If you want the truth when you have a question to ask or problem to solve, ask an apprentice. In contrast, graduates tend to “tell you what you want to hear”, according to the director of talent and development at global media investment group GroupM.

GroupM currently has 40 apprentices, and Emy Rumble-Mettle would like to double that number next year, she told Recruiter on Tuesday night at Licence to Skill, a National Apprenticeship Week event held by the Skills Funding Agency at the London Film Museum. Across its different brands, GroupM takes in 170 to 200 graduates a year, or 25% of its entry level talent.

Rumble-Mettle is an unabashed supporter of apprenticeships and says that in media especially, the capabilities and attitudes of apprentices can transform businesses. “They’re authentic, they’re real,” she said of apprentices. “They tell you the truth.”

Asked about differentiators between apprentices and graduates, Rumble-Mettle said that graduates tended to tell managers and authority figures what they thought they wanted to hear. Also, she said, graduates tend to have a sense of entitlement in contrast to apprentices, who typically are much more focused on learning and contributing from the beginning. 

At GroupM, she said, apprentices contribute from the beginning, due to a combination of attitude and innate digital ability. “These people come in and give us ideas we never had before,” Rumble-Mettle explained. 

She characterised relationships between apprentices and companies that hire them as genuine partnerships with “no slave and master” slant.

She added that employers often believe they’re doing a charitable act to create apprenticeships but the reality is different. “We think we’re giving but we’re actually getting,” she said.

Other employer speakers at the event included representatives from Microsoft and Oscar-winning special effects firm Double Negative.

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