Wednesday 08 July 2026 4:55 am  |  Updated:  Tuesday 07 July 2026 12:44 pm

The City should hire on character again

By: Georgiana Bristol

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In a world of AI, character has never been more important. Employers and jobseekers should bring it to the forefront, writes Georgiana Bristol

Across offices in the City, rather than going to a junior colleague, people are now instinctively asking ChatGPT or Claude to make the first draft of a document or check the figures on a deck. Each time we do this, we’re making a rational decision that AI can do this work quicker and more accurately. But as environmentalists complain about how much electricity and water our AI habits are consuming, there’s less thought given to how we are, in part, quietly pulling up the first rung on the ladder of opportunity for our young people.

Our NEETs crisis is shocking. More than a million young people in Britain are now not in education, employment or training, and six in 10 of them have never held a job at all. In the words of Alan Milburn, who is authoring the government’s review into young people and work, this is a “lost generation”. 

Yet if you talk to employers, as we have at the Jobs........

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