Hiring managers are faced with young people seeking apprenticeships and employment without previous experience in the mainstream workplace. So what should hiring managers do to judge which young person will perform well in the role? Since vocational identity predicts performance, hiring managers should listen to the young person's story.

So what jobs to recruit to next? Increasing staff numbers is a scary prospect. No manager wants to get it wrong. You can't guess. You've no precedent. You can't ask a friend because all firms are different. You must model the company and evaluate each option for its effect on the company and it's KPIs. And it becomes all the more difficult when considering indirect roles like sales people, marketers and other support staff. They could drive the firm to light speed. It's always a tough call.

The UK’s academic institutions are not turning out enough software engineers. Demand dramatically exceeds supply. This exemplifies the problem in many domains in the UK. So how do hiring managers find specialists? The key thing is to hire those with the right profile to contribute and learn. Profiling of personal characteristics and search for those must take precedence over high-level statements like ‘must be proficient in coding in MS.NET’. Coding and other specialist competencies can be learned.

The job that a software professional does is linked to where on the lifecycle they work and how much of that lifecycle they embrace. It also depends on how much of the technology they cover – user interface or full-stack. And salaries go with those definitions. Here's the structure of the industry.

Hiring an apprentice can be more daunting that hiring an experienced worker. Get it wrong and you’ve the management costs and hassle to correct your mistake. But get it right and you’ve have engaged a future high performer. But on what basis do you select your apprentice? The career decisiveness of a young person predicts how well he or she will perform in a job after apprenticeship.

French workers generate the same wealth as British workers but in a 32-hour week rather than the British 36-hour week. Managers are generally under pressure to improve their firms. So there's no question about whether or not managers should invest. It's just a question of where - in people or machines?