- Santander’s Trade Barometer shows 70% of UK businesses lack skills to grow in next three years
- Unibeez platform provides large pool of university student and graduate talent to support UK business
- Discount for Santander Navigator subscribers to AI platform that eradicates hiring bias and promotes more diverse recruitment
Santander UK has today announced it will partner with Unibeez, a skills-based talent platform for emerging talent. The platform connects students and graduates to a range of jobs and enables businesses to grow by providing access to in-demand skills.
From projects, internships, apprenticeships to permanent hire, Unibeez and its hirers support future talent, enhance work readiness skills and are advocates of equality, diversity and inclusion.
Chris Keenan, Unibeez Co-founder and CEO said: “We’re delighted to be partnering with Santander UK both through their International ground-breaking platform Santander Navigator and also with the Corporate & Commercial Banking team through their SME Support Toolkit. Our platform allows their forward-thinking clients and subscribers to connect with the UK’s ambitious and diverse emerging talent pool, helping to bring efficiencies to the skills market.“
John Carroll, Head of International and Transactional Banking, Santander UK said: “Our latest Spring Trade Barometer shows the ability to attract skilled staff is key to businesses’ ability to grow over the next three years. Over the past six months, businesses have been inundated with labour related crises including higher starting salaries, more staff vacancies than usual and Brexit-induced staff shortages). Our partnership with Unibeez will be crucial to help businesses access new talent as they place recruitment and training top of their investment plans for the next year.”
The Unibeez platform will be available at a discount to Santander Navigator’s subscribers as well as to Santander UK’s clients and Santander’s’ partner universities. The platform will use AI to match the skills of students and graduates with the skills employers are looking for. Hirers can recruit faster, smarter and have access to a range of emerging talent which was previously very hard to connect with.
With a highly diverse talent pool including 69% female, 25% STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) graduates and 45% candidates from Black Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, Unibeez has been designed to help eliminate hiring bias on the grounds of race, gender and socio-economic background.
The diversity, creativity and digital skills of the UK’s student and graduate population are in huge demand by employers. The digital skill shortage is set to cost the UK economy £12.8bn a year1 while diverse teams are 70% more likely to capture new markets2 which is why connecting emerging talent with internationally ambitious growth companies makes so much sense.”
Chris Keenan continued: “The UK’s student and early-career population is bubbling with talent, but up until now, opportunity has been restricted by an outdated model. Millions of UK students who have historically been excluded from accessing real-world work experiences will now have an unparalleled advantage thanks to our new partnership with Santander UK. Unibeez is committed to advancing today’s emerging talent, empowering businesses to fill their skills gap and launching the careers of the UK’s future workforce.”
John Carroll added: “SMEs (small and medium-sized businesses) are the lifeblood of the UK economy. But they need our help to recover from the challenges they’ve faced over the last few years. A quarter have asked for help with recruitment and this platform will do just that. I’m proud that we’ve been able to bring together our Santander Navigator providers, our specialist teams and our Santander Universities partners to make this happen.”
For more information on access to the Unibeez platform via Santander log on to: www.santandernavigator.co.uk With the new Explore package, UK businesses can access some elements of the platform for free including discounted access to Unibeez.
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Notes to Editors
1. CEBR
2. https://www.fundera.com/resources/diversity-in-the-workplace-statistics
Unibeez is the UK's leading skills-based talent platform for emerging talent. It connects students and graduates with a diverse range of flexible real-world jobs, enabling the unseen to be seen and hired by forward-thinking companies. From projects, internships, apprenticeships to perm hire, Unibeez turbo charges business growth by providing visibility and access to in-demand skills, bridging the gap between education and employability.
Unibeez and its hirers support future talent, enhance work readiness skills and are advocates of equality, diversity and inclusion.
Santander UK is a financial services provider in the UK that offers a wide range of personal and commercial financial products and services. At 31 December 2022, the bank had around 19,000 employees and serves around 14 million active customers, via a nationwide branch network, telephone, mobile and online banking. Santander UK is subject to the full supervision of the FCA and the PRA in the UK. Santander UK plc customers’ eligible deposits are protected by the FSCS in the UK.
Banco Santander (SAN SM, STD US, BNC LN) is a leading commercial bank, founded in 1857 and headquartered in Spain. It has a meaningful presence in 10 core markets in the Europe, North America and South America regions, and is one of the largest banks in the world by market capitalization. Santander aims to be the best open financial services platform providing services to individuals, SMEs, corporates, financial institutions and governments. The bank’s purpose is to help people and businesses prosper in a simple, personal and fair way. Santander is building a more responsible bank and has made a number of commitments to support this objective, including raising €220 billion in green financing between 2019 and 2030. At the end of 2022, Banco Santander had €1.3 trillion in total funds, 160 million customers, 9,000 branches and 206,000 employees.