Young people, particularly those not in education, employment or training, faced a genuinely difficult stretch through the disruption of the pandemic. Entry-level roles became far scarcer just as applications surged, and a large share of under-25s went through furlough with no guarantee of a role to return to. It hit early-career marketers especially hard, right at the point they most needed a first real opportunity.
A generation of digitally fluent young people has genuine skills the industry needs, and closing that gap takes real collaboration between businesses, education and organisations willing to build a proper route in, not just goodwill.
Skills the industry genuinely needs
This generation grew up digitally native, and that fluency is exactly what businesses across every sector increasingly need. With a large pool of young people unemployed and a growing shortage of skilled digital talent expected over the coming years, the mismatch isn't a lack of ability, it's a lack of routes in. Closing that gap takes genuine collaboration between government, education and employers, through apprenticeships, graduate schemes and structured early-career programmes.
Why we built a graduate scheme
Seeing how many graduates had job offers paused or withdrawn entirely during this period, often right when they were closest to landing their first professional role, we built an agile graduate scheme specifically aimed at supporting them. As restrictions eased and hiring picked back up, the goal was straightforward: help UK businesses access genuinely skilled digital marketing graduates while giving those graduates the first real opportunity they'd been missing.
How we work with businesses
Our graduate scheme works directly alongside a business's own hiring process, making it easier to bring in talent while still providing proper training and development on the other side. These graduates bring fresh thinking and genuine commercial value, not just capacity. It's a model built for real, long-term working relationships, not short-term placements, and it's one of the ways we help close a skills gap that spans the whole sector.
If you're a business looking to bring in genuinely capable graduate talent, or a graduate looking for the right first opportunity, get in touch with Lead Kinetics. If you're a graduate wondering how to build that experience yourself in the meantime, how to successfully work on becoming an expert at your craft is a good place to start.
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