Potential has no age limit. Ben Williams at Sten10 considers the shift from ‘early career’ to ‘emerging talent’ programmes and the considerations for fair and objective assessment including a case study from Coventry Building Society.
Many employers still picture emerging talent as someone right at the start of their working life: early twenties, no industry experience, learning fast.
In reality, apprenticeships and entry-pathway roles are increasingly filled by people returning to work, switching careers, or starting later in life.
Emerging talent refers to employees who are at an early stage in a specific career pathway and who are expected to learn and aspire to progress within their field.
Potential vs experience
There’s a well-known finding in psychology: give people two equally strong candidates -one with achievements, the other with potential - and we tend to rate the ‘potential’ candidate more favourably. It feels exciting. Open-ended. A story still unfolding.
The problem is that, in practice, we often equate potential with being early in life, not early in this career. Someone in their 40s entering tech for the first time may have enormous potential-but we don’t label it that way because it doesn’t fit the mental picture.
By way of an example, a few months ago my son got an electric skateboard. Naturally, the responsible parental thing to do was buy one for myself too -purely to ensure his safety, you understand.
He learned to ride faster. Better balance. Sharper cornering. That’s fluid intelligence doing its thing: quick learning and adaptability.
I, on the other hand, brought different assets:
- knowledge of the Highway Code
- awareness of local by-laws
- the patience to work up to the 30mph top speed
That’s crystallised intelligence: knowledge, judgement, the ability to map learning into the real world.
The point? We both ended up competent, but by different routes. His learning was quicker; mine was more cautious, contextual and wise. Neither of us is the “right” model of potential-just different.
Early careers programmes often assume the skateboarder who learns fast is the natural choice. Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes the person who reads the by-laws prevents the lawsuit.
Hiring to a ‘prototype’
People rarely set out to exclude older candidates. We simply hold an internal picture of what ‘a graduate’ or ‘a trainee’ looks like - timing in life, not capability.
When someone doesn’t match the prototype (older, returning to work, switching sectors), the subtle reaction is: this doesn’t quite fit. This cognitive shortcut can lead to biased decisions being made – and missing out on diversity of thought and approach.
Rejecting people who are ‘too experienced’
When someone with significant experience applies for a role traditionally positioned as entry level, we assume they’ll be bored or leave quickly. There is some evidence they may leave sooner - if the role offers no progression and no space to use their skills.
But performance? That’s usually not the issue. When autonomy and meaningful work are present, people with ‘surplus’ experience perform just as strongly, sometimes better. The mismatch is often in job design, not the individual.
In other words: the job may be underqualified for the person, not the other way round.
Language matters
What we call something determines who applies.
If a programme is described as ‘early careers’, older candidates often assume they are not invited. If it’s described as ‘emerging talent’, the mental shutters don’t come down quite so fast.
That doesn’t solve everything, but it changes who sees themselves in the frame and who hiring managers see as legitimate applicants. Words don’t just describe categories; they create them.
6 considerations for hiring potential at any age
- Clarify who the programme is for.
If it’s open to career-changers or returners, say so explicitly. Don’t rely on candidates to decode the marketing.
- Assess skills and behaviours, not life stage.
Define the capabilities needed to succeed, then design assessment around those behaviours. If your scoring system looks for ‘recent university experience’ rather than the ability to ‘analyse unfamiliar information’, something is off.
- Design pathways that don’t force everyone back to zero.
If someone joins with experience, consider advanced entry points, accelerated progression routes, or differentiated training so they aren’t artificially reset to square one.
- Prepare managers before they meet candidates.
Bias shows up fastest in early screening decisions. Provide short guidance on what counts as relevant experience, how to recognise different forms of potential, and what not to infer from age as part of your assessor training.
- Refresh attraction language.
Avoid terms like ‘fast-paced, energetic, digital native’ and replace them with transparent capability signals. People self-exclude based on wording long before selection happens.
- Measure who gets through and who doesn’t.
Track outcomes by age band, life stage, entry route and prior experience. Data reveals patterns that ‘good intentions’ miss.
Case study: Emerging talent programmes at Coventry Building Society
Coventry Building Society is embracing the mantra of ‘emerging talent’ and creating programmes that offer opportunity for everyone, explains David Hambrook, Talent Delivery Manager.
With the current skills challenges that all industries are facing, and a challenging landscape for recruitment, it’s no longer possible for Coventry Building Society (CBS) to find the skills, talent and potential from one demographic.
As we need to be more open-minded about where we find talent, it becomes even more important for us to be clear on what the purpose of a programme is and what skills we need to develop.
By defining the purpose of a programme with the relevant business leaders, we’re able to hold them to account and keep this at the heart of any recruitment activity. This ensures we’re focused and supporting the development of the right skills.
To put this into practice effectively at CBS and offer the greatest chance of success, we’re creating a robust talent eco-system that draws in the appropriate specialists at the right time to ensure we find the right programmes and the right people to put on them.
As an Emerging Talent team, we have to bring in Talent Acquisition specialists to help design inclusive and skills-based recruitment processes that reduce the chance of bias as much as possible.
We work with Talent and Leadership specialists to understand what additional learning we can provide to support the development of high potential individuals and, where it’s appropriate, embed development of our leadership capabilities.
Where apprenticeships are concerned, we’ve worked hard to ensure that the programmes are normalised and seen as legitimate development routes for existing staff. This has had a significantly positive impact in changing hiring managers perceptions of what an ‘apprentice’ looks like.
We’re by no means the finished article but if we continue along this path, we firmly believe we’ll strike the right balance between creating opportunity and supporting careers for everyone.