from employers to professional bodies

Cibyl careers research helps you to understand students and their motivations, how to build your employer or membership brand, and attract and hire well into your apprenticeship or graduate roles.

Employers

We support employer partners by providing data and insight on raising their brand awareness, attracting more diverse and representative applicants, finding the students they are looking for, and successfully hiring the right students into their apprenticeship, internship, placement and graduate opportunities.

School Leaver UK

School / College students aged 13 to 18

2024

Respondents
13,904
Schools/Colleges
2,000+

Graduate UK

Undergraduates and recent graduates

2024

Respondents
64,495
Universities
160+

Graduate Ireland

Undergraduates and recent graduates

2024

Respondents
13,895
Universities/Colleges
30+

Our research

Each project captures insights into students' aspirations and expectations of their future careers and employers. We look at what is important to students, their influences and drivers in making careers decisions including which employers they want to work for and why. These insights can help you to make data-led decisions to impact your attraction, engagement and hiring.

Market overview

Gain an overview of the sector, looking at industry sector shifts and the perceptions versus the reality of the student job-hunting journey.  
Find out how attractive your organisation is to students in comparison to your competitors – overall and by different demographics, including geographical region, subject of study, year group, sector(s) of interest and ethnic background.  
Discover...
  • Which sectors and roles are most attractive
  • Awareness and attractiveness of your employer or membership brand tracked over time
  • Year-on-year trends
  • Competitor benchmarking
  • Salary and programme expectations
  • Where and how students want to work

The addressable market

Review the student market: look at the size of your addressable market and the potential student pool you have to recruit from and check that this matches your business expectations.
Discover....
  • What the overall student population looks like
  • The actual demographic make up of your target student groups
  • Whether EDI targets and expectations are realistic
  • How attractive you are to your target students
  • Which student groups you might be losing
  • Which students are high-potential for you

Attraction – engagement and expectations

Gain insight into which social media and digital channels are most popular with students when making decisions about their future.
Discover...
  • Which channels your target students are most likely using to research careers
  • Who and what is influencing them
  • What content you should be sharing and how
  • What support they might need and expect from you

Diversity – EDI, academic and skills

Learn how successful you are in attracting candidates from different backgrounds and chart their success through your recruitment process. See if this is representative of the wider student populations at school/college and higher education levels and within your target groups. We can show you whether (and how) you are ‘losing students’ from specific groups and why that might be.
Discover detailed insights on students by singular or intersectional groups looking at....
  • Diversity characteristics (gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability – physical impairments, neurodiversity, socio-economic status)
  • Skills (eg coding languages, foreign languages, interpersonal)
  • Location (international/home-domicile students, study region, work region)
  • Academic (subjects, qualification level/pathway - apprenticeship, degree, grade, achieved/exected)
  • Stage (school/college, higher education, year group)
  • Values

Locating the right students  – school/college or campus engagement strategy

Measure the impacts of your apprenticeship, intern and graduate, or membership recruitment marketing campaign regionally and by campus to see how effective these have been. Review current targets and activities against student populations, preferences and hiring targets, using data to make informed decisions around where to invest your time and money in line with your priorities.
Discover...
  • Where your target students are located
  • Who you are competing against by campus or region
  • If your target campuses are attracting the right students to your opportunities
  • Where you should be focusing your attraction activities
  • Which attraction activities are most likely to be successful

Measure your employer or membership brand

See how your employer value proposition (EVP) or membership brand is perceived by students and how this changes over time and compares to competitor organisations.
Discover...
  • How students make employer choices
  • The awareness attractiveness and perception of your brand
  • How your EVP can be improved
  • What is important to students when choosing their future employer
  • Whether your marketing collateral is delivering
  • Whether student values match yours

Skills, selection and skills and recruitment process

Understand which skills students are likely to bring to your organisation, how best to measure these and how to successfully take candidates through your recruitment process to the offer and onboarding stages.
Discover...
  • Which skills you should be expecting your target students to display and measure against
  • Where you might be likely to see particular student groups drop out of your recruitment funnel
  • Which recruitment activities and tests are preferred by students
  • What support you might need to give specific student groups at particular stages of your recruitment process to effectively hire
  • What inadvertent barriers might be in place to recruiting a truly diverse workforce

Executive summaries – stakeholder reports, recommendations and forecasts

Use the Cibyl team as part of your team to support business cases for change: provide a data-driven perspective for key stakeholders within your organisation and use our data to inform broader initiatives and projects across the business.
This could include...
  • Why your sector is finding it more challenging to recruit
  • How to address an aging workforce
  • Building data-led diversity targets
  • Supporting internal employee network groups
  • How external factors are affecting career confidence

Market overview

Gain an overview of the sector, looking at industry sector shifts and the perceptions versus the reality of the student job-hunting journey.
Find out how attractive your organisation is to students in comparison to your competitors – overall and by different demographics, including geographical region, subject of study, year group, sector(s) of interest and ethnic background.  
Discover...
  • Which sectors and roles are most attractive
  • Awareness and attractiveness of your employer or membership brand tracked over time
  • Year-on-year trends
  • Competitor benchmarking
  • Salary and programme expectations
  • Where and how students want to work

The addressable market

Review the student market: look at the size of your addressable market and the potential student pool you have to recruit from and check that this matches your business expectations.
Discover....
  • What the overall student population looks like
  • The actual demographic make up of your target student groups
  • Whether EDI targets and expectations are realistic
  • How attractive you are to your target students
  • Which student groups you might be losing
  • Which students are high-potential for you

Attraction – engagement and expectations

Gain insight into which social media and digital channels are most popular with students when making decisions about their future.
Discover...
  • Which channels your target students are most likely using to research careers
  • Who and what is influencing them
  • What content you should be sharing and how
  • What support they might need and expect from you

Diversity – EDI, academic and skills

Learn how successful you are in attracting candidates from different backgrounds and chart their success through your recruitment process. See if this is representative of the wider student populations at school/college and higher education levels and within your target groups. We can show you whether (and how) you are ‘losing students’ from specific groups and why that might be.
Discover detailed insights on students by singular or intersectional groups looking at...
  • Diversity characteristics (gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability – physical impairments, neurodiversity, socio-economic status)
  • Skills (eg coding languages, foreign languages, interpersonal)
  • Location (international/home-domicile students, study region, work region)
  • Academic (subjects, qualification level/pathway – apprenticeship, degree, grade, achieved/expected)
  • Stage (school/college, higher education, year group)
  • Values

Locating the right students  – school/college or campus engagement strategy

Measure the impacts of your apprenticeship, intern and graduate, or membership recruitment marketing campaign regionally and by campus to see how effective these have been. Review current targets and activities against student populations, preferences and hiring targets, using data to make informed decisions around where to invest your time and money in line with your priorities.
Discover...
  • Where your target students are located
  • Who you are competing against by campus or region
  • If your target campuses are attracting the right students to your opportunities
  • Where you should be focusing your attraction activities
  • Which attraction activities are most likely to be successful

Measure your employer or membership brand

See how your employer value proposition (EVP) or membership brand is perceived by students and how this changes over time and compares to competitor organisations.
Discover...
  • How students make employer choices
  • The awareness attractiveness and perception of your brand
  • How your EVP can be improved
  • What is important to students when choosing their future employer
  • Whether your marketing collateral is delivering
  • Whether student values match yours

Skills, selection and skills and recruitment process

Understand which skills students are likely to bring to your organisation, how best to measure these and how to successfully take candidates through your recruitment process to the offer and onboarding stages.
Discover...
  • Which skills you should be expecting your target students to display and measure against
  • Where you might be likely to see particular student groups drop out of your recruitment funnel
  • Which recruitment activities and tests are preferred by students
  • What support you might need to give specific student groups at particular stages of your recruitment process to effectively hire
  • What inadvertent barriers might be in place to recruiting a truly diverse workforce

Executive summaries – stakeholder reports, recommendations and forecasts

Use the Cibyl team as part of your team to support business cases for change: provide a data-driven perspective for key stakeholders within your organisation and use our data to inform broader initiatives and projects across the business.
This could include...
  • Why your sector is finding it more challenging to recruit
  • How to address an aging workforce
  • Building data-led diversity targets
  • Supporting internal employee network groups
  • How external factors are affecting career confidence

Professional bodies

Our research helps professional body and membership organisations understand how to better attract students to their sector and profession. It provides inspiration on what support they, and the employers they serve, could give students to ensure that they attract a diverse and inclusive future membership – and to ensure that their offering to future members stands the test of time.

Who are the best known and popular employers in your sector by student group?

How well known is your organisation compared to others?

How to better explain the industry to the next generation, by student group?

Create compelling reasons to join your organisation

Some of our clients

Aldi logo
Alstom logo
Atkins logo
Aviva logo
Bank of England logo
CBRE logo
CMS logo
Deloitte logo
DHL logo
Enterprise Rent-a-Car logo
ICAEW logo
Institute of Physics logo
Jameson logo
Lloyds Banking Group logo
L'Oréal logo
Newton logo
NHS logo
Ocado logo
Rolls-Royce logo
Salesforce logo

Get in touch

We work with employers and educators to understand students: their ambitions, perceptions of sectors and brands, skills needs, candidate experience and wellbeing.