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Young people’s participation in
Tech City:
Barriers and opportunities
Dr Johanna Wadsley and Dr Melissa Butcher
March 2015
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
CONTENTS
About the project ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Executive summary of barriers and opportunities ..................................................................................... 2
1. Context: Hoxton, Shoreditch and the Old Street roundabout: ................................................................ 4
2. Methodology ....................................................................................................................................... 5
3. What is Tech City? ................................................................................................................................ 6
3.1 Defining Tech City: professionals’ perspectives ........................................................................................6
3.2 Defining Tech City: young people’s perspectives. .....................................................................................6
3.3 Workforce composition: professionals’ perspectives ...............................................................................7
3.4 Workforce composition: young people’s perceptions ..............................................................................8
4. Technical skills: opportunities and barriers ......................................................................................... 10
4.1 Existing pathways ................................................................................................................................... 10
4.1.1 Apprenticeships ............................................................................................................................ 10
4.1.2 Educational Expectations and ‘push’ factors ............................................................................... 12
4.1.3 Internships .................................................................................................................................... 14
4.1.4 Work experience placements ....................................................................................................... 15
4.2 Timing mismatches at two levels ........................................................................................................... 16
4.2.1 The rate of tech development outstrips formal education ........................................................... 16
4.2.2 Tech City business timeframes do not mesh well with training inexperienced staff .................... 16
4.3 Graduates vs non-graduates .................................................................................................................. 17
4.3.1 Local self-starting, self-taught entrepreneurial ‘Techies’ ............................................................. 17
4.4 A lack of diversity and entry-level rungs on the job ladder.................................................................... 18
4.4.1 In some areas, raw talent and creativity can trump a degree ..................................................... 18
4.4.2 Risks and benefits of diversity ...................................................................................................... 20
4.5 Local young people assume a university education is necessary ........................................................... 20
5. Soft skills and organizational culture ................................................................................................... 22
5.1 “Will you fit?” ......................................................................................................................................... 22
5.2 “I won’t fit in” ......................................................................................................................................... 23
5.3 Adapting social and cultural capital for the workplace .......................................................................... 26
5.4 Overcoming misperceptions .................................................................................................................. 27
Face-to-Face meetings .......................................................................................................................... 27
Young people say, “if Tech City were to come to us …..” ...................................................................... 28
6. Communication preferences ............................................................................................................... 29
7. Conclusions and recommendations ..................................................................................................... 30
Areas for future research ............................................................................................................................. 31
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
1
About the project
Young People’s Participation in Tech City was a pilot study (October 2014 – January 2015) run by the
Geography Department at The Open University (led by Dr Melissa Butcher), in collaboration with local
organizations such as Hackney Unites, Our City and the Shoreditch Trust. The study was part of the Creating
Hackney as Home project (CHAsH 2013-15, www.hackneyashome.co.uk) and funded by the OpenSpace
Research Centre at The Open University.
The growth of entrepreneurial sites like London’s Tech City brings with it challenges as well as opportunities
for local residents. This pilot study took a particular focus on young people living in south Hackney and
explored the opportunities and barriers to their gaining access to employment and training in Tech City.
The research involved group discussion workshops with young Hoxton/south Hackney residents, primarily
students in the final years of education (16 – 20 years old). The research also involved interviews with
professionals working in Hoxton/south Hackney-based education institutions, community organizations,
public and private training and apprenticeship providers and Tech City businesses.
Intended benefits of this research are: 1) a better understanding of the barriers and opportunities
experienced by young Hoxton/south Hackney residents for accessing training and/or employment in Tech
City, and 2) a better understanding of the concerns of educators, employers and decision-makers in relation
to Tech City’s capacity to generate locally-oriented training and employment opportunities.
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
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Executive summary of barriers and opportunities
Awareness and assumptions: in general, young people’s awareness of Tech City and the kind of work that
goes on there is limited to non-existent, although Tech City companies attending career guidance events at
educational institutions has improved young people’s knowledge. The Tech City workforce is perceived by
both professionals and young local people to be largely white, male, middle-class and university-educated.
However, young people are open to having these assumptions challenged.
Apprenticeship programmes have yet to reach their potential in scale and impact but face a number of
barriers in the Tech City and Hackney contexts: 1) apprenticeships require commitments of time and money
that small Tech City companies may not be able to afford; 2) companies may regard apprenticeships to be
corporate social responsibility (CSR) rather than a human resources (HR) issue, a luxury rather than a
necessity; 3) schools and parents may be influencing young people’s focus on university when other
vocational options are available; 4) consequently, Tech City companies perceive that apprenticeships attract
lower quality candidates. There is an opportunity, however, to create structured programmes to get more
businesses involved in Apprenticeship schemes.
Bias towards university graduates: overall, the recruitment pipeline is oriented towards university
graduates. Young people assume that going to university will ensure that they have sufficient knowledge and
skills to enter the job market, including the digital tech industry. However, there may be space for more
entry-level rungs on the job ladder for non-graduates; job and apprenticeship models exist that ‘parcel up’
overlooked digital business tasks that graduates might consider beneath them, to mutual benefit.
Internships: young people’s knowledge of internships is limited. They are also still perceived to be unpaid,
which may be unaffordable for some local young people. Internships are possibly more suited to graduates
because employers hold expectations that interns will deliver value in a short timeframe. Nevertheless,
some self-taught IT-savvy young people may have sufficient skills to deliver during internships.
Work experience placements: educators and young people can lack the social capital (personal connections)
necessary to organize work experience placements. As in the case of internships, work experience
placements are unpaid and this may be unaffordable for some local young people. There is also the factor of
limited time and capacity amongst small businesses to manage apprentices or other non-graduate trainees.
Self-starters and demographic insights: south Hackney is producing self-starting, self-taught entrepreneurial
‘techies’, though they still have to compete with university graduates and may lack the social and cultural
capital
1
to do so. In the field of digital marketing in particular, young local people have been found to provide
insights into their social demographic.
Will you/I fit? Employers’ methods for assessing ‘will you fit?’ put young local people at a disadvantage
because they lack comparable social and cultural capital. Young people’s perceptions of not fitting in relate
to how they think Tech City might perceive them, and worries about not fitting in undermine confidence to
make first contact through job applications. There is an opportunity to change this situation by making job
applications the second moment of contact rather than the first.
1
Cultural capital: the way in which education, modes of speech, styles of dress, physical appearance and intellect can
be understood as non-financial assets that enable social mobility, for example, access to and utilization of the social
networks that characterize Tech City’s workforce and way of doing business.
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
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Face-to-face meet-ups: making meet-ups on young people’s ‘home turf’ the first moment of contact
between Tech City and young people is perceived to have three main benefits: 1) improve mutual
understandings between the two ‘alien tribes’; 2) give young people the confidence to take the next step
and apply for jobs, internships, placements and apprenticeships; and 3) provide an ‘in’ for companies to
access local young people.
Communicating with local young people: young people are often unaware of the existing websites and apps
where training and employment opportunities are posted; job centres and career advisors remain important.
Diverse social media need to be selected in order to target different groups of young people, for example,
YouTube, however, low-tech methods (e.g. flyers, bus stop advertisements) may also improve local young
people’s awareness of Tech City.
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
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1. Context: Hoxton, Shoreditch and the Old Street roundabout:
In recent years Hackney has experienced population change in terms of its ethnic and social mix, which some
argue has resulted in the borough becoming a site of ‘hyper-gentrification’ (Neal et al. 2015). However,
Hackney still has relatively high levels of social and economic deprivation
2
. It has a relatively young
population with an estimated 25% under 20 years of age, and 21% aged between 20 and 29 years (reported
September 2014)
3
. Whilst educational attainment has improved significantly and in some cases exceeds the
national average, 11% of the population were entirely without qualifications (2012), and unemployment
stood at 8.8% (2013-14), two percent higher than the national average.
It is within this context that Hackney has seen the development of a cluster of digital technology businesses
in the vicinity of the Old Street roundabout. Compared to the USA’s Silicon Valley
4
, Tech City is considered to
be Europe’s top technology start-up hub
5
and, for the sheer number of businesses (1472 as of 21/02/15)
6
, is
comparable with tech clusters in New York and San Francisco. Digital tech start-ups and venture capitalists
were initially attracted to the cheap rent but also by artists, and creative media and advertising agencies that
were already established in the area.
7
The number of companies setting up or moving in increased
dramatically between 2008 and 2014.
Seeing an opportunity, the national government (UK Trade and Investment) founded the quango, Tech City
Investment Organization in 2010 (now Tech City UK
8
), mandated to formalize the cluster as Tech City and
promote its growth. As well as smaller start-ups, major enterprises such as Google and Amazon have since
established operations in the area. However, the cluster’s growth has outstripped the supply of skilled or
qualified talent available within the UK, an issue that has received extensive media coverage in recent years.
A 2012 Centre for London report, A Tale of Tech City, identified an "undersupply of skilled developers and
specialist staff in the UK"
9
. Entrepreneurs blamed visa restrictions, and “ill designed university syllabuses”,
perceiving there to be a “lack of understanding at all levels of the education system” of the needs of high
tech enterprises.
10
To a certain extent, this study found that these latter concerns still resonate for many
Tech City professionals.
2
http://www.hackney.gov.uk/Assets/Documents/Facts-and-Figures.pdf (accessed 20/02/15)
3
http://www.hackney.gov.uk/Assets/Documents/Hackney-Profile.pdf (accessed 20/02/15)
4
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/first-came-the-artists-then-came-the-hackers-the-strange-history-of-londons-
own-silicon-valley/ (accessed 21/02/15)
5
http://techcitynews.com/2014/08/19/london-the-worlds-most-influential-city/ (accessed 21/02/15)
6
http://www.techcitymap.com/index.html#/ (accessed 21/02/15)
7
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/first-came-the-artists-then-came-the-hackers-the-strange-history-of-londons-
own-silicon-valley/ (accessed 21/02/15)
8
http://www.techcityuk.com/about-us/ (accessed 21/02/15)
9
http://centreforlondon.org/publication/a-tale-of-tech-city/ (page 20) (accessed 21/02/15)
10
http://centreforlondon.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/A_Tale_of_Tech_City_web.pdf (page 20) (accessed
21/02/15)
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
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2. Methodology
Data collection for this study was carried out by Dr Johanna Wadsley (R1), with support from Dr Luke Dickens
(R2). It involved initial scoping conversations and correspondence with members of Hackney Unites, Our City
and the Shoreditch Trust. This was followed by in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interviews with eight
educators, apprenticeship or training providers, Tech City entrepreneurs and non-academic researchers (in
seven interviews), identified as having interests relevant to the project through reputational snowballing.
Interviewees included (using pseudonyms):
Graham: apprenticeship company
Thomas: entrepreneur/tech trainer
Leslie: educator
Paul: entrepreneur/spokesperson
Marcus: entrepreneur
Jeff: researcher
Jeremy: researcher
Andrew: educator
Off-the-record conversations were also held with four teachers, the information from which serves as
background. One teacher participated in a focus group; where quoted directly within a focus group excerpt
they are denoted by ‘Educator’.
Four focus groups were undertaken with twenty-three local young people accessed through one of
Hackney’s sixth-form colleges. The cohort were volunteers drawn from three different course strands so as
to ensure a range of perspectives: IT (2 focus groups of six students), BTEC
11
(1 group of 4 students) and
Sociology (1 group of 7 students). All participants were given or chose pseudonyms. A future project around
the same set of issues should involve young people not currently in education or training, as well as young
people doing or having recently completed apprenticeships and internships in Tech City.
With participants’ written permission, interviews and focus groups were audio-recorded and then
transcribed. Transcripts were analysed using a mix of standard discursive thematic analysis and NVivo
software. This report presents the strongest themes arising from the analysis, focussing upon general
perceptions of Tech City and its workforce, barriers and pathways into training and employment
opportunities, and modes of communicating between Tech City and young people in Hackney.
The ethical protocols for the study were approved by the Open University Human Research Ethics
Committee (memorandum HREC/2013/1356/Butcher/1, 03/10/14). As much as possible, all identifying
factors have been removed to try to maintain conditions of anonymity for participants.
11
BTEC are vocational qualifications certified by the Business and Technology Education Council, equivalent to GCSE
(levels 1 to 2), A Level (level 3) and university degrees (levels 4 to 7). The BTEC students amongst the cohort were in the
A level equivalent stream.
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
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3. What is Tech City?
3.1 DEFINING TECH CITY: PROFESSIONALS’ PERSPECTIVES
When asked to define or characterize ‘Tech City’ professional interviewees did so in four main ways.
The first characterization referred to the geographical clustering of digital tech businesses in Hoxton and
Shoreditch, with specific reference to Old Street (station) as the centre of the ‘hub’. ‘Silicon Roundabout’
was also frequently used to denote the area with some irony.
The second characterization framed ‘Tech City’ as a hub of entrepreneurial and creative activity in the
interrelated fields of digital marketing and communications (particularly around social media and mobile
digital technologies), digital design, games development, app development and data management.
The third concerned the digital tech community itself: the socio-professional network of coding-literate
entrepreneurs engaged in the above activities, their sense of ‘community’ facilitated by businesses such as
3Beards (a “content, promotion and events company
12
”) and events such as the weekly “Silicon Drinkabout”
(a 3Beards event). For some this network constitutes an ‘ecosystem’ and those directly involved in tech
training (either corporate or via apprenticeships) wanted to see better integration of young local talent into
this ecosystem and its constituent tech companies.
The fourth mode of characterization specifically referred to the British Government’s branding all of the
above in order to structure and promote it as a globally-significant specialized business hub. The TechCityUK
organization, established by the UK Government in 2010, is the publicly-funded agency mandated to
promote the growth of London’s digital technology sector and provide expert knowledge and
recommendations to policy-makers.
3.2 DEFINING TECH CITY: YOUNG PEOPLE’S PERSPECTIVES.
When asked whether they had heard of Tech City the young people participating in the focus groups were
either unaware of its existence, or its proximity, or the kinds of activities that go on there. The following
quotations evidence the breadth of understandings but also, with a few exceptions, indicate the general lack
of awareness of what Tech City is about:
I think it’s a college.
I think it’s an organisation that helps young people get jobs in technology.
I don’t know what it is but I know it’s something to do with the shops in Shoreditch.
I’m not sure about what Tech City is, yeah.
I don't even know what it is.
I heard about it first last week.
I think it is like a place that has been set up by the government to get young people
more involved in IT, yeah.
From what I know so far it’s a white company…
I just heard that it’s, like, where Google is in the UK.
I heard it was on Old Street or something I, never heard anything about it.
12
http://3-beards.com/
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
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I have an idea that you can help young people, like, open their own business because I
participated last year bringing up ideas. Like, we had to bring out ideas and it helped,
so yeah.
Right now? Helping young people to be able to find jobs, or get jobs.
I’ve heard it was just like a bunch of technology companies all in one area, and there’s
something similar in California or something called Silicon Valley or something like that.
To be honest with you, I’ve never heard of Tech City. I’d really like to find out what it’s
about.
It does trickle in conversations here with the teachers. It’s on Old Street, isn’t it? Just
down the road. I know it because occasionally it comes up in the papers with a
nickname London’s Silicon Valley but I heard there’s an enormous number of businesses
in tiny companies comprising of three people but there’s hundreds, thousands of them
all in this one compact space. I know bits and bobs of it. What they do in the
community is beyond me.
I’ve heard of the name and assumed IT, computers, networks but it’s never gone
beyond that, to be honest.
I’ve never heard of it.
The Silicon Roundabout.
Basically, what I remember I think it’s a little company with an idea and if you want to
get funding and everything they contribute […..] So they have some time to make sure
they can find work and in a few years they launch a product
I never knew Tech City was around the corner. I thought it was advertising companies
and marketing companies. I never knew it was around here […..] Yes, I never knew that
like it was said you know Silicon Valley. I thought there would be something similar in
the UK but […..] I didn’t think it was local. I thought it was somewhere going out of
London maybe, but you learn something every day.
While it may be unsurprising that the students enrolled in Sociology or B-Tech streams were either not
aware of the technology cluster’s existence or, if they had heard of it were uncertain about what goes on
there, it is significant that the IT students were similarly unaware. One member of the cohort had even done
a games-testing placement over the previous summer but was unaware of the wider context of the company
in which they had been placed. The students who were most aware of Tech City’ existence were usually those
who had attended in-college career guidance events at which companies were represented, usually larger
entities rather than small start-ups. The significance of this point is addressed in Section 5.4, which considers
the mutual benefits of meet-ups in places familiar and supportive to young people.
Barrier: in general, young people’s awareness of Tech City and the kind of work that goes on
there is limited to non-existent
Opportunity: Tech City companies attending career guidance events at educational institutions
improves young people’s awareness of Tech City
3.3 WORKFORCE COMPOSITION: PROFESSIONALS’ PERSPECTIVES
The Tech City workforce is perceived by the professionals interviewed to be largely white, highly educated
(in computer engineering or another STEM – science, technology, engineering, maths - field), young, middle-
class and male:
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
8
…it’s people 25 to 35 is what I typically think of. Probably blokes in skinny jeans and
beards, that’s the sort of the image that I have, but of course it’s not. I mean certainly
that sort of trendy Hoxton, Shoreditch kind of vibe […..] and certainly other people tell me
that it’s very kind of monochrome in terms of the make-up of the workforce, they’re
mainly white university graduates. That’s my perception. (Graham, apprenticeship
company)
The phrase ‘skinny jeans and beards’, or variations thereof, was a common short-hand categorization of the
kinds of people working in Tech City. Marcus provided nuance to the white, male middle-class professional
tags by setting out the diversity of trajectories by which people come into the Tech City workforce:
A lot of people transitioning from corporate jobs […..] finance, decided to come and do
something different. Or people transitioning out of large […..] marketing agencies and
coming to do something a bit more free form. Or people just coming straight out of
university and have always been sort of programmers, developers, marketers, coming into
the sort of space. So it’s a lot of emerging talent rather than kind of a huge collection of
really experienced sort of professionals; there’s a lot of sort of people doing it for the first
time, learning it as they go. (Marcus, entrepreneur)
Paul also commented on the professional diversity within Tech City start-ups, but recognized that the need
for ‘bright talented scientist engineers’ inevitably resulted in not only a ‘geeky feel’, but also gender
disparity:
I think for young women they see mainly the young men […..] we’ve got to close the
gender gap and we’ve got to close the racial gap. We don’t have a lot of blacks in the
tech sector and yet you know there are black communities in and around Tech City. How
do you, we bridge that gap? (Paul, entrepreneur/spokesperson)
Other professional interviewees also identified ethnic and gender gaps as problematic, especially given the
make-up of the local population within which TechCity is based. Thomas specifically cites the 2012 Centre for
London investigation that found that a third of Tech City employees have studied at Oxford or Cambridge
13
,
linking a lack of social mobility in the UK with low levels of participation in the IT sector of people from the
black community, particularly black women.
Overall, professionals’ perceptions of Tech City’s lack of diversity around ethnicity, gender and education
correspond with the reputational issues associated with the global IT industry more generally.
1415
Educators
interviewed for this study noted that it is a concern among young people from BME and lower socio-
economic backgrounds that ‘it is not for them’.
3.4 WORKFORCE COMPOSITION: YOUNG PEOPLE’S PERCEPTIONS
For many of the young people once they knew of Tech City’s existence their perceptions of its workforce
composition were based on their experience of seeing people walking around Hoxton and Shoreditch. These
perceptions ranged from positive stereotypes to a sense that the presence of TechCity was part of wider
changes in Hackney that had more negative impacts on their lives such as being unable to afford access to
new facilities and housing (CHAsH report, www.hackneyashome.ac.uk).
13
http://centreforlondon.org/publication/a-tale-of-tech-city/ (page 66) (accessed 21/02/15)
14
EC (2013) Women active in the ICT sector. Brussels: European Commission.
15
Raghuram, P. (2014) Gendered skilled migration and gender segregated labour markets, paper to IOM-OECD Expert
Group Meeting on the Migration of Highly Skilled Women April 3-4, Geneva.
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
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Shannon: I think I share that sense of it, I think it’s one of the two sides of the spectrum.
You’ve either got quite well dressed people running about with their quite nice
suits or you’ve got quite like what you imagine people running about in a Google
Glass. Not much care as to what they’re wearing so much as they’re being paid
quite a lot of money.
R1: Have any of you seen the beards? [Laughter] Everyone’s laughing at that,
[Laughter] the beards.
David: There’s a lot of little niche restaurants and cafes and whatever. There’s always
something going on there […..] Problem is […..] gets pricey for average
things.[…..]
Robert: They look friendly.
The majority of the student cohort was sensitive to the socio-economic and ethnic differences they
perceived to exist between themselves and the Tech City workforce:
Sarah: I think it’s people with degrees. […..]
Demba: Internet nerds isn’t it? […..]
Sarah: Nerds. […..]
Demba: Yes, the little ginger white with glasses and that, yes. […..] People with suits. […..]
Obviously must be clever people […..]
Mark: I think they’re just going to wear jewels and hoodies and they’re just scruffy types.
Demba: Yeah, they’re normal people like us. . […..]
Abdur: When you drive past it you see it’s always….I’m not trying to be rude or anything.
You don’t’ see that brown people, only white, I mean Asian people or something
like that, you see white man with their suits and ties and their…briefcase […..]
Mark: I think they will be from a rich background […..] Yes, that’s why they had the
opportunities that they had, to spend all their lives doing stuff really to computers
and a lot…
Sarah: Private schools.
Mark: Yeah.
R2: Privately educated?
Sarah: Yeah.
R2: Yeah, so they’re not people like you?
Demba: But it could be, we don’t know, we haven’t been there yet.
While some of the students describe what they see (e.g. suits, beards), it is important to draw attention to
how a number of comments in this extract and particularly the final exchange reveal assumptions of socio-
economic differences (‘they must be privately educated’). However, the final comment suggests an
openness to have these assumptions challenged through interaction. The potential significance of face-to-
face meetings that break-down assumptions and barriers are discussed in Section 5.4. Related to this, for
those students who might be interested in a career in Tech City, in whatever capacity, their perceptions of
the workforce were often linked to concerns about how they themselves might be perceived by Tech City
employees. This important point is discussed in more depth in Section 5.2 and we would recommend it as an
area for future research.
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
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Barrier: Tech City is perceived to be largely white, male, middle-class and university-educated
Opportunity: Young people are open to having their assumptions about Tech City challenged
4. Technical skills: opportunities and barriers
4.1 EXISTING PATHWAYS
This section considers research participants’ views on existing pathways by which young people can access
training and employment in Tech City. These are, primarily, apprenticeship programmes managed by public
(education institutions) and private providers; skill-specific commercial training courses delivered by Tech
City businesses, either as an add-on or their main focus (some provide free places to disadvantaged young
people); internships; and work-experience placements. Programmes aimed at primary and secondary school
students (Code Club, Apps for Good, etc.) are not discussed.
Face-to-face meet-ups such as ‘geek-a-thons’ are discussed in Section 5.4; young people’s awareness of as
online portals and apps listing training and employment opportunities is considered in Section 6.
4.1.1 Apprenticeships
Apprenticeships were understood by professional interviewees to be vocational but generally non-technical,
that is, not developing skill sets around coding and computer programming. Rather, apprenticeships were
constructed around business administration, digital marketing, web and digital design, IT helpdesk and IT
technicians (installing digital services).
None of the young people involved in the study were currently enrolled on apprenticeship programmes. One
student amongst the cohort had successfully applied for and completed a summer-long ‘apprenticeship’ with
a digital technology company. The placement, arranged through a job centre, involved participating in
gaming and taking notes on improvements. With mentoring and feeling part of a team, it had proven to be ‘a
very good experience’ for the individual concerned. In this placement, the nature of the tasks indicates the
utilization of existing skills as a gamer to test products. However, while positive, this style of placement is
more like an internship than an apprenticeship that requires more time and results in an accreditation of
some kind (if not a permanent job).
The draw-card for apprenticeships as opposed to other entry-level jobs is that it results in an accreditation as
well as experience and a salary, the significance of which was summed up by Graham:
… the thing about apprenticeships is that they are recognised by parents and young
people as a good [s.l. bet], it tends to be the kid, the apprentices and their parents care a
hell of a lot more about the qualification part at the beginning of the apprenticeship
than they do at the end. At the end they can like, yeah they’ve the certificate, but what
they’re delighted by is that their child is in a great job and, particularly if they’re
employed at the end of it, they’re off and away, and the apprenticeship itself as a
qualification becomes very second order. But at the beginning when they don’t know that
that’s what’s gonna happen in a job, a job which comes with an apprenticeship is seen as
a safer, better, higher quality opportunity that one that doesn’t come with an
apprenticeship. (Graham, apprenticeship company)
For the education providers in this study, the mandate of providing pathways to qualifications was as
important as the skills and experience acquired during the apprenticeship. This required them to find ways
to incorporate skills into the qualifications they are delivering. However, the educators were not alone in
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
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recognizing that there was an inherent tension between designing and delivering qualifications, and the
timeliness and relevance of the skills delivered through those programmes. This concern was also prevalent
amongst those Tech City entrepreneurs most concerned with young people’s prospects.
The trouble within the sort of digital economy is that the skills required and learnings of
those frequently change so quickly that by the time you’ve codified that into a curriculum
or to an offering, it’s out of date. And we’ve seen this with the computer science degrees
within universities. By the time we’ve all agreed what we should be teaching, that has
moved on ... (Marcus, entrepreneur)
The mismatch between university and apprenticeship pathways into Tech City and the intrinsic speed of the
digital economy are discussed in more depth in Section 4.2. What is pertinent at this point, however, is that
the rate of change in the technology sector is directly linked to the capacity and willingness of Tech City
businesses to take on apprentices:
… Because, to say, okay we can commit, but for the next 12 months we can teach you,
kind of, these skills, and make use of you in these ways. Like SMEs in the tech sector can't
make that commitment, 'cause they don't know what they're gonna be doing in a year's
time, they don't know what skills they're gonna need, and what skills the people that
currently work there are gonna be using in nine months' time. They just don't work on the
same timeframes - apprenticeships are too kind of slow and bureaucratic, and unwieldy
for them, at the moment (Jeff, researcher)
Likewise, the risks to small enterprises are also disincentives to taking on apprentices. It was noted by one
informant that Tech City, unlike Silicon Valley, consists mainly of many small, young, less well established
enterprises for whom taking on an apprentice may be too costly. There is an investment in time and costs in
apprenticeships that is particularly difficult for smaller tech companies to manage.
The perception that taking on apprenticeships is neither feasible nor sensible for small businesses is perhaps
reinforced by the idea that companies are only doing it for purposes of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
rather than Human Resources (HR), with CSR regarded as only feasible for larger companies:
So it’s great, them doing it, but it’s like on a surface kind of thing, ‘oh, we’re doing some
apprenticeships’, and I think part of that’s borne out by a bit of embarrassment around
not actually helping the local area. (Thomas, entrepreneur/tech trainer)
However, we would pose the question that even if companies are taking on local apprentices to meet CSR
rather than HR objectives, is this necessarily negative? This point is made in the context of how, within the
professional sphere of corporate responsibility specifically concerned with local employment, the emphasis
has shifted from the why of CSR to the how, which has positively changed the nature and efficacy of many
corporate-community engagement endeavours.
16
As Andrew (educator) suggests, ‘So although there are
elements of the corporate social responsibility in the agenda, at least that’s one thing that gets them to think
a little bit differently in terms of recruits’.
Nonetheless, a number of the professional interviewees observed that any given apprenticeship experience
could only ever be as good as the placement company’s enthusiasm, time and capacity to supervise and train
the apprentice. A key point made in this context was that companies that had survived five years of trading
were thought likely to be the most successful in this regard, and the most committed to the principle of
‘giving something back’ to the south Hackney community where Tech City is predominantly based. As noted
16
http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/docs/research/116503.pdf (accessed 20/02/15)
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by Andrew (educator), a lack of sufficiently mature and stable Tech City companies coming forward is a
barrier for apprenticeship providers to scale up the apprenticeship offerings.
However, the importance of structured programmes (such as accredited apprenticeship schemes) to
facilitate scaling up was identified by Graham. As an apprenticeship provider they have a clear vested
interest in promoting such schemes, but the principle resonated across much of the interview data:
… everyone’s got a story of someone they know who came in, blagged a job on reception
or doing something and has worked their way up, but actually if you want to increase the
numbers you have an impact on scale and you probably do need to provide more
structured programmes (Graham, apprenticeship company)
The difficulty around developing structured programmes seems to be finding the right balance between
structure and the needs of each individual company. We have already seen how designing apprenticeships is
challenging because developing curricula takes time, but time is a luxury that the Tech sector often lacks.
Section 4.4 explores ways around this, particularly ‘bundling up’ tasks into bespoke apprenticeship packages,
but an issue arising is whether this strategy for minimizing ‘slow bureaucracy’ generates risks in terms of
quality assurance and subsequent diminishing of the value of any accreditation.
Developing a structured approach could also be enhanced by increasing knowledge about how companies
can develop apprenticeships as part of their HR strategy. Information is currently fragmented, according to
Paul:
[…] we’ve gotta do a better job of communicating where business can go to find out how
these schemes are working and again if the public sector can do that, that’s great but I
also think the private sector should play a role here and those companies that are doing
apprentice schemes, you know, we need to work with them to say “okay, how do we get
the message out”? (Paul, entrepreneur/spokesperson)
Section 6 specifically attends to the issue of fragmented knowledge, along with the pros and cons of the
different media used to communicate to and with young people.
Barrier: apprenticeship programmes are currently too small scale to have an impact
Barriers: apprenticeships require commitments of time and money that small Tech City
companies may not be able to afford
Barrier: companies regard apprenticeships to be CSR rather than HR, luxury rather than necessity
Opportunity: create structured programmes to get more small to medium-sized, medium term
businesses involved in apprenticeship schemes
4.1.2 Educational Expectations and ‘push’ factors
Other interrelated issues raised by interviewees as impacting on the take-up of apprenticeships by both
young people and employers centred on the ‘push factor’ from local schools encouraging ‘strong candidates’
to go to university instead of considering vocational pathways. There may be a circular issue here, that
schools may not be pushing apprenticeships because such programmes have yet to achieve a critical mass
and positive reputation. Following on from this, there was a perception that employers assumed that
candidates coming through apprenticeship schemes were lower achievers regardless of whether this might
be the case or not.
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It's very much seen as, kind of a second rate solution option for kids who aren't doing
well academically. Which is obviously not going to entice companies into doing it,
because they know they're not getting particularly strong candidates. And there are also a
lot of strong candidates who would probably really enjoy apprenticeships, and they'd be
very well suited to them, but apprenticeships are not something that their school is
gonna push them towards. Their school is gonna push them towards A level and uni.
(Jeff, researcher)
In conversations and interviews with educators, all were of the opinion that the improved standards and
educational outcomes of Hackney’s schools and academies was, in some ways, undermining efforts to
improve vocational pathways into tech careers and apprenticeship schemes:
Hackney actually has got fantastic schools and academies so you’ve got to be pretty
determined to take your child out of a good academy, which you probably struggled to get
them into in the first place, because they have got their interest in a career in tech
(Andrew, educator).
Young people’s perspectives on the ‘university push’ will be covered in more detail in Section 4.5, however,
almost all were of the opinion that going to university was necessarily the better path. The reasons why,
however, are more complex than the school ‘push factor’ alone, bound up as they are with what they know
about earning trajectories, assumptions about the relevance of what they’ll actually learn, and concerns
about the need to ‘fit in’.
This returns to the earlier discussion on how the lack of diversity within Tech City may impact on young
people’s willingness to take up an opportunity such as an apprenticeship. Similarly, several interviewees
highlighted the different ways in which the content or skills delivered by apprenticeships didn’t tally with the
nature of Tech City itself. Marcus (entrepreneur) expressed concern that the apprenticeships pathway
trained people to do specific jobs but didn’t train people to create jobs, to be entrepreneurs:
There is nothing currently exists that teaches people that they could create their own
jobs, that they can begin to understand business models, to understand the basics of the
PNL, of understanding the basic of spreadsheets, of presenting yourself, of doing public
speaking, of fund raising, of attracting things …so there’s nothing that really kind of
teaches you to be a well-rounded sort of business owner or potential business owner.
Now when you’re confronted with the reality that small businesses form a huge part of
the UK economy it’s kind of very backwards that they’re not teaching people to create
businesses. (Marcus, entrepreneur)
Much of what Marcus is describing here could be categorized as particular forms of social and cultural
capital, which, as will be discussed later, is something that many young people in south Hackney perceive
that they lack. This specific issue has been identified by educators and trainers, and several organizations
have trialled or are trialling short-term projects designed to encourage skills like “pitching as a way of life”
(Andrew).
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Barrier: an emphasis on university when other vocational options are available
Barrier: companies perceive that apprenticeships attract lower quality candidates
Barrier: apprenticeships may not be preparing young people with the right skills
4.1.3 Internships
When comparing internships to apprenticeships, the latter have tended to be longer (at least one year) and
therefore thought to be more likely to result in the development of a comprehensive skill set, allowing time
for candidates to demonstrate that they are the right person for the job. On the other hand, this study notes
that internships have some advantages including requiring less commitment from both parties, which, in
certain circumstances, might be an incentive for Tech City companies to take on local young people.
However, according to Andrew (educator), because of their unpaid and temporary nature, internships have
previously almost exclusively involved graduates. While there has been some improvement on the issue of
paying interns, most are still not advertised and instead rely on word-of-mouth to be filled. There are
companies attempting to address this barrier by establishing databases of intern programmes. At the time
this report was produced one such company, was advertising 30 internships in London, ranging from 5 days
to 12 months, in the fields of IT, business development, marketing, social media and project management.
Yet many of the recruiting companies are expressly looking for graduates and, ironically, many of the
positions require previous experience. Internships then appear as more suited to graduates because they are
more likely to have sufficient skills to come into a company for a short period of time and still deliver some
value. The exception may be IT-savvy young people (gamers, those already making computers or designing
apps) who have requisite skills, although they may still lack the experience of workplace environments.
Internships were generally found not to be ‘on the radar’ of the young people involved in the study. They
were generally viewed as unpaid jobs, the equivalent of work experience placements, but useful in terms of
gaining experience. Others expressed the assumption that internships were for graduates and, therefore,
they would not consider such opportunities until they had completed their university degrees. While for the
IT students, with an existing skills base and personal interest, internships weren’t necessarily a graduate-only
domain, it was unattractive as an entry-level pathway because of the risk that it would not lead to a job.
Obtaining a university degree was a way of minimizing that risk – university fees notwithstanding:
Bentner: Yeah but for the entry job now, the thing is, if it's a guaranteed job after that,
yeah. Is it a guaranteed job?
R1: Often internships lead to permanent jobs, yeah. But not always, you're right.
Bentner: Exactly, you're unsure about that, you're not sure it's guaranteed. When I can go
to uni and get a better chance, 90 per cent chance of getting a job.
R1: Yeah, so you still feel that that's a better path, rather than choosing a path that
doesn't give you as much debt as the end?
Bentner: Because the one that don't give you much debt at the end is not guaranteed a
job. But with uni, experience, knowledge, everything you need to know, you have
90 per cent guaranteed a job.
The extent to which the IT students evidenced strong faith in what a university education will do for them is
striking. Section 4.5 presents young people’s views on the necessity of attending university in more depth,
but a ‘push factor’ from schools could be influential, along with the mandate for colleges to deliver
qualification outcomes oriented to university entry. However, these processes of decision making, the
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weighing up of the risks of each career pathway, and the role of family, peers and school in influencing those
decisions is an important area for future research. There is a policy and commercial imperative to
understand why and how young people are making their choices.
Barriers: young people have limited knowledge of how to access internships, which, if unpaid, can
be unaffordable
Barrier: internships are possibly more suited to graduates because employers still hold
expectations that interns will deliver value in a short timeframe
Opportunities: some IT-savvy young people may have sufficient skills to deliver during internships
4.1.4 Work experience placements
As with internships, finding and filling work experience placements (or any sort of Tech City training job, for
that matter) are also hampered by a lack of knowledge about how people outside the Tech City ‘ecology’
find out what is available. Similarly, unpaid work as a means of gaining experience is not an option for people
who cannot afford it. In the course of talking with subject teachers responsible for the students in the
research cohort it became apparent that it was very difficult for them to arrange work experience
placements, even though the courses were to a certain extent designed to ready students for the workplace.
It was clear that they spent a lot of time on the task without much success, despite some of the students
having advanced knowledge and skills that would enable them to do productive work.
IT Educator: We’ve been trying but it’s extremely difficult. Actually it’s become an
impossible task to be honest, especially to place students, sorry, I don’t want to add to
their worries. […] It’s becoming extremely difficult to place students on the right levels, on
the right jobs for them to gain the beneficial experience […..] You can see the talent,
they’re actually working […] I see them giving all their best and some of them, they do
excel in work, the fact of the matter it counts for almost nothing. Then they get the
qualification, but what do they do next?
Implicated with the difficulty of finding placements is that teachers may not have sufficient social capital in
terms of connections to Tech City to build and maintain relationships there. That personal connections
enable more productive connections between education institutions and Tech City businesses was clear
from the interview with Leslie, who did have personal links to a Tech City business:
Leslie: Because he’s [has] always been able to translate for me when we’re talking about
pythonistas and geek-outs. He was able to use the language … which would encourage
those young people working at Tech City to think, “Oh, okay I might come and see what
these people are doing”. They haven't even got employment opportunities some of these
very small businesses for the young people we’ve got here, but they were interested
enough.
Some students have used their own initiative, such as finding a placement through the job centre, but again
in the example below, it was facilitated by a personal connection.
I went to the Jobcentre and seen a project going on rated with companies and I was
asking if there’s any apprenticeships. And they told me that they had one opportunity but
it was very difficult to get [onto] … But the person that gave me the opportunity knew the
person that was running the place, so I got onto that, yeah. (Leon, IT student)
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These findings reinforce the sense that face-to-face meetings and personal connections are an important
part of differentiating talented and motivated young local people from the crowd of talented and motivated
applicants on paper. The mutual benefits arising from face-to-face meetings are discussed further below.
Barriers: both educators and young people lack social capital (personal connections) necessary to
organize work placements
Barrier: work placements are unpaid which may be unaffordable
4.2 TIMING MISMATCHES AT TWO LEVELS
Of relevance at this point is that two levels of temporal mismatches are perceived to undermine the capacity
of Tech City businesses to take on and train up young people, including those engaged on apprenticeship
programmes. These are: the rate of tech development outstripping formal education; and that Tech City
business timeframes do not necessarily mesh well with training inexperienced staff.
4.2.1 The rate of tech development outstrips formal education
Across the interview cohort of educators, trainers and entrepreneurs there was a general concern that the
rate at which technology changes, along with the increasing breadth of skills required, means that formal
STEM education pathways can be out of date by the time a young person is deemed ‘ready’ to enter the
workforce:
… a three year degree in computer science – you might as well call it computer history,
ancient history, computer ancient history ‘cause it’s changed so radically by the time
you’ve finished your degree. Or media, the same, has changed so radically; one year
you’re studying telly and in year three you’re studying … there is no … it’s all YouTube and
telly’s changed ‘cause you’ve got smart TVs. It’s all changed drastically. So a three year
degree course, if it’s historical or Latin or ancient Mediterranean studies or shit that
happened years ago or whatever; great. But anything else which is any way relates to
practicality you’re gonna struggle with and I’m not sure we should be sending kids to do
degrees (Thomas, entrepreneur/tech trainer)
When this issue was put to the IT students, for whom it might be most relevant, they were very aware of the
rate at which new tech comes to market but were also very optimistic that university and any university-
organized industry placements would be sufficient to stay abreast of developments:
Yeah but I reckon in university, like, if a new digital area comes up, then they teach it in
uni, they'll give you an extension course. There's something new, so they give you
something extra to learn about it […..] Yeah, I think it will all come down in the university, I
reckon it will. (Bentner, IT student)
As mentioned earlier, faith in the benefits of a university education resonated across the focus groups. They
were not blindly optimistic, however; it was more that worrying about it would be a paralysing waste of
time, as Bentner explains: “So you won't move, you're just stuck. So you just have to do what you've got to
do” (IT student).
4.2.2 Tech City business timeframes do not mesh well with training inexperienced staff
Another timing issue identified by many interviewees was that taking on unskilled staff that need to be
trained up on the job was a bad ‘fit’ for the nature of Tech City start-ups. Overall, the characteristically small
staff teams, in combination with short-term venture capital funding deadlines and the speed with which
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products and projects need to come to fruition, means that many Tech City companies simply do not have
the capacity.
I think the trouble with the very nature of sort of start-ups and high growth … you have to
separate out sort of two things. One is we’re trying to fulfil places for companies that are
growing at a sort of unsustainable rate whereby they’re in the ascendant and they frankly
they need bodies, they frankly need people. That’s the moment where injecting unskilled
labour actually slows you down rather than speeds you up because actually you need
people who can go in and hit pace really quickly, not go in and work slowly and then have
to be managed and trained and sort of guided up through the system. That takes a
huge amount of resource off you. […..] The reality is if that person is unskilled […] you
spend so long educating them in what you need to do that actually by the time you’ve
done the training you’re three months further down the line but you haven’t moved
anywhere. (Marcus, entrepreneur)
As will be seen below, the implication of this temporal/capacity disjuncture is that a diverse team in terms of
educational backgrounds, technical knowledge and experience may bring dividends in the long run, but the
cost – and risk – is the time needed to invest in training which a small Tech City start-up may not have.
Barrier: Time limitations and the capacity of small businesses to manage apprentices or other
non-graduate trainees
4.3 GRADUATES VS NON-GRADUATES
My sense is there’s an expectation level that you’re taking on board a university graduate
(Paul, entrepreneur/spokesperson)
Even that’s immaterial in the tech world, whether you have a degree or not, who cares.
How good are you, what have you made? You can see on the web, here’s what you’ve
made. So having a piece of paper is a bit old school (Thomas, entrepreneur/tech trainer)
As seen in the two brief excerpts above, interviewees were divided as to the extent to which having a
university degree was necessary in order to contribute creatively and economically to the Tech City sphere.
However, a common theme was that a bias towards recruiting STEM graduates meant that Tech City
businesses were ‘missing a trick’; several tricks, in fact.
4.3.1 Local self-starting, self-taught entrepreneurial ‘Techies’
In the first instance, that IT and digital technologists can be self-taught – indeed, are expected to maintain
self-directed learning throughout their careers – means that young people whose education pathways had
been less than linear were potential tech talent because of their intrinsic interest and enthusiasm.
[….] it’s very raw talent but [which has] huge academic potential that’s not really being
properly tapped into and may not show itself on bits of paper, and they may not have the
history that looks great. One of the young people here came from a youth offending unit
and PRU [Pupil Referral Unit], he’s brilliant. He could wire up someone’s network in five
minutes, and he’s running a business and he knows what he wants to do, […..] if he was
just given the right opportunity he’d be absolutely a huge success wherever he went.
(Leslie, educator)
A number of similar stories were told by interviewees, about local young people who had built tech-related
businesses whilst still in education. Indeed, we met a few budding entrepreneurs in the IT focus groups.
What they lacked in these instances was knowledge of how to take it further and whom to connect to, an
issue related to Tech City’s ‘meet-up’ culture.
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The implication of much of the interviewees’ talk about the failure to look beyond the graduate recruit pool
was that Tech City businesses were missing out on the benefits of employing young people whose creative
potential had not been formed – and normed – by a university education. However, Jeremy and Jeff, think-
tank researchers interviewed in tandem, were more ambivalent about the capacity of Hackney’s self-taught
‘techies’ to compete against university STEM graduates, personal motivation notwithstanding:
Jeremy: You know, most of these people have got physics masters degrees. The
fact that you went to a much improved school in Hackney, good as it is, is not
gonna get you all the way there […..] people who learn coding are often self-
taught […..] self-starters, they have an intrinsic motivation to do it, they're
interested in it. They're computing nerds, basically […..] On the other hand, it
means that finding somebody aged 16, and hoping that they'll be able to compete
with a load of self-starting computer nerds from elsewhere, with a physics degree,
is...
Jeff: Optimistic!
Jeremy: Yeah, it's optimistic! So I'm not quite sure what I make of that overall. But
it's not easy for them to get involved, and they face very tough competition.
There are several factors that contribute to why ‘self-starting computer nerds’ from Hackney may not be
able to compete. Issues around a lack of particular forms of social and cultural capital (the question of ‘will
I/they fit in?’ discussed in Section 5) and how these non-technical social and cultural skills and assets might
be acquired by attending university, were implicated by some professional interviewees and many of the
young people involved in the focus groups. In particular, differences of cultural capital – life experiences in
common that enable and facilitate social interactions and the ability to communicate on the same
‘wavelength’ – are implicated in the minimal connections between Tech City businesses and young local
people, including those that might be facilitated by apprenticeship programmes:
So when they do present themselves to each other and these two alien tribes do finally
meet each other, these employers with all their cultural conditioning about graduates,
these people have been culturally conditioned to have graduates, these people have been
told none of the tricks of the trade about how to actually engage with these people, it’s
not surprising that they don’t often meet, and why the Tech City stuff in terms of
apprenticeships and so on hasn’t really kind of shot up in numbers. (Graham,
apprenticeship company)
Opportunity: south Hackney produces self-starting, self-taught entrepreneurial ‘techies’
Barrier: they still have to compete with university graduates and may lack forms of cultural
capital needed in order to do so
4.4 A LACK OF DIVERSITY AND ENTRY-LEVEL RUNGS ON THE JOB LADDER
4.4.1 In some areas, raw talent and creativity can trump a degree
Two of the most significant barriers identified by interviewees, almost regardless of the nature of their
professional activities (entrepreneur, training provider, educator) were the interrelated assumptions that, 1)
computer studies/engineering graduate-level entry positions constitute the lowest possible rung on the
employment ladder, and 2) that more computer studies graduates are what Tech City needs. This tendency
was consistently framed as an internal cultural bias that needed to be overcome for the benefit of both the
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Tech City cluster as well as young local people. Andrew, as an educator, identified a lack of diversity as an
outcome of this focus on recruiting graduates with detrimental implications for business:
[…..] if your clients are Coca Cola or Nike who might already be selling to a young urban
clientele then rather than have a focus group why not have some people on your staff
team who come from that background? [….] we’ve got some great quotes from
companies who say, “you know, I’m in the business of saying ‘we are the best, we are
different, but if my workforce looks the same as every other agencies workforce how am I
different?’” So, or, “if I replace an old white middleclass degree educated man with a
young white middleclass degree educated man, where’s the fresh thinking coming into
the business?”.
Precisely this same point was made by ‘Mark’, a BTEC student:
If you bring people from different upbringing they’re going to be different ideas, different
business, start-ups, apps. Whatever they’re going to make is going to be
completely different from a different walk of life, it’s going to come in to affect
other people, not just that straight down the line, every other Tom, Dick and
Harry sort of thing.
Thomas, a successful tech entrepreneur and digital technology training provider, was an enthusiast of the
benefits of bringing young, local people on board, regardless of their lack of formal university qualifications.
Noting the financial as well as creative benefits to be gained by training-up young people on the job, he
argued that it was a viable business model given that companies may not be able to afford graduates and
needed to stay abreast of technology changes: ‘So, whether someone has got a First Class from Oxford or
not is totally irrelevant and that’s my belief, especially in technology’.
In a similar vein, Graham argued the case for creating more rungs on the employment ladder to be filled by
school-leavers and apprentices. This particularly related to tasks ‘that are typically unloved and tend to go
undone or not done very well’. Graham gave examples of testing, pay-per-click campaigns and monitoring
social media. These are low-level tasks often outsourced to an agency at a cost to the company but that
could be undertaken by a junior or lesser skilled employee.
So there’s this mismatch; all these tasks that need doing and these people are happy to do
them but culture and practice means that employers typically don’t look to these people
as a solution, and actually what they don’t do very well is actually even look at those
tasks and think about them in a very effective way, to actually say ‘hold on a minute,
we’ve got a whole bunch of tasks, we could parcel these up and create a job out of it’. …
so there’s a lot of work I think to be done, lots of people are beginning to do that but
that’s certainly my perception. (Graham, apprenticeship company)
However, while identifying lower level work as an opportunity for non-graduate employees we would argue
there is a need to ensure the possibility of career progression, otherwise this cohort may find themselves
relegated to ‘dead end’ jobs. Creating more lower rungs on the employment ladder also risks entrenching a
two tier system in the IT sector, in which lower qualified employees get ‘stuck’ doing repetitive, low-skilled,
low paid tasks while graduates maintain their access to higher value, better paid work. However, as Thomas
argues, while they may be on different pathways, they are also on a track to improve earnings, based on the
opportunities of supply and demand.
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4.4.2 Risks and benefits of diversity
In addition to the possibility of improved financial margins associated with training up school leavers rather
than taking on graduates, Thomas linked the diversity that came from recruiting outside of the usual pool of
graduate talent to widening market opportunities, an idea supported by others, such as Paul:
I think we need to do […..] more with our ethnic groups that are out there and say you
know “you can be of Pakistani origin, of South Asian origin, you can be from the Arabic
culture, it’s okay” and actually the beauty of a lot of these businesses is they have people
from all over the world working in there and they’re connecting back to their […..] home
markets. (Paul, entrepreneur/spokesperson)
Internal culture was again highlighted as a barrier to diversity in employment with claims that Tech City was
behind other industries when it came to recruiting beyond the usual graduate pool. According to Graham
(apprenticeship company):
‘… although there’s of course huge amounts of innovation in Tech City around the
technology, in terms of how they build the companies they’re all very similar to each
other, certainly the feel, the culture of all the companies that I’ve been into, in fact
‘you’re, I can’t remember which one you were, you’re just like that one over there’. So
how they’re building their businesses is actually very, very un-innovative, even if the
software there might be working on in a field sense is cutting edge. (Graham,
apprenticeship company)
The implication is that the Tech City focus on recruiting graduates represents potential lost opportunities for
both companies and young people. Furthermore, and as was reinforced by Andrew, the recruitment
paradigm perpetuates “because of the way the recruitment pipeline works in those Tech businesses
effectively is self-replicating” (Andrew, educator).
It is likely that several factors are involved in why the pipeline remains oriented to university graduates
despite the positive alternatives presented by interviewees like Leslie, Graham, Thomas and Paul. For
example, it may not be just about a degree but also how employers are, unsurprisingly, assessing candidates
on the basis of who is most likely to provide the best ‘fit’ – and the most straight forward way to do that is to
find someone with a similar life trajectory as oneself and one’s colleagues. We consider this point further in
Section 5.1.
Barrier: as the recruitment pipeline is oriented towards university graduates there are not
enough entry-level rungs on the job ladder
Opportunity: increasing recognition that diversity in the workplace can enhance innovation;
young people can provide a creative and marketing edge with insights into their social
demographic
4.5 LOCAL YOUNG PEOPLE ASSUME A UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IS NECESSARY
Even though the professional respondents’ opinions about the value of university degrees in the context of
the digital tech industry were varied, the majority of young people who participated in the research were of
the view that attending university and acquiring a degree was going to be necessary (though they might
elect to undertake an apprenticeship or work for a couple of years beforehand). This is despite the significant
financial burden that would come from needing student loans for university fees and living costs.
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Although none of the young research participants personally knew anyone who worked in the Tech City
cluster, one, Mark, a BTEC student, had a father working in the IT industry. Mark’s opinion on the value of a
university degree was very much shaped by his father’s experience that not having one imposed a ceiling on
his career trajectory – a ‘cap’:
… because my dad’s in that industry and he didn’t go to university he always complains
that there’s always a cap ‘cause he came in at entry level and now he can’t go any further
because he doesn’t have a degree ….
Mark’s perspective is an important counter-point to the optimism expressed by some professional
respondents about the extent to which young people without formal qualifications, or with certifications
below that of a degree, can ‘make it’ in the tech world.
While the majority of the student cohort was of the opinion that going to university was necessary, there
were striking contrasts in levels of optimism around the likelihood of finding employment afterwards, with a
clear association between optimism, scepticism and the different subject streams from which the cohort was
constituted: IT, BTEC, and Sociology. Specifically in relation to Tech City, IT students displayed high
confidence that the advanced knowledge acquired through doing a university degree would be enough to
find well-paid tech-based employment, and on that basis discounted apprenticeships as an option.
Bentner: Yeah, 'cause to me, uni is more advanced, isn't it, they teach everything that you
should know.
Crazy8: Doesn't give you a guarantee though.
Bentner: Yeah, it's not guaranteed, but it's more advanced, like you have a better chance,
if you're going to uni, and then coming back with a chance after going to uni.
Justin: It's like going to uni, and then coming out of it, you have a much better chance of
getting a job.
Bentner: Yeah, it's like 80/20 if you go to uni.
Justin: Because only this year, they showed us some research of how far a uni student
would go, and an apprenticeship student would go. And it's massive, it's like by
the age of 35, an apprenticeship should have around £290,000 in the bank.
Whereas a uni student would have around £360,000.
The association of higher education with higher earning capacity corroborates Mark’s earlier comments that
his father’s career was being ‘capped’ by not having a degree.
The idea that socio-economic factors outside of a university education might have an impact on their ability
to gain a job in Tech City (such as lacking social networks or possessing cultural norms like speaking in a
particular way) did not resonate for the IT students. For them, their personal interests in all things ‘tech’
(gaming, coding, making their own computers) – in conjunction with strong confidence in the value and
relevance of a university education in terms of acquired technical knowledge – were deemed to be sufficient
to ensure successful entry to well-paid employment in an environment like Tech City. This corresponded
with the opinion held by Leslie (educator), that the students who were confident, natural ‘techies’ and
entrepreneurs, would thrive.
Given that most of the IT students were also keen gamers (with some wanting to be games designers), a
topic for future research might be to explore the extent to which being part of an expert and international
community of gamers contributes to their greater confidence. For the non-gamers, however, it is relevant to
the study that young people are evaluating their educational and vocational options with a concern to
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secure financial safety prevalent in their minds, which may explain the preference for a university degree. As
Graham (apprenticeship provider) suggests:
I think actually young people of that age, 17, 18, 19, are actually by and large remarkably
unadventurous, as they want security, they want safety, they wanna know that what
they’re doing is a safe option that other people are doing as well.
Unlike the IT students, the BTEC cohort were, in general, more cautious and sceptical about the extent to
which a university education would enable them to overcome what they saw as fundamental hurdles of
difference. When asked about what kinds of things might get in the way of working in Tech City, Mark
expressed a concern that he would be socially isolated:
‘Cause we’ve already talked about the kind of people that work there, I don’t think I could
associate with them as much and so I wouldn’t be inclined to go work in that field because
I’ll be having lunch on my own (Mark, BTEC student)
Even though Mark was committed to going to university to study computer engineering in order to escape
the career ‘cap’ represented by his father, he nevertheless feels that Tech City is not the place for him. This
response brings home the point that perceptions of having insufficient social, but particularly cultural, capital
– beyond that acquired through a university education – shapes local young people’s thinking about Tech
City as a place to work. The next section of the report considers these issues in greater depth, and explores
the extent to which some of these concerns, often articulated in terms of class and ethnic differences, can be
attributed to perception rather than reality.
Barrier: young local people assume that going to university is the best path to a place like Tech
City
5. Soft skills and organizational culture
Examining people’s understandings of whether or not a university education is necessary reveals the extent
to which differences in cultural capital and associated communication difficulties negatively impact upon
young people’s access to training and employment in Tech City. This section of the report explores how the
question of ‘will you/I fit in?’ intersects with self-replicating recruitment outcomes. It ends with a discussion
of how to improve the frequency and quality of interactions between Tech City businesses and local young
people, and, based on the information provided by the studies’ student participants, recommends modes of
communicating Tech City to local young people.
5.1 “WILL YOU FIT?”
The following interview excerpt is revealing as a key mechanism by which the Tech City recruitment
paradigm is self-replicating and generates a particular organizational culture. Pursuing the question of ‘will
you fit?’, a lack of common experiences renders each party unable to communicate with the other. The
excerpt, from an apprenticeship provider, is presented in full because it evokes a sense of how specific
interactions between Tech City employers and young local interviewees are symptomatic of a gulf in cultural
capital:
Well just culturally there is […..] just that sense of it being really cool, ‘are you in, are you
in the club, do you know the rules, do you dress the right way, do you know how to talk
in the right way’. Tech City is still quite a trendy and therefore exclusive, wants to be quite
exclusive and cool […..] and they’ll also want to be people who are […..] “we’re really
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open, we’re really broad minded”, but …like all they’re probably far less broad minded
than they’d like to be, […..] one of the things that I’ve noticed, not just at Tech City but
across the advertising industry, is that, someone who’s been in the advertising industry
five or ten years, one of the ways in which they evaluate people coming in is, … ‘will you
fit, will you be a good person to have around, will you kind of get how to get on on a
Friday night when we go for beers after work, will you fit in with how we run meetings
with what we find funny, what we joke about, what we complain about’, all that ‘will you
fit?’ is a really important part of the advertising industry. They all wanna work with
people who are alike, to that extent, like them, and they have a tried and tested set of
topics of conversation to work that out and typically with a young person it’ll be around
things like university, social life and all the rest of it, and actually lots of these kids don’t
have, have never had it, have never been, you know, if someone says “so, do you like
music or have you been to any festivals”, all these young kids say “oh ‘cause I haven’t
been able to afford it, I’ve never had the money, I didn’t come from a background where I
could just shell out 250 quid for tickets […..] booze, food for a weekend, so no I can’t talk
about that” and then the people who are in there think ‘well god, this kid’s either shy or
they’re not into this sort of stuff, or they’re not cool or…’, just because they haven’t had a
shared topic of conversation and university would be another one; what did you get up
to at university, were you into this, were you into that. And therefore the people on the
company side of things don’t have, they kind of pick off the usual conversation areas
that they like to have, and find they’re pulling complete blanks, they can’t have a
conversation and they don’t know how to have a conversation with an 18 year old to
evaluate whether they are a good fit or not. (Graham, apprenticeship company)
Differences in cultural capital – a university education and associated social life, the financial resources to
participate in cultural activities such as music festivals, styles of dress, ways of speaking, shared jokes and
complaints – are seen to make it very challenging for Tech City employers and young local people to
communicate effectively precisely at the moment of negotiating access. However, it also needs to be
acknowledged that companies do need to find people who can ‘slot into’ their organizational culture with
minimal negative operational impact. Minimizing risk is a significant driver and shaper of recruitment
strategies, particularly in small firms.
Barrier: methods for assessing ‘will you fit?’ can put young local people at a disadvantage
5.2 “I WON’T FIT IN”
Worrying about not fitting in is, of course, an experience common to people in all walks of life. Paul, a Tech
City entrepreneur, wanted to demystify the sense that what goes on in Tech City is all about being a ‘cool
techie’, highllghting that there are many other roles in the tech sector that require different skills. However,
as Jeff (thinktank researcher) argues, despite a wide variety of roles, there is still a sense that, for some
young people, “that’s not for me”:
The reason that young people from South Hackney aren't going into Tech City is […..]
'cause they perceive that young people from South Hackney don't go into Tech City. And
so, it's almost an intangible...it's just that ‘people like me don't do it’.
In this context there were, again, significant contrasts in how the different subject streams within the
student cohort thought about issues of cultural capital and ‘fitting in’ to the tech sector. The IT students
were once more the most confident:
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Justin: I don't see the point of fitting in or anything, you know, what is there to fit in with.
Everyone has their own style, everyone has their own way of doing things. Why
should you change what you do for other people?
Bentner: And that's where teamwork comes in, 'cause you have to work in a team, and
that means everyone. At the end of the day, you're going to make the same
project, you're all creating something.
Falcao: […] You don't have to fit in, you just have to be yourself and just do it.
R1: Okay, and so you have the conviction of your own selves, to take you forward,
belief in yourself.
Bentner: Yeah, definitely.
R1: Okay, so you think that's a really important part of it.
Bentner: Being confident.
Crazy8: But you can't be too confident.
Bentner: No, but once they're confident, you're more motivated 'cause you know you
know certain stuff.
This confidence acquired from knowing ‘certain stuff’ corresponds with Leslie’s (educator) understanding of
students enrolled in STEM streams more generally:
Where the young people have been confident they don’t really care who they’re working
for. They’re themselves, but it’s more whether they’ve got the confidence to get out there
and find themselves something or talk to people. So there might be an unconscious
barrier, but they don’t say, “Oh, we can’t go and work for those people”. Where we’ve
brought people together it’s gone really well.
Both of these extracts illuminate a sense of how intrinsic confidence from already having acquired a level of
knowledge leads to a confidence in one’s self that makes fitting in more possible. However, Leslie also points
towards the issue of confidence “to get out there and find themselves something […..] talk to people”, and it
is here that the crux of the ‘fitting in’ issue lies. At another point in the discussion with the IT students,
Falcao articulated how fear of failing at the application stage might put young people off applying in the first
place: “Fear to fail, I suppose. Because say they go in and apply for these opportunities and they don't get it,
it'll put them down, mentally” (Falcao, IT student).
For the BTEC students the picture was also more ambivalent around this moment of making contact through
applying for jobs. When asked what might make it difficult for him to access work in Tech City, Abdur, a BTEC
student, articulated a set of concerns around perceptions of Turks, Asians and black people, along with
differences of class. It is salient at this point to clarify that the IT and BTEC segments of the student cohort
had similar levels of ethnic diversity, with the majority of students being of Middle-Eastern, South Asian or
African Caribbean descent.
Even though Abdur, like many of his colleagues, had not heard of the Tech City cluster prior to the focus
group, he ascribed the sector with the same kinds of prejudices that he felt the London/UK job market to
have more generally
17
. Abdur felt that he wouldn’t get an interview because of his ethnic background:
… I feel like obviously first of all we haven’t got the qualifications yet and second of all that
we probably won’t even get interviews ‘cause when they see our name…in a way black
17
Recently reported research highlighted that ethnic minority groups faced higher incidents of discrimination in the job
market, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-muslims-face-worst-job-discrimination-of-any-
minority-group-9893211.html [accessed 02 March 2015]
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people still get treated a bit better than like, let’s say…us Turks and Asians and that
‘cause when they see our name, like, Erkan or Abdul they know straight away this guy’s
not English, but a black name could be called Caleb or John or something… he will get the
interview and he’ll get to prove himself to them, we don’t get that chance […..] I was born
and bred in this country, I’m just not… […..] I like white people, I haven’t got anything
against them, I’ve got white friends, but it’s just the people in there that’s…[…..] I don’t
think they want people of our class to join…
On following up these interrelated concerns of class and ethnicity it became clear that several members of
this discussion group attributed exclusionary thought processes to Tech City employers and how they might
perceive them:
Like I’m saying, if I go there I’m not going to go work there because I won’t fit in. They’re
probably saying, “Oh, I don’t want him to work here because he won’t fit in with me”, sort
of thing (Mark, BTEC student)
Other than characterizing the Tech City workforce as largely white, male and middle-class, the majority of
professional respondents were circumspect in relation to discussing the extent to which differences of
ethnicity or class were impeding young local peoples’ access to opportunities in Tech City. For Thomas
(entrepreneur and tech trainer), however, ethnicity and gender imbalances within Tech City were perceived
to be symptomatic of broader biases:
… if you ask a spectrum of the Tech City businesses, ‘what is the percentage of people who
have been locally schooled in the local area, that you have employed?’ It’ll be around zero
percent […..] And, I think that’s the fundamental issue […..] I have a real worry, because
whilst technology’s a great equalizer and a great leveller, it can also be used to be a great
divider, because you can create old boys clubs, except that this isn’t old boys clubs, this is
old class clubs, right? This is the social mobility issue, the symptoms of which, in
technology are, predominantly male, predominantly white, low ethnicity. But the key
issue is class. So, which universities, which school did you go to, [….] it’s very easy in a
new market, in a new technology, to have this clique develop, and Tech City is probably
the biggest clique I have ever seen in my whole life […..] I’m not going to talk about
ethnicity or sex or anything because I think those are symptoms. I think they’re all from
the same class, right? And I think that’s the problem. Because then the societal biases,
selection biases that exist, pervade, which means the symptoms are, white male, [and]
underrepresented ethnic recruits don’t feature … (Thomas, entrepreneur/tech trainer)
If Thomas’s perspective is in any way accurate, the implication is that there is an unfortunate element of
truth to young people’s perceptions that ethnic and socio-economic differences play a role in how easy or
difficult it is for them to access training and employment in Tech City. However, when asked whether they
would gain confidence from actually knowing what Tech City people think rather than wondering about it
and assuming the worst, even the most sceptical of the young respondents showed some optimism.
Concerns about ‘fitting in’ appeared to be centred on the nature of the initial moment of contact. If that first
moment is a job application then young people may lack the confidence to apply. But, as Mark (BTEC
student) suggested, “If interviews are more open and easy to get then I think I would be more confident to go
for the job”. Face-to-face meetings were also cited by both young people and professionals as vital to
breaking down barriers; to be explored further in Section 5.4.
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Barrier: organisational culture within Tech City influences who is employed
Barrier: young people may feel they won’t fit in, related to how they think Tech City might
perceive them
Barrier: worries about not fitting in undermine confidence to make first contact through job
applications
5.3 ADAPTING SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CAPITAL FOR THE WORKPLACE
While, as noted above, diversity can have positive benefits for businesses in Tech City, differences in social
and cultural capital are highlighted in the various ways in which young people understand the norms of a
workplace. This can impact on employers’ perception of young people from different backgrounds and their
willingness to recruit from a potentially different pool of employees.
We get guys coming in, because I do the induction thing, and they wear their coat. This is
the first morning in their new, technically they’re not in their job but it’s the first – they’re
being paid – they’re just with us for the first week, and they’ve got their coat on! And it’s
completely obvious that no-one’s ever said to them you should take your coat off. So
that sort of advice; but tough advice. (Graham, apprenticeship company)
Graham’s anecdote encapsulates the extent to which even if young people successfully apply for an
apprenticeship or placement, some still have work to do in terms of learning basic behavioural norms that
enable them to fit in. Communication may be an even more fundamental challenge to overcome given the
linguistic diversity of Hackney and language inflected by contemporary youth slang. As Graham (educator)
notes,
our feeling is that there is something about not speaking English when you are at home
that has an impact on people’s ability to present and to talk in an articulate way, in the
way that the companies would recognise as articulate.
There is a stress here on what the companies would recognise as good communication. However, it could be
argued that this definition needs to be broadened if those companies are to benefit from a multi-lingual
workforce, particularly in terms of having employees that can connect with diverse consumers and bring
innovation (as noted in Sections 4.3 and 4.4). This returns us, though, to the issue of time, as research into
global workplaces indicates that while there are benefits to a diverse workforce, it also takes time to bring
cohesion to the team and this is particularly related to communication.
Differences in communication styles also impact on the social networking that is key to Tech City
recruitment. Concepts and products are ‘pitched’ at weekly events such as the Silicon Drinkabout and
3Beards’ ‘Don’t pitch me bro’. The significance of networking to gaining access and doing business in Tech
City was repeatedly reiterated in the interview data. That these events and activities might actively exclude
local people, young or otherwise, was raised by Thomas (entrepreneur/tech trainer):
So I think working practices, the way people communicate in businesses, alpha male
behaviour even if it’s not a male, it’s a woman, but you know, they need a bit of
understanding of the local culture. Just thinking, a really blindingly obvious statement I’d
say, say of a drinking culture, what happens if you’re Muslim? I mean I’m not and I drink
too much, but you know, do you feel excluded? What happens if you have kids? Feel
excluded. If it happens to be a woman then it’s all male sexism. Tech City has like got a lot
of very male engineers who say some really inappropriate things … it’s not sustainable
[…..] Like Silicon Drinkabout, there you go, just the word says it all. Ping Pong Fight Club,
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there you go. Just think of all these events, just the name, you don’t need to go any further
than the name to realise the thinking around whether it’s gonna appeal to local residents
or not. Of course it [isn’t].
Nevertheless, Andrew, Leslie and the other educators all talked about how improving young peoples’
abilities to present themselves to potential training providers and employers was an increasingly important
part of the educators’ mandate to prepare students. But such training was not necessarily part of existing
formal curricula, that is, it was being delivered around other course requirements.
While preparing students to access Tech City was one strategy, another was to bring Tech City to them on
campus. When discussing the outcome of such events Leslie was enthusiastic, particularly noting the
opportunity for young people to learn how to network. However, the most successful outcomes involved
students who had basic social skills and the confidence to introduce themselves and talk to adults. Less
encouragingly, Andrew spoke of how, when they have brought young people together with company
representatives, low confidence affected how they responded, rendering students unable to make the most
of the opportunity:
[…] if you are young and black, and I do think that young people temper their
expectations, and they don’t want to seem too keen and enthusiastic [.….] So I know some
of my staff get very, very frustrated when opportunities are presented to young people to
take part. I mean, these digital business days, we start a day with 50 people and we will
end up with 40 people, because they get easily bored or they think it is not for them.
(Andrew, educator)
Educators we spoke to off-the-record confirmed that because of assumptions or misperceptions about how
they would be perceived, young people were often reluctant to attend in-house events designed to open up
opportunities for them. This said, the relative successes arising from bringing young people together with
Tech City businesses need to be acknowledged, and the IT students in particular referenced those kinds of
events – even though they were not aware of Tech City as the general context in which those companies are
embedded. The potential for breaking down assumptions on both sides are considered next.
Barrier: differences in understandings of workplace norms
Opportunity: contact between Tech City and students can begin a process of breaking down
misperceptions
5.4 OVERCOMING MISPERCEPTIONS
Face-to-Face meetings
Educators were very positive about the benefits of ‘meet-ups’, whether they were tech-oriented, such as
‘geek-a-thons’, or more general career guidance events. A key recommendation of this report is that these
meet-ups ought to constitute the first point of contact between young local people and Tech City businesses.
Face-to-face meetings and meet-ups are already happening because educators, trainers and careers advisors
understand the significance of networking to the way that business gets done in Tech City. We referred
earlier (Section 4.1.4) to how educators’ personal networks were also implicated in their capacity to set up
work experience placements for their students, and draw Tech City businesses to campuses for a ‘look-see’.
Importantly, meet-up events hosted by education institutions also provide ‘ways in’ for Tech City businesses
who might otherwise not know where to start in terms of accessing local young people.
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There is an interest in working with young people, but it’s how do you, you know, you
don’t just go knock on the door of a school and say, “Can I come and give you a hand you
need some pathways in, as well as pathways for the students out.” (Leslie, educator)
Young people say, “if Tech City were to come to us …..”
From the perspectives of young people across the four groups in this study, connections with Tech City could
be strengthened were Tech City to have initial contact with them on their ‘own turf’, boosting their
confidence through providing information. As Abdur (BTech student) put it: “If they come first you will go
back, but if you go there first you don’t know if you're going to get rejected [by] them”.
The question of ‘who moves first’ and fear of rejection are central to intercultural debate, and there is
definitely a sense in which these ‘two alien tribes’, as Graham described them in Section 4.3, need assistance
overcoming their differences: language, dress, social mores and norms, education, and interpersonal
expectations. For many young people, going into Tech City is akin to stepping into the unknown, but also
involves stepping into a realm perceived as potentially hostile because of their lack of qualifications or
because of their ethnic backgrounds; and, as was seen in section 5.1, Tech City employers may struggle even
knowing how to construct a conversation with young people.
Helen and James (sociology students) point to the work of other industries, such as banking, that deploy the
strategy of meeting young people before they went to university:
James: I just got out of a meeting by the City Brokerage people who work for the banking
industry over near Liverpool Street and they come in and have a sit down and talk
to us. […]
Helen: Last year the same thing happened so a banking firm came to here, they offered
us internships. The only reason I was able to get on the course because they
came to us. It was really helpful as well.
In addition to providing an opportunity for them to meet and mingle, face-to-face meetings would go a long
way to making up for the generally fragmented knowledge about the different modes of working and income
generation that Tech City enables. Marcus, a tech entrepreneur, without university qualifications,
emphasised that in addition to Tech City needing generalists (problem solvers both digital and otherwise,
with multiple technical skills and the agility and adaptability to apply them to different problems), it also
provides an environment for people to turn their personal creative interests and skills into careers:
… schools are not telling young kids of any age that there is a job filming the Arsenal
football players for the digital channel of Arsenal TV which goes out on YouTube. No-one
knows that. Careers tutors in themselves don’t know what jobs exist so let alone do
children know they exist. So unless you’re associated to this world in a meaningful way
then how are you to know? You’re just gonna assume … most people are only aware of
the jobs that their family and friends have and predominantly family and friends are
unemployed or out of work or on educational training then what hope do you have, and
especially if you’re kind of walking around and what you see is white boys like me staring
at a £2,500 laptop drinking beer in the afternoon looking like he’s not working. It’s very
hard for people to break into this arena [..] I mean there’s a lot of very talented, creative
people in Hackney who are doing incredible work whether that be as graffiti artists
illegally, or whether just drawing in their room or not realising that they can monetise
that, but realising that messing around on their iPhone making stupid videos that’s one
sizable … I think people don’t know that you can actually engineer a life where you get
paid to do the things you love and are good at. And this area is really good at actually
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monetising that sort of stuff; finding people who will pay for that sort of idea and
creativity. (Marcus, entrepreneur)
Marcus ties together the multiple barriers that we have noted in this section: fragmented knowledge; lack of
role models; different social and cultural capital; Tech City’s organisational culture and misperceptions of
what actually gets done there. All of these barriers can be distilled to a need for a more systematic approach
in connecting young people and Tech City, as well as finding ways that young people’s and Tech City’s
cultural and social capital can be translated so that it becomes meaningful for the other.
Barrier: it can be difficult for companies to know how to access local young people
Opportunity: make meet-ups the first moment of contact
1) to improve mutual understanding between the two ‘alien tribes’
2) to give young people the confidence to take the next step and apply
6. Communication preferences
As noted above, face-to-face meetings were considered a vital first step to breaking down barriers and
misperceptions. With few exceptions, the young people in this study were completely unaware of any
existing online portals (both websites and apps) through which Tech City internships, placements,
apprenticeships and jobs were advertised. And such portals are obviously ineffective if young people did not
know Tech City existed in the first place. Therefore, given the general lack of awareness about Tech City,
what is done there and by whom, participants in this study suggested that companies do more to promote
themselves using various channels, including the use of the non-digital.
[…] go for social media or if it’s leaflets when you go to a tech store or whatever or just
getting off a bus, and inviting us there and letting us see what they do, I think that will
help us to understand it more. (Shannon, Sociology student)
Different groups of young people had distinct preferences for how Tech City can best communicate with
them. YouTube videos were the preferred method for some, citing both data and hardware limits on their
smart phones as well as a general disinclination to read tracts of text on websites, manuals or other
documents. Facebook was a popular preference among others who were more likely to read websites to
which they had been directed. However, apps were not popular because alerts and notifications were
thought to be irritating.
Barrier: young people are unaware of existing information outlets where Tech City opportunities
are posted
Barrier: there are different preferences for communication channels, including ‘low tech’
methods, that may require companies to take a more diverse approach to disseminating
information
Opportunity: improving communication may raise awareness of Tech City activities and
opportunities, enhancing the potential to find local recruits
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7. Conclusions and recommendations
There is an inherent tension between the fundamental nature of Tech City’s digital technology innovation
and start-up model and efforts to render Tech City more accessible to young south Hackney residents. That
model requires rapid technological change, high levels of technical knowledge, minimally staffed small
companies, short business development time frames, and regular participation in a socio-professional
network with its own organisational culture. This presents both a technical and socio-cultural skill set that
young people may lack. The best way to attain this skill set has led to debates over the level of education
that is generally considered the norm for Tech City employees (an undergraduate degree as a minimum),
and whether alternative entry-level models such as apprenticeships can achieve the scale necessary to
provide more opportunities for young people .
Barriers were also evident in the extent to which differences in social and cultural capital negatively
impacted young people’s access to training and employment in Tech City. Potential employers’ means of
answering the question of “will you fit in?” are bound up with the extent to which Tech City recruitment
outcomes are self-replicating. At the same time, young people’s assumptions that they won’t fit in may be
grounded in a lack of knowledge about what Tech City can offer and a lack of confidence. Students held
diverse opinions on the relationship between ‘fitting in’ and socio-economic differences, with some seeing it
as more of a barrier than others. It is clear, however, that face-to-face meetings in environments familiar to
young people go a long way to breaking down barriers of misperception.
While recognising organisational impediments such as the speed of technological development and the need
to mitigate against risk in human resources strategies, this report has noted evidence to suggest that
diversity within its workforce could enhance innovation and productivity in Tech City. Therefore, to address
the barriers identified in this study, and enhance the opportunities for both Tech City and south Hackney
residents, this report makes the following recommendations:
There is a need for a more systematic approach so that opportunities are not just reliant on ad hoc
connections between individuals in education institutions and Tech City companies. This could include
formalising networking and ‘pitching’ skills into vocational curricula; and regular, scheduled meet ups of
Tech City businesses at schools and colleges, not only developing links with students but also teachers
and careers advisors. Funding schemes or payment should be provided to support young people in work
placements and internships. It is likely that a more systematic approach is necessary first in order to
support a shift in opinion among young people, and influencers such as school and parents, that
apprenticeships are a viable option.
Building on initial contact, there is a need for companies to commit to formalizing the transition from
‘meet & greet’ events to placements (other business sectors provide examples of successful models).
There is space for mediating organizations or brokers to facilitate the educator-Tech City connections
and guide companies through processes of taking on trainees.
Creating lower rungs on the job ladder (such as apprenticeships built around ‘bundled’ tasks) needs to
be balanced with career development opportunities that prevent employees from non-graduate
backgrounds getting ‘capped’ in lower skilled, lower paid work in the long term.
There is a need for greater recognition of the benefits of diversity within the technology and creative
industries. This may require training within Tech City companies to raise awareness of how
organisational cultures can create barriers to diversity.
Young people’s participation in Tech City: barriers and opportunities │ Open University │ March 2015
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Tech City companies may need to revise how they communicate what they do to attract recruits from a
diversity of backgrounds. Communication channels and communication styles could be adapted to target
different cohorts of young people.
Recognising that there are risks to companies in start-up phase, larger companies and established SMEs
could take the lead in upscaling internship and apprenticeship programmes.
AREAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The processes of young peoples’ decision making – the weighing up of the risks of each career pathway, and
the role of family, peers and school in influencing those decisions – is an important area for future research.
There is a policy and commercial imperative to understand why and how young people are making their
choices.
The solution of ‘hiring local kids with no degrees’ could have other challenges that we do not yet know
about. Future research could involve working in-depth with young people who have made it into the system,
how that has been managed and what have been the outcomes for them and the organisation.
An in-depth study that differentiated between the different sectors that constitute Tech City (creative
media, advertising, games development, data management innovation, hardware development, IT services
etc.) is required to pinpoint where the best avenues may be for improving young people’s access into the
workforce; likewise, the more intractable barriers associated with cultural differences.
Further research should also involve evaluating the relative impact of deploying various media to
communicate with different cohorts of young people. Whilst we have identified that there is a need for a
range of communication channels, including low tech solutions, more research is required if Tech City
companies are interested in targeting particular cohorts of young people in the future, IT students and self-
taught ‘techies’, for example.
