Jenny Taylor

By Jenny Taylor MBE on 2 February, 2024

The Six Reasons Why Apprenticeships Mean Business

As a passionate champion of apprenticeships, I’m delighted to see the model growing in popularity and reputation. UCAS, for example, now features apprenticeships on their website on a par with traditional university opportunities. Despite this, however, I’m often still asked “can we have a graduate for our business?”. To which I reply: “how about an […]

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By Jenny Taylor MBE on 7 February, 2022

Building The Future

#BuildTheFuture is the perfect theme for National Apprenticeship Week 2022. At IBM, we have been building our future with apprentices since 2010, and what a wonderful journey it has been! I started my Talent Acquisition career as a graduate recruiter and development manager. When we first decided to hire school leaver apprentices into IBM, we […]

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By Jenny Taylor MBE on 8 February, 2021

How IBM has adapted early professional recruitment and onboarding strategies in light of the pandemic

Organisations spent £6.6 billion in 2020 on the skills shortage, up from £4.4 billion in 2019 [1] (Open University Business Barometer 2020). These skill shortages are predominantly addressed through recruitment activities, with ever more businesses opting for a sustainable, long-term approach to address the skills gap. Nearly half (48%) of employers acknowledged that apprenticeships and […]

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By Jenny Taylor MBE on 6 February, 2020

Apprenticeships – helping secure the workforce of the future

Employers are spending more than £4.4 billion a year on the skills shortage[1] (Open University Business Barometer 2019), predominantly through recruitment activities, but buying skills and not building them is a short-term approach, which ultimately won’t pay dividends. It is crucial that organisations take a more sustainable approach using training to address their skills gaps. […]

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By Jenny Taylor MBE on 12 June, 2019

Building a diverse and highly-skilled workforce for the future

By 2020 the digital skills gap will have grown to a huge 500,000 people according to Europe’s Digital Progress Report 2017. At the same time, UK school systems still primarily encourage more traditional routes into higher education via University excluding many young people from professional roles and emerging opportunities due to a lack of qualifications […]

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By Jenny Taylor MBE on 4 March, 2019

National Apprentice Week 2019 and IBM

Securing the workforce of the future Employers are spending more than £6 billion a year on the skills shortage[1] (Open University Business Barometer 2018), predominantly through recruitment activities, but buying skills and not building them is a short-term approach, which ultimately won’t pay dividends. It is crucial that organisations take a more sustainable approach using […]

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