How to Find the Best Apprentice for Your Business

Recruiting an apprentice is a significant commitment and getting it right from the start makes everything that follows much easier.

Finding someone who is the right fit for your business, your team, and the role can take time and effort, but it pays back many times over when you find the right person.

So how do you find a good apprentice? In our experience, these are the four most effective approaches businesses can take to recruit the right apprentice for their organisation.

Use a specialist apprenticeship recruitment service

One of the most straightforward ways to find a good apprentice is to work with a specialist apprenticeship recruitment service rather than managing the process alone. Advertising a vacancy, filtering applications, shortlisting candidates, and running assessment days requires time that many businesses simply do not have.

At Total People, our Recruitment and Engagement team provides tailored apprenticeship recruitment support for businesses of all sizes. We work with you from the start to attract the right candidates and filter out those who are not a good fit before they reach your desk.

Our recruitment support includes creating targeted vacancy advertisements based on current market intelligence, ensuring your role reaches the right candidates through the right channels. We collaborate with you to develop a promotional strategy that includes working with local authorities, Jobcentre Plus, schools, colleges, and sixth forms to raise awareness of your vacancy. We then receive, filter, and shortlist applications against agreed specifications, develop customised assessment days where needed, and support you through the interview stage including post-interview feedback.

For businesses wanting to search the wider market, the government's Find an Apprenticeship service also allows employers to list vacancies and receive applications from candidates across England. Working with Total People alongside this means you benefit from hands-on support rather than managing the volume of applications alone.

As competition for apprenticeship places has grown significantly in recent years, with some programmes now receiving more than 150 applications per position, having a structured and well-targeted recruitment process is more important than ever.

Upskill your existing employees

Finding the right apprentice does not always mean looking outside your business. Apprenticeships are equally effective as a tool for developing people already on your team, and for many employers, this is the most efficient route of all.

By using apprenticeships to reskill your staff, you are working with people you already know. You understand their strengths, their areas for development, and how they fit within your team. They already know your business, your customers, and your ways of working, which means they can apply new skills more quickly than someone starting from scratch.

Upskilling existing employees through apprenticeships is also one of the most effective ways to address skills gaps within your business. Rather than recruiting externally to fill a capability shortfall, you can develop the skills you need from within your own team, often more cost-effectively and with less disruption.

Attend recruitment and school leaver events

Even with a strong job advertisement, it can be difficult to get a true sense of a candidate on paper alone. Recruitment events, school leaver fairs, and careers days give you the opportunity to introduce your business to potential candidates and form a first impression that a CV simply cannot provide. For tips on how to assemble your CV, read our guide to writing a perfect CV.

These events allow you to speak directly to young people who are actively considering their next steps. You can explain what your business does, what the apprenticeship role involves, and what you are looking for in a candidate. That kind of direct conversation helps you identify candidates with genuine enthusiasm and the right attitude before you have even started the formal recruitment process.

Across Greater Manchester and the North West, there are regular events specifically focused on apprenticeship and school leaver recruitment. Getting involved in these, whether as an exhibitor or a speaker, raises your profile among candidates and gives you access to talent that may not actively be searching job boards.

Attending events also gives you the opportunity to build relationships with schools, colleges, and career advisers who can refer suitable candidates to your vacancies on an ongoing basis. These relationships compound over time and can become a reliable pipeline of future talent.

Look for the right qualities

Most apprenticeship candidates will come to you with little or no industry experience, and that is fine. An apprenticeship is, by design, the start of someone's career journey. What you are looking for is not a finished product but the raw material to develop one.

That means shifting your focus from traditional job requirements toward the qualities that will help someone succeed in your workplace and your programme. Our guide on what to look for in an apprentice covers this in detail, but the core qualities that consistently make for a strong apprentice include:

Attention to written and verbal communication

Not perfection, but awareness and effort. Can the candidate express themselves clearly and demonstrate care in how they communicate?

Motivation and purpose

Do they have a clear reason for wanting this specific apprenticeship? Generic answers about wanting to learn are less convincing than candidates who can explain why your sector, your business, or this particular role appeals to them.

Enthusiasm and a positive attitude

Apprenticeships involve periods of intensive learning alongside a demanding job. Candidates who approach challenges with energy and openness are significantly more likely to complete their programme successfully.

Teamwork and interpersonal skills

Almost all workplace environments require the ability to work alongside others, take direction, and contribute to shared goals. Look for evidence of this in how candidates describe previous experiences, whether in school, sport, volunteering, or part-time work.

Reliability and commitment

Attendance, punctuality, and follow-through matter enormously in an apprenticeship. A candidate who has demonstrated consistency in a previous role or education setting is more likely to bring that consistency to your business.

It is also worth considering cultural fit. The best apprentice is not necessarily the one with the strongest answers on paper but the one who is most likely to thrive in your specific environment.

If you are running assessment days, structured group activities are an excellent way to observe candidates in a more natural setting, where communication style, problem-solving approach, and ability to work with others become visible in a way that a formal interview often does not reveal.

How Total People supports your recruitment

Finding the right apprentice takes time, and the process involves more moving parts than many employers expect. At Total People, we are here to take the burden off your shoulders and make sure the process is set up correctly from the start.

• We can help you set up your apprenticeship service account, reserve apprenticeship funds on your behalf, advertise your vacancy, and support you through the recruitment and shortlisting process. Once you have found the right person, we are ready to begin training as soon as you are.

Whether you are recruiting your first apprentice or expanding an established programme, our team has the experience and expertise to support you every step of the way. To find out more, get in touch with our team or explore our apprenticeships for employers pages to see what is available.