# Holly Hobbs

Holly Hobbs helps employers attract and recruit young people, especially Gen Z, through social media and urfuture, which aims to connect young people with employers and assess potential beyond polished CVs.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/holly-hobbs/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hollyhobbss
- LinkedIn followers: 14,023
- Topics: recruiting, employer-branding
- Based on 10 dated posts, latest 2026-09-29

## Summary

Holly Hobbs is most useful for framing early-careers hiring problems and reaching UK talent acquisition practitioners.

- Best for: A recruitment technology company targeting early-careers and entry-level talent acquisition leaders.
- Not for: North American workforce analytics vendors selling to chief HR officers and senior HR executives.
- Check first: Confirm follower breakdowns and recent webinar registration and attendance before committing budget.

### Takeaways

- Hiring can exclude people before they apply, a pattern called self-deselection.
- Social media can help attract young people but cannot solve the problem alone.
- An ISE post reports West Midlands Police tripled ethnic minority applicants from 10% to 30%.

## Main ideas

- **Hiring can exclude people before they apply**: Hobbs argues that social media can help employers reach Gen Z, but reach alone will not improve diversity if employer content, application processes or branding make some candidates feel the opportunity is not for them. They call this early drop-off “self-deselection” and say interventions at the shortlisting or interview stage come too late.
- **Change the hiring system rather than blaming candidates**: Hobbs frames barriers to entry-level work as problems of distribution and infrastructure, rather than shortcomings in young people. The focus is on reaching candidates where they are and assessing potential beyond polish or CVs.
- **Give hiring teams a practical, concise way to prepare for younger generations**: Hobbs presents generational change as a reason for talent acquisition teams to rethink their infrastructure, not just learn new labels for candidates. Their posts package the discussion as short briefings for busy practitioners.

## Work to read

- [Gen Alpha webinar for 70 talent acquisition professionals](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hollyhobbss_tomorrow-70-talent-acquisition-professionals-activity-7459852513312256000-qho5)
- [Why urfuture raised £1.7m to fix entry-level hiring](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hollyhobbss_5-years-ago-i-was-a-college-student-struggling-activity-7450869301500129282-KOi2)
- [Stopping self-deselection at the ISE Apprenticeships Conference](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hollyhobbss_iseapprenticeships26-activity-7432750178962624512-zisB)
- [The Hidden Hiring Bias playbook on self-deselection](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hollyhobbss_ive-built-my-entire-career-helping-employers-activity-7472539733374468096-3kHe)

## Brand relationships

- **urfuture** (disclosed_partnership)
- **West Midlands Police** (mention)

## Partnerships

No sponsorship offer is documented in the four posts reviewed: there is no rate card, media kit, sponsored-format description or partnership enquiry page. The documented partnership activity sits at company level. Hobbs is part of urfuture, which announced a £1.7 million seed round backed by investors and employers including West Midlands Police, SP Electricity North West, British Airways, Surrey County Council and HIT Training. Those relationships are described as backing urfuture's entry-level hiring work, not as personal sponsorship placements. The brand-facing activities in the posts feature Hobbs and Tom Keighley together: a 30-minute webinar for talent acquisition professionals on what to expect from Gen Alpha entering the workplace; a panel session at the ISE Apprenticeships Conference on stopping self-deselection, run with Sten10, Unseen Group and West Midlands Police; and 'The Hidden Hiring Bias playbook', a resource distributed by link and email to early-careers and entry-level recruitment professionals. None is presented as a paid sponsorship slot, and the links lead to webinar registration or a document download rather than a partnership contact. A recruitment tech company seeking a co-marketing webinar or content collaboration should ask directly whether they accept sponsorship and, if so, for rates and booking terms.

## Alternatives

- Timothy Smith, BREP, CWDP, CWDL: Pick Timothy Smith when the campaign needs the employer-readiness half of work-based learning rather than applicant attraction. The two posts reviewed argue that hosting a high school intern takes more than assigning tasks and a supervisor: students need clear expectations, meaningful work, regular feedback, and someone with time to explain how the work connects to a career pathway. Smith also reports that a June 2026 survey of roughly 30 manufacturing employers found supervisor capacity and scheduling to be bigger barriers than wages or equipment, and writes about registered apprenticeships, workforce grants, and bringing school districts and manufacturers together in East Texas through LEDCO and Kilgore College. That makes Smith the better choice when the product or message concerns programme design, employer onboarding, mentor capacity, or apprenticeship operations, and when the audience is employers, school districts, colleges, and workforce partners. Under the same recruitment-technology brief, this is the version of the 'build the pipeline' story that speaks to the people who host and run placements rather than the people who buy hiring software.
- Maria Christopoulos Katris: Choose Maria Christopoulos Katris when the campaign is about measuring employer brand and talent attraction rather than designing an entry-level pipeline. Both posts tackle the same problem: leaders cannot show what employer brand, recruitment marketing, and reputation investment are actually delivering, especially now that candidates research employers inside AI tools such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity before they ever reach a career site. Katris argues that attribution should become one input rather than the strategy, and proposes a framework built on three questions: whether the company shows up for the talent it wants, what candidates think when they research it, and whether visibility and reputation improvements turn into better applicants, mid-funnel conversion, offer acceptance, and hires in the specific markets, functions, and roles that were underperforming. That is the better fit for a recruitment technology product selling employer brand analytics, AI visibility, or candidate research tooling to a talent brand, talent attraction, or employer brand leader.
- Frederick Douglas Lumpkin, MIS: Pick Frederick Douglas Lumpkin when the campaign needs a measurement argument about youth talent pipelines over time. The two posts make one sustained case: workforce systems count placements, credentials, employment rates, and wages, but no national system tracks whether young people who took part in work-based learning between 14 and 18 eventually return to work for the employer that first invested in them. Lumpkin proposes the Employer Return Hiring Rate as the missing metric and frames it as a leadership question for employers, schools, workforce boards, and policymakers. This suits a workforce analytics or data product sold into workforce boards, education systems, and large employers that sponsor programmes, where the sale depends on proving the long-run return of early investment rather than on attracting applicants. It is the same underlying buyer decision as convincing employers that early talent work pays—but pitched at system level and to budget holders who fund programmes.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/