I'm no Simon Cowell, but when I witness some of our graduate intake, I feel I have hit the golden buzzer. Recruitment has changed more over the past decade than at any other time in my career. Young people think differently about the workplace – company culture and corporate responsibility are as important as a decent salary – and social media has transformed the way they look for jobs.

Attracting top talent into our business means we need to think differently about not just who, how and where we recruit, but what our offer is. With more than 10,000 employees, our people are our greatest asset. If we are to continue to grow and diversify as a business, we need to bring more young people on board as they are the biggest stakeholders in the future of the communities in which we work. We support and invest in our staff at every level. We recruit for attitude and train for skills, and to ensure that we are getting the right people into our senior positions, we are committed to growing our own through our graduate and apprenticeship programmes.

Our two-year, individually tailored, graduate programme enables us to develop future leaders from day one. Our apprenticeship programme ensures our staff are equipped with the skills and training to enable them to do their jobs to the best of their ability. We work with schools to make sure young people are aware of the opportunities that exist within our business. We are moving to modern recruitment technology and transforming how we use social media to
ensure that we are getting the right messages out to the right people.

There's an old adage that people in Norfolk, where we are headquartered, ‘do things different' and when it comes to recruitment that's no bad thing. Doing different is how we will ensure that we stand out from the crowd, that we recruit the best and that we continue to grow. That's a definite yes from me.

This column is brought to you by Norse Group