Cognizant achieved 100% graduate engagement in their first year, along with an industry benchmark-exceeding renege rate.
"One year after go live, our pre-boarding early career NPS score is +63.”
- BDO
“100% engagement and an industry benchmark-exceeding 8% dropout rate."
- Cognizant
"In 2025, our new hires spent over 3,000 hours on Eli."
- NatWest Group
“100% engagement and an industry benchmark-exceeding 8% dropout rate."
- Cognizant
Award-winning early careers pre-boarding & onboarding. Built to unlock the potential of your new talent.
Early careers candidates are hard to win and easy to lose. The gap between offer acceptance and day one is your biggest risk – and most organisations don't realise there's a problem until someone has already walked. Eli closes that gap. With deeply personalised journeys for every graduate, apprentice, intern and school leaver, it keeps new talent connected, engaged and genuinely excited about joining from the moment they say yes. NatWest reduced graduate reneges by 6% and achieved £73,000 in cost avoidance last year with Eli.
Losing students before they start
Early careers reneges are higher than most organisations admit. Between offer acceptance and day one, candidates receive counter-offers, get cold feet or simply stop responding. Eli keeps new talent connected and engaged from the moment they say yes – while Eli Insights™ tracks individual engagement in real time, flagging flight risks before they become dropouts.
One experience that supports no one
Graduates, apprentices, interns and work experience students all have different needs, expectations and starting points. A one-size approach fails all of them. Without truly personalised journeys, you get low engagement, poor retention and early careers talent that never quite feels it belongs.
Students feel disconnected and unsupported
Candidates who don't feel genuinely connected – to their cohort, to the organisation or to a clear sense of purpose – are far more likely to disengage or drop out before day one. Most early careers programmes miss the window between offer acceptance and start date, when those connections are most easily made and most urgently needed.
Managing multiple cohorts feels impossible
Running graduate, apprentice, intern and work experience programmes simultaneously – each with their own timelines, content and communications – is genuinely complex. Without the right tools, things fall through the cracks. And often, the people who fall through are the ones you most wanted to keep.
Students aren’t ready for work
Bridging the gap from student life to the workplace takes more than a welcome email and a laptop. New talent needs structured support and a clear sense of where they are heading. Eli comes with 12 built-in soft skills learning modules designed to help new talent grow in confidence and hit the ground running.
Award winning onboarding technology #whoopwhoop
What do our clients think of Eli?
Cognizant
BDO
BDO achieved a pre-boarding Employee Net Promoter Score of +63 less than one year after implementing Eli.
Cognizant
Cognizant achieved a onboarding Employee Net Promoter Score of +67 last year.
Eli
This year, Eli Onboarding's Net Promoter Score is +80 (up 26 points from 2025).
Reneges, admin and attrition
100% of Eli clients agreed that Eli had reduced offer reneges, admin and early attrition.
Support
Clients rated the support they received from Eli 5 out of 5 stars.
Early performance
100% of clients agreed that Eli set their new hires up for success.
Outstanding early career experiences
Reduce dropout before it's too late
Eli Insights™ tracks engagement and wellbeing across every new hire in real time, flagging at-risk individuals before they disengage or drop out. Your team gets early warning and the data to act – turning potential reneges into day one arrivals.
Manage onboarding with minimal resource
From content delivery and task management to event invitations, communications and progress tracking, Eli handles the complexity of early careers onboarding so your team doesn't have to. Less time on administration. More time on the things that actually need a human.
Build a community from day one
Social walls, messaging tools and personalised profiles help new cohorts get to know each other before they arrive. Peer connection reduces anxiety, builds a genuine sense of belonging and is one of the most powerful drivers of early retention.
Track success & continuously improve
Eli Insights™ gives you real-time data on engagement, task completion and wellbeing throughout your programme – hundreds of data points, including pulse surveys that capture real feedback from new hires as they go. Drive real improvements, and demonstrate impact in real time.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is early careers onboarding?
Early careers onboarding is the structured process of welcoming and supporting new talent – graduates, apprentices, interns and school leavers – from offer acceptance through to full productivity in their role. It covers pre-boarding communications, community building, role-specific content, compliance tasks and learning throughout the onboarding period. Done well, it reduces reneges and dropout, accelerates work-readiness and builds the emotional connection that drives long-term retention.
What types of hire does Eli support for early careers?
Eli supports the full range of early careers hire types – graduates, degree apprentices, apprentices, interns, work experience students and school leavers. Each cohort can receive different content, connections, tasks and communications tailored to their programme, role and location. Cohorts can also be separated by year – so your 2026 intake and 2027 intake remain distinct communities, with no crossover between them. Multiple cohort types can run simultaneously from a single platform, each with their own timeline and structure.
How does Eli help reduce early careers reneges?
Eli tackles reneges at their root cause: disengagement during the pre-boarding period. By keeping new talent connected, informed and genuinely excited about joining from the moment they accept an offer, Eli significantly reduces the likelihood of dropout. Eli Insights™ adds real-time intelligence – tracking engagement scores and wellbeing indicators across the cohort and flagging individuals at risk so your team can intervene early. NatWest reduced early careers reneges by 6% and achieved £73,692 in cost avoidance in their first year with Eli. Cognizant achieved 100% engagement and an industry benchmark-exceeding renege rate.
Can Eli manage multiple early careers cohorts at the same time
Yes. Eli is built for the complexity of multi-cohort management. Graduate, apprentice, intern and work experience programmes can run simultaneously – each with their own journey, content, events and timeline – all from a single platform. Role-based permissions mean the right people have access to the right cohort, and reporting can be broken down by programme, location or hire type.
How does Eli measure the success of an early careers programme?
Eli Insights™ provides real-time data on engagement, task completion, event attendance, content consumption and wellbeing throughout the onboarding journey. Pulse surveys capture live feedback from new hires as they move through their programme, giving you a direct line to how people are actually feeling. Cohort-level and individual-level reporting gives programme managers a clear picture of what is working and where to focus – and the kind of data that drives insight-led improvements to your pre-boarding experience, in real time or year on year.
Does Eli use AI?
Yes – through Noggin, Eli's built-in AI layer. Noggin analyses your programme data and gives your team practical guidance on how to build better pre-boarding and onboarding experiences over time. It works in the background, helping the people running your programme make smarter decisions. The experience your new hires receive remains personal and human-led – Noggin supports the team delivering it, not the new hires going through it.
Can Eli support early careers candidates before they've accepted an offer?
Yes. Eli can support early careers candidates at earlier stages of the journey – from pre-application and initial interest, through application and assessment, to offer acceptance and beyond. For early careers audiences in particular, the experience candidates have before they even join has a direct impact on their decision to commit. Our aim? To reduce applications and increase your quality of hires.
This is a growing area for us and one we see as a genuine differentiator for early careers employers. Our Candidate Experience solution covers this in more detail – but if you would like to explore what it could look like for your early careers programme specifically, we would love to talk.
How quickly can Eli be implemented for an early careers programme?
Most Eli early careers implementations are completed within 8–12 weeks. Our dedicated client success team guides you throughout setup and beyond. If you have tighter timescales or a more straightforward programme, Eli Go can typically be live in less than a week.
Is Eli right for smaller early careers teams and programmes?
Eli is designed to scale – from global graduate programmes onboarding thousands each year, to smaller, more focused schemes. For organisations running smaller early careers cohorts or working with a tighter budget, Eli Go offers the same award-winning onboarding experience with faster implementation and lower investment.
Eli Go launches quickly, requires minimal setup and delivers the same engaging, personalised journey that early careers talent expects. It is the ideal starting point for teams that are serious about early careers onboarding but not yet ready for an enterprise deployment. Find out more on our Products page.
Early careers insight & advice
