Spotted Zebra takes double silver at the National Emerging Talent Awards 2026

Spotted Zebra has been awarded two silver trophies at the targetjobs National Emerging Talent Awards 2026, organised by Group GTI. The ceremony was held at JW Marriott Grosvenor House, London on Thursday 16 April 2026. In the lead-up to the event, nearly 100,000 individual votes were cast by undergraduates, apprentices and school leavers, and 29 trophies were presented on the night.

Spotted Zebra placed silver in Best Innovation in Assessment and Selection (sponsored by AMS) in partnership with our customer AWE, recognised alongside the likes of Howden and HSBC. We also took silver in Best Use of AI in Recruitment (sponsored by Howden), with the brilliant team at Lloyds Banking Group taking home the gold.

A moment for our customers first

These wins belong to our customers. AWE's early careers team took a real leap of faith in committing to a skills-based approach at the scale their national security mission demands. The results have been exceptional.

Working together, AWE and Spotted Zebra have:

• Reduced Year 1 attrition from 35% to under 10%, saving over £1.05 million annually.
• Halved offer rejection rates from 44% to 22%.
• Cut time-to-hire by 33%, from 6 months to 4 months.
• Achieved a 96% assessment completion rate, against an 82% industry average.
• Delivered 100% candidate satisfaction, unprecedented in AWE's early careers history.
• Validated zero adverse impact across 4,370 assessments, with a 100% offer acceptance rate for Black candidates.
• Generated a 416% return on investment, independently verified.

That's what happens when validated skills science, powerful assessments, and responsible AI come together in service of a single, candidate-centric process.

Why silver feels like a win

The shortlist mattered. Being recognised alongside Howden, HSBC, and Lloyds Banking Group, all doing genuinely ambitious work in early careers, is the kind of validation that counts. The National Emerging Talent Awards are judged against the UK's most demanding bar for innovation, fairness and candidate experience. Placing silver in two categories, including the AI category sponsored by the winner of the third, tells us the approach we've built with our customers is competitive at the sharp end of the market.

Building on the momentum

The NETAs recognition arrives four months after a landmark week in December 2025, when Spotted Zebra swept four major industry awards. These included TA Supplier of the Year at the Personnel Today Awards and the Candidate Assessment Award at the In-House Recruitment Awards. Six major industry trophies in four months across Personnel Today, IHR and now the National Emerging Talent Awards point to a clear pattern: the combination of skills science and AI is becoming the standard against which enterprise talent decisions are measured.

Earlier in 2025, Spotted Zebra also achieved ISO/IEC 42001 certification, one of the first organisations in our category globally. It's proof that AI in hiring can be both powerful and responsible by design.

Nick Shaw, Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer, on the double silver:

"What we've built with AWE is special, and I'm thrilled to see it recognised on the NETAs stage alongside some of the most respected names in UK early careers. Silver at an event of this calibre, especially in the AI category, isn't a consolation. It's confirmation that skills science is how AI earns its place in talent decisions. When you measure what actually predicts success in a specific role at a specific organisation, AI stops being a shortcut and starts being a force multiplier for quality, fairness and candidate experience. AWE's early careers team deserves enormous credit. They chose the harder, better path, and the results speak for themselves."

What it means for early careers hiring

The UK's engineering talent shortfall, more than 40,000 graduates and technicians every year, won't be solved by asking the same questions of the same candidates in the same way. It takes expanding the pool, matching on the skills that actually predict performance, and building a candidate experience that earns trust.

The NETAs judging panel recognised what our customers already know. Early careers recruitment can deliver exceptional candidate experiences, defensible fairness outcomes and strong business results, all at once. The blueprint exists. It's working. And it's scaling.

‍

If you want to achieve faster, fairer hiring in across your early careers programme - get in touch. You too could achieve award-winning results with us in the future.

‍