The celebrations of the class of 2009 will be unusually muted. The thousands of young people finishing GCSEs, A levels and finals will enter a difficult world. Staying on in education has become tougher, with a squeeze on university places predicted. And competition for jobs will be tougher still.

Office for National Statistics data shows that 18 to 24-year-olds are bearing the brunt of unemployment, which is running at 16.1 per cent in this age group, the highest since 1994. It is unlikely to have peaked.

The result is a genuine bottleneck for young people getting on in education or the workplace. As chairman of the CBI's education and skills committee, I am concerned that it is difficult for many young people to know where their first experience of work will come from - especially when employers have more experienced candidates to recruit from because of the recession.

At McDonald's more than half of our staff are under 21. Nearly all have friends facing possibly years of drift. I firmly believe that businesses which have remained strong in this harsh economic climate must play a part to ensure that our young people continue to have prospects.

Obviously, it is essential for businesses in whatever sector that prove more resistant to the recession to keep hiring and investing in training through the ups and downs of the economic cycle. Much was made last week of figures showing that more than 2,000 people apply to work at McDonald's each day. More importantly, we can offer jobs to about 140 of those applicants a day as a result of our strong performance.

But two cultural barriers are stopping young people finding jobs. One - a prejudice of some young people attempting to join the workplace for the first time - is the stereotyping of frontline service sector jobs as having low prospects; the second is the barrier that separates the world of work from the world of education - that employers feel no responsibility to help staff to develop basic skills that will enable them to fulfil their full potential, such as literacy and numeracy. Both these cultural prejudices are linked.

It will be galling for young people who have sweated over exams to find that their hard-won grades no longer guarantee them the type of job they want, especially when they have to compete against more experienced, recently jobless candidates. They might have to scale back their expectations but be open-minded about where it might lead them.

We have always been entirely comfortable that many people join McDonald's as a stepping stone to another job. In so-called “low-skill” jobs you learn valuable disciplines such as timekeeping, customer service and people skills. There is no such thing as a bad job; every job has something to offer.

I believe passionately in selection processes that focus on individuals' qualities rather than on their background or experience. When we identify someone at McDonald's with the raw abilities and aptitude we are after, we invest in their development. In effect we provide a learning ladder that people can ascend, starting with GCSE-equivalents qualifications in maths and English for those who need to brush up on the basics, leading on to apprenticeships, a vocational qualification gained in the workplace that is worth five good GCSEs, and then to A-level equivalent management diplomas.

That is why some of our restaurants double up as examinations centres. Soon McDonald's will face its first Ofsted inspections, like any other educational establishment.

In a world where progress in formal education is harder and there is a fight to land your first paying job, employers accredited to deliver nationally recognised qualifications will become ever more important.

Everyday in our business I work with people who demonstrate the value of our approach. Nine out of ten of our restaurant management staff started out as hourly-paid crew members. Some left school at 16 with no qualifications and worked their way up, gaining maths and English qualifications and becoming qualified apprentices. Others joined as students to earn extra money while at college or university, and stayed with us after they qualified. All have grown and developed in an environment where we try to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to achieve their full potential.

This year we invited experts on social mobility from Leeds Metropolitan University to see what impact our approach to recruiting has on the social mobility of our workforce. They found that almost half (44 per cent) of our people had two or more indicators of disadvantage. One in five had experienced unemployment before joining McDonald's and one in five has responsibilities as a carer. Their report concluded that McDonald's gives people who might not otherwise have had the chance to gain practical, transferable skills.

It is a model that is good for the long-term health of the economy. The national qualifications we offer enable people to move on to their next job with a valuable, transferable qualification. Others will find a long-term career with us and, just as importantly, our approach is good for our bottom line. We have seen a 10 per cent uplift in the confidence of our crew, which, we know, equates to better customer service, and our staff turnover has fallen.

For too long there has been a divide between the worlds of education and work. It cannot be right that leaving school at 16 is the end of the education story for so many. Only by making a revolving door between study and work can we harness this country's young talent.

Equally, companies cannot afford to ignore the talent on their doorstep just because it doesn't feel fully formed. If both employers and young people entering the job market can drop their prejudices it will help to ensure that Britain isn't held back by a lost generation of the unemployed.

Steve Easterbrook is chief executive of McDonald's UK

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