Graduates and the Law?

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Fears that anti-age discrimination laws to be introduced in the UK next year will spell the end of graduate training schemes and the annual milk round are probably wide of the mark. But it is clear that how employers recruit and train graduates will have to change significantly.

A recent study by law firm DLA, the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) and graduate careers specialist Graduate Prospects said concerns that the laws would mean the end of graduate schemes as a fair and legitimate recruitment method had been "overstated".

But the laws, which come into effect on 1 October next year, will mean that schemes that stay limited to "first jobbers" straight from university will leave employers wide open to discrimination claims.

Worryingly, the research polled employers and found more than half did not believe their current graduate recruitment processes were "age neutral", although 52 per cent also thought age was a weak predictor of future performance.

More than seven out of 10 admitted to using images of young people in such advertising and more than three-quarters of recruits recruited by AGR members are under 25, it found.

For employers with big graduate recruitment and training programmes, the new age regulations are therefore a very real issue – but should not be cause for breaking out in a cold sweat, stresses Julie Ingham, marketing and communications manager at Graduate Prospects.

"It is going to be a fundamental change. The problem is that, unlike sex discrimination, it is not an easy one to distinguish and there are so many cultural stereotypes about it," she says.

"But we are also starting to make graduate recruiters aware that they do not need to panic," she adds.

Just this week, the Association of Technology Staffing Companies warned that employers in IT and other sectors that tended to target young employees in recruitment campaigns would have to tread carefully under the new laws.

Other "youthful" industries such as advertising and the media also face having to re-assess how they attract, develop and retain graduates and other workers.