Features
Bristol’s youth unemployment is nearly double the city’s overall rate
Employment rates in the UK may be the highest on record, but 11.3% of Bristol’s youth are unemployed, which is nearly double the city’s overall rate.
As a response to this problem, BITC (Business in the Community), a national outreach charity promoting responsible business, invited young people in Bristol to take part in a ‘mystery shopping’ exercise at 17 local businesses to find out whether their entry-level jobs adverts were accessible.
The exercise found that 47% of vacancies didn’t have a clear job description, 40% of job descriptions contained jargon, 65% of descriptions didn’t outline the recruitment process or its stages, and over 76% of job descriptions didn’t outline the timeframe of the recruitment process. On a national scale, BITC found that young people were put off from applying for jobs by ‘business-speak’.
Given these findings, BITC will run workshops later this year to advise employers on how to attract and recruit young people. Bristol employers can apply to the event which will feature a range of speakers, and have their entry-level recruitment processes assessed.
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