Hamer, HR Director – Education & Skills, BAE Systems Plc
Dal Channa, Corporate Citizenship UKI Lead, Accenture
Rhea Bakrania, Accenture

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. We are often seeing over 20% of offer acceptances subsequently withdrawn, leaving gaps in organisation’s talent pipelines or requiring lengthy and expensive further recruitment processes.

Grant Thornton utilised Unseen’s onboarding tool, Meet & Engage, to enhance the pre-start experience. This masterclass draws upon established psychological science as well as practical examples to present a student-centred approach for strengthening follow-through between offer and arrival.

Holly Pearce, Talent and Recruitment Experience Manager, Grant Thornton

As early careers recruitment shifts from volume to value, employers are rethinking how they attract, assess and retain diverse talent. Yet while most organisations are taking action on EDI, progress remains uneven and often difficult to measure.

Drawing on findings from the ISE EDI Survey 2026, this session will explore where employers are focusing their efforts, which approaches are delivering the greatest impact, and where opportunities remain.

It will also examine key challenges shaping the EDI agenda, including gaps in data and visibility, differing outcomes across demographic groups, and growing uncertainty around the role of AI. Attendees will leave with practical insights to help strengthen impact across the full talent lifecycle.

Claire Tyler - Head of Insights, ISE

Clare Power - Chief Marketing Officer, Police Now

Laura Anderson - Emerging Talent Development Lead, HSBC & ISE Board Vice-Chair

Lynda Jackson - Apprenticeship and Graduate Talent Acquisition Manager, Tesco

Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton is an internationally recognised leading authority on decision-making in critical situations, advising organisations on leading effectively in high-stakes, rapidly evolving environments. Her combination of operational leadership and academic research has made her a leading authority on crisis decision-making, with her work influencing national policy and organisational practice. 

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. 

Chris Rea, Head of Strategic Relationships, Prospects
Micha-Shannon Smith, Information Analyst, Prospects
Erin McKelvey, Talent Attraction Manager, Forvis Mazars 
Claire Tyler, ISE

We can't tell you everything about this session. What we can tell you is that the mission is urgent. The window is narrow. And the decisions you make about who to put forward - and how you make the case for them - will carry more weight than you might expect when you walk through the door.

Working in teams, you'll take on a high-pressure recruitment challenge using AI tools and live data insights. You'll need to move quickly, think strategically, and bring stakeholders with you — even when priorities conflict and the brief evolves. The ability to influence, adapt, and back your judgement under pressure will matter as much as the data in front of you.

But beyond the challenge itself, there's a bigger picture.

As you move through the session, you'll be experiencing - not just hearing about - what becomes possible when immersive design and specialist assessment and development expertise are brought together to engage students at the moments that matter most. Pre-application. Keep warm. Onboarding. This is the art of the possible. Live, in the room, with you in it.

For early careers professionals who want to see further - this session is for you.

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. 

To set up UK businesses with a sustainable, diverse workforce, employers must scale workplace experiences and provide supported routes into work. But hosting impactful work experience can be challenging for businesses to deliver at scale: it’s resource intensive, relies on volunteers and is a side of desk project for many. You’ll hear from BDO and a panel of experts sharing experiences of how to deliver work experience at scale in a way that takes into account the constraints companies have including how to meet ambitious government targets to equip more young people with career access.. Then it’s over to the room to workshop one ‘big idea’ in breakouts.

A panel including Jane baker from BDO and led by Charlotte Dudley from Connectr.

High application volumes have often been seen as a badge of honour in Early Careers, a signal that your employer brand is strong and that young people genuinely want to work for you.  

Volume has been the easiest measure of success because if large numbers of students are applying, then the organisation can reasonably say it is attractive to talent, has a stronger brand amongst future apprentices compared to competitors, and can say that its roles are worthy of the time spent applying.  Applications have been seen as indicators of enthusiasm and interest, and the level of work required to sufficiently research a business, its values and its mission filtered out those without genuine motivation. 

Today, with AI tools now capable of producing well written applications in seconds, an application to a company may no longer reflect genuine enthusiasm to work there, but rather that they are one of a series of options in a general field of interest.

Our workshop will focus on how early careers people can successfully overcome this challenge. Instead of chasing volume or viewing high application numbers as an indicator of brand strength, we believe Early Careers teams must shift their focus to quality over quantity.

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.  

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

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 employers alongside two graduates who secured roles using their Vizzys, the session offers a 360-degree perspective, from enterprise recruitment strategy to lived candidate experience.

Jess Woodward-Jones, Co-founder and Client Director, Vizzy
Max Oakton, Early Careers Programme Lead, Beazley
Gemma Codina, Brand Talent Manager, Puig

Employers tell us that early talent is academically strong yet “not workplace ready.” At the same time, students report unclear expectations, ambiguous success criteria and limited structured support. In a context of AI‑accelerated role change, hybrid working, reduced informal learning, and pressure to scale ethically, the gap is widening- especially for those without prior exposure to corporate norms.

This session reframes “career readiness” from an individual attribute to a designed outcome- shaped by attraction strategy, candidate support and development ecosystems. Delivered jointly by Penna (recruitment marketing & EDI specialists), LHH (talent development & coaching experts) and Virgin Money (live employer case study), the session offers a joined‑up, attraction‑to‑performance perspective spanning early careers and apprenticeships.

Jessica Poon, Head of Communications and Strategy, Recruitment Marketing, Penna
Lisa Cappuccini, Practice Leader, Career Development & Mobility, LHH
Jamie Smith, Early Talent Programme Lead, Virgin Money

In this timely and straight‑talking keynote, Huw will unpack the past, present and future of the UK’s education and skills system: what it all means for employers, providers and careers professionals. Huw traces how we ended up with the system we have, what’s genuinely working (and what isn’t), and why so many organisations still struggle to navigate FE, schools and the apprenticeship levy. He’ll explore the realities of regional and national devolution, the tensions it creates, and the opportunities it opens up for those willing to engage. Expect a candid, evidence‑rich view of the future: what a more coherent, responsive skills ecosystem could look like, and the practical, actions employers and careers practitioners should be taking now to shape it.