Emerging findings on how care-experienced students understand and navigate employability provide useful insight for employers looking to make early careers more accessible, explains Laura Dorian, Deputy Director of Careers and Enterprise at Durham University.
Graduate employers are increasingly focused on widening access, improving candidate experience and attracting talent from a broader range of backgrounds.
Insight to how care-experienced students navigate employability can support employers in designing a clearer and more accessible candidate experience for all.
A care-experienced student is one who has spent any time in the care of their Local Authority during their lives, this differs to a care-leaver who typically must have been in the care of the Local Authority for at least 13 weeks from age 14, including at least one day after their 16th birthday (Children Act 1989).
Through in-depth interviews with current students, my research found that career decision-making was influenced not only by skills, interests and ambition, but also by the conditions that make opportunities feel realistic and accessible.
These included certainty of location, financial security, access to professional networks through which labour market knowledge can be gained, and the capacity to undertake the often-hidden labour involved in researching options, interpreting expectations, weighing risks and navigating unfamiliar pathways into work.
The findings highlight several practical ways employers can make early-career opportunities easier to understand and access.
1. Be clear about location and flexibility
Stability was important to participants, and certainty about where they would be expected to live and work formed part of their decision-making.
For employers, this means being as transparent as possible about location.
If a graduate scheme operates across several offices, explain whether candidates can express a preference. If relocation may be required, be clear about when this will be confirmed and how this may be supported. If hybrid working is available, describe what this means in practice.
2. Consider the signals created by targeted opportunities
Disclosure of care experience was a complex issue for research participants.
Some anticipated that employers might respond negatively and therefore thought carefully about whether, when and why they would disclose their background.
However, the discovery of a care-leaver internship scheme generated a notably positive response. Targeted or ring-fenced opportunities therefore provide access to opportunities whilst also signalling that an employer understands care experience and recognises that it may continue to shape someone's educational and career journey.
This can help create confidence that an organisation is genuinely open to candidates from different backgrounds.
3. Consider what counts as experience
Work experience and internships remain important ways for students to develop skills, confidence and understanding of professional environments. However, participants also described having to balance employability development with more immediate priorities to ensure economic survival.
For some students, taking an unpaid or poorly paid work experiences can mean giving up paid employment that they rely on.
This creates a difficult trade-off between maintaining economic sustainability now and investing time in activities that may improve future graduate prospects.
Employers can ensure work experience and internships are paid or supported financially, reducing the need for students to choose between immediate income and longer-term career development.
At the same time, take a broader view of what counts as valuable experience. Part-time employment, volunteering, caring responsibilities and other activities can all provide strong evidence of communication, judgement, organisation, responsibility and problem-solving.
Recognising these experiences helps employers identify capability developed in different contexts, rather than placing disproportionate value on access to traditional internships and professional work experience.
4. Make the time and financial commitment visible
Applying for graduate roles can require significant time as well as money.
Applications, online assessments, assessment centres and interviews all take time, and in-person stages may involve travel or time away from essential paid employment.
For students with limited disposable income, or those balancing study with substantial paid work, these factors can influence if they are able to continue with a recruitment process.
Employers can help by providing candidates with a clear overview of the full recruitment journey, including likely time commitments, potential costs and how expenses will be reimbursed.
5. Make financial support easy to find
Where employers provide financial support, this should be highly visible.
Travel reimbursement, accommodation support, relocation payments or other forms of financial assistance can make a significant difference to whether a candidate feels able to participate, particularly for candidates without any financial or familial support.
Care-experienced students may already be navigating a range of institutional and administrative processes, so additional complexity can create another barrier. State prominently what financial support is available, who can access it, what it covers and how to claim it. Keep the process as simple, and as obvious, as possible.
6. Explain the unwritten rules
Graduate recruitment includes a considerable amount of knowledge that can easily be taken for granted.
What should someone wear to an assessment centre or to the office? How formal is the workplace? What does a strong interview answer sound like? What does an employer mean by ‘commercial awareness’?
Students with family members or networks who have experience of professional workplaces may have people they can easily ask. Others may be navigating these environments for the first time, which involves a great deal of further research, time and effort.
Explain the practical and cultural aspects of recruitment and work behaviours, as well as the formal process. Share examples, clarify expectations and avoid relying on assumed knowledge so that candidates are assessed on their potential rather than their familiarity with professional environments.
7. Help students picture themselves in your organisation
Research participants also considered whether they could see themselves fitting within particular workplaces.
This was not necessarily about whether they believed they could perform the role. It was often about whether the organisation felt like somewhere they could belong.
Employers can support this by showing a broader range of employee experiences.
Case studies can be particularly useful when they go beyond job titles and describe different routes into the organisation, educational backgrounds, career journeys and experiences of progression.
8. Support students to build social capital
Professional relationships can provide information, encouragement, reassurance and access to knowledge about occupations that may otherwise be difficult to obtain.
For students who have fewer existing personal and professional connections, employers can play an important role in creating opportunities to develop these relationships.
Mentoring, employee conversations, work shadowing and insight events can all help, recognising that students first need access to people and environments from which professional relationships can develop.
Making opportunity easier to navigate
The findings suggest that progressing towards graduate employment can involve considerable hidden labour: researching unfamiliar options, interpreting expectations, weighing financial and practical risks, building networks and working out how professional environments operate. For students with less access to financial, familial or professional support, more of this work may need to be undertaken alone.
Employers cannot remove all of these differences, but they can reduce the amount of unnecessary labour involved in accessing their opportunities. Greater transparency, clearer expectations, visible support and broader recognition of experience can make it easier for care-experienced candidates to make informed choices and demonstrate what they can offer.