Graduates today face the prospect of leaving university with a degree and £40k debt, but without the practical skills and experience required in the workplace. At the same time, employers struggle to find individuals with the up-to-date technical expertise that can make a real impact to their business from day one.
It is a skills gap that is reportedly costing the UK economy as much as £63 billion each year1 in lost productivity, and is causing 47% of employers to inflate salaries2 in order to attract the right skills. What's more, according to Tech City UK, 19.3% of businesses are hiring their digital specialists from other parts of the EU, so the demand for digital skills in the UK could become even greater with any tightening of immigration rules.
Now one disruptive company is addressing the problem by turning the recruitment industry on its head. DigitalGrads is solving the age-old paradox of ‘how can you get experience when no-one will give you a job?' by providing graduates with the real-world experience they need to be able to make a positive contribution to businesses - for free!
The DigitalGrads company strapline says it all: ‘We train the grads so you don't have to'. And this is the essence of their business. Train up the raw, hungry graduates in digital marketing so that they can make a real difference to a business immediately - not in six months' time.
This new service offers employers a pool of intelligent, hungry and hard-working graduates who have all chosen to take the DigitalGrads training in addition to completing their degree. But unlike most digital training programmes, DigitalGrads is free for any graduates who graduated within the last 3 years and are yet to find a permanent role.
DigitalGrads was founded by Lucy Smith who has spent the last 15 years living and breathing digital marketing for small and medium-sized business. Lucy explains DigitalGrads mission:
"A digital transformation is happening around us and requires that we teach young people the skills and the mind-set they need to navigate this new digital world of work.
We don't know what the job titles of the future will be, so we are creating a digital community that will share what they learn with the next generation and so on. It's our aim to help millions of people pursue the work they love."
In addition to the training, DigitalGrads are using their marketing expertise and digital know-how to help grads get jobs, by offering them exposure to employers via their ‘Hiring Hub'. This platform also helps businesses recruit more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Traditionally if you needed help hiring you had one of two options. You could hire an agency and pay a fee of up to 35% or you could post on a job board and be bombarded with large volumes of irrelevant or poor-quality CVs.
That's where DigitalGrads is different - they are using technology to make the recruitment process cheaper, faster and more effective. Employers can search the pool of online profiles that include videos, example work and training test scores, to create a shortlist of candidates with relevant skills and experience
DigitalGrads is part of the NatWest Entrepreneur Accelerator that is the world's largest fully-funded business accelerator with 13 hubs across the UK - Over 2,000 entrepreneurs are currently on, or have completed one of four bespoke programmes designed to grow and scale start-ups from every sector and at every stage.
