Welcome to The Insight Series, where we catch up with leaders and practitioners in early careers to share real-world experiences, insights, and best practices around talent development, engagement, and growth. Each edition brings a fresh perspective and actionable ideas to support early careers programmes.
We’re kicking off The Insight Series with our first guest, Rebecca Busby, Early Careers Talent Acquisition Business Partner at Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, who shares her insights on supporting early careers talent through recruitment and development.
Bec has worked in the TA space for 13 years, focusing heavily on Early Careers, both in-house and RPO, for multiple industries including environmental, financial and construction/infrastructure. She has a keen interest in candidate experience and ensuring that all candidates, no matter their background or experience, have the opportunity to bring their best selves to an interview or assessment day.
What challenges have you faced over the last 12 months when supporting early careers candidates through the recruitment process?
I have noticed within the market there has been an increase in reneges, we have seen the opposite here. In the 2025 season we had just one renege, early on after offer. Through conversation with the candidate, we found it was due to personal circumstances out of our and the candidate’s control.
We put a lot of emphasis on engagement and virtual / in person events to help ensure that the candidates we offered feel aligned to us and our culture early on.
I have really noticed a shift in how confident students are in their own abilities and belief in themselves. This has led to an uptake in more candidates spray applying for roles, and shifts in the support needed upfront, to relieve fears around travelling, being away from home and entering the workplace.
How did you overcome it?
All our assessment centres are face to face, and we had just the one no-show out of around 20 assessment centres held earlier this year. I wanted to ensure that whilst the prospect of attending an assessment centre/interview was stressful, getting to the venue was not.
Each candidate was sent an email containing full directions, including closest parking and walking directions from the nearest train station and names / numbers of who to ask for, should there be any issues faced on the day.
To help with confidence, I wanted to ensure that all communication shared was simple, to the point but soft in delivery. I tried to ensure that the tone used was succinct and friendly so that candidates felt that they were kept informed, or if being chased for info we needed, they didn’t feel pressured to react.
I created a calendar of events with key dates for the candidates, once offers had been accepted. This allowed them control, visibility and the option to opt in or out or plan to attend the virtual and in-person events we held before their start date.
Coaching conversations – being available for phone calls in advance of the assessment centres, if candidates needed the extra support.
What questions would you like to ask your peers in the Early Careers Development Network?
Excluding AI, as we know this is a hot topic of conversation currently, what other trends do you see being key for the next three-five years? And how do you see them impacting the recruitment of Early Careers candidates?
How are you measuring ROI currently, is it conversion off programme or does it get looked at further afield such as two years / five years?
We’d love to hear your thoughts, share in the comments!
Thanks Bec!
Next edition, we’ll be chatting with another Early Careers Development leader about trends, challenges, and innovative approaches.
