- September 26th, 2022|
- by gradconsult|
- Corporates,Employers,SMEs
by Rebecca Fielding
I’ve launched graduate schemes many dozens of times over the last twenty years, both in-house and more recently with clients. In this third and final blog, of a three-part mini-series this Summer, I share my final tips to set your graduate scheme up for success. You can read the first ten tips in detail in part 1 and part 2 of the series. But let’s take a look at my final five top tips here:
11. Recruit for potential
Assessing and recruiting graduates is different to recruiting experienced hires, namely as:
If you take a traditional ‘recruitment for past performance’ approach it can be hard to distinguish between candidates in a way that has high predictive validity to future performance in role. By which I mean just because someone did well in their studies, does not mean they are going to do well in the role. Indeed multiple studies over the years have shown that academic attainment has a confused and complicated (sometimes even counter) correlation to future success - unless you happen to work in a highly academic field of work such as the law or medicine.
‘Instead I’d encourage you and your business to recruit for potential.’
There are multiple ways to do this via strengths, motivational or values-based interview questions, psychometrics, situational judgement tests or work-based tests that require skills and aptitude but not knowledge or experience. But the single biggest thing you can do is to rid yourself of the requirement for work experience. Most graduates are hugely frustrated by the work experience conundrum - that they cannot get a job because they have no experience, but of course they cannot get experience without someone giving them a job! If you can be open to assessing potential, rather than being hung up on prior experience/proven performance you will engage, discover and recruit swathes of talented and capable people that others will miss.
12. Map the development programme
It’s a common mistake to focus on graduate attraction, on campus activity and recruitment rather than development. But ‘getting on’ is just as critical to graduates and your business (if not more) as ‘getting in’ to an organisation. Creating some well-designed and structured development input for your new graduate population is key to progression, performance, speed to ROI and retention. It is also a key tool for attraction with ‘training and development’ or ‘career progression’ consistently placing in the top three most important factors graduates look for in opportunities. Designing and delivering a dedicated graduate development programme from scratch can feel overwhelming, so where to start? I always start by considering these things:
13. Integrate into the wider people strategy
Work with your colleagues to ensure that the graduate scheme integrates into your wider people strategy. There’s lots to think about here and it varies from one context to another but the key things you need to ensure are aligned are:
14. Set operational KPIs and strategic ROI measures
Going all the way back to tip 1 at the start of the series, once you understand ‘why’ you are recruiting graduates, you can craft the strategic ROI measures of success to demonstrate if you are delivering that long term return to the business. For example if your ‘why’ is to develop a pool of future leaders within 3-5 years you could measure:
Whatever your ‘why’ (diversity, skills, demographics, growth, culture change) you can agree some clear strategic ROI measures that will enable you to demonstrate for years to come exactly how well the graduate scheme is addressing the problem it set out to solve. If you discover you are not achieving what you set out to do, then you can make informed changes to your design and approach, continue to monitor, and course correct accordingly.
Alongside the long-term ROI strategic measures I’d also recommend agreeing exactly what your stakeholders want to see in terms of operational (usually monthly) KPIs. This includes things like the number of applicants at each stage of the process, source of applications, offer-acceptance ratios and key ED&I metrics at each stage in the recruitment process. Once on the scheme it’s things like retention rates, academic/training completion rates and satisfaction ratings. Here’s some examples of the most common attraction and recruitment operational KPIs for graduate schemes:
Attraction
Why is it important to agree these things up front? Chiefly because in my experience lots of people will be interested in any graduate scheme you launch – you will be inundated with requests for random cuts of the data about ED&I characteristics through the funnel, the performance and progression rates of different universities, correlation between prior academics and achievement of certifications internally. You name it – I have been asked for it! And this can create an extraordinary amount of work. By clearly agreeing your key KPIs and ROI measures of success upfront you can swerve many of these admin requests and simply record them for any annual improvement process. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.
15. Experiment
Last but by no means least is my tip to be unafraid of experimenting. The early careers and future talent space is one of the most innovative areas of the people profession. Indeed on-line applications, social hiring, positive action initiatives to address social mobility, video interviewing and much more were all first trialled on graduates before they became much more commonplace across experienced hire. I’d argue in fact that as graduate schemes (and other early careers/future talent schemes) sit at the very forefront of engaging and developing the future of our organisations, it’s not simply that we can experiment, it’s that we should. We should push at the boundaries and help to shape the future of employee experience by listening and responding to the needs and feedback of our next generation.
Every year there are a plethora of new partners in the space, new ideas, technology solutions and a wealth of innovative programmes launched across the university careers and employability space. Often these solutions and ideas come from students and graduates themselves. Don’t be afraid to be an early adopter and try something new or different, even if it is as simple as having a wildcard university every year. Be prepared for the fact that not everything will work by setting up responsive candidate feedback loops and good management information to pivot when required. But building in this scope for experimentation, innovation and (dare I say it) a little fun are one of the great joys of working in this less constrained segment of the market.
That's your lot
So that’s your lot! All 15 of my top tips for launching a graduate scheme.
1. Be clear on the WHY
2. Understand the status quo
3. Avoid the big bang
4. Model the resource requirements and costs
5. Hiring/line managers are crucial
6. Bust the myths with benchmarks and data
7. Talk to university partners sooner rather than later
8. Engage your graduate alumni
9. Apply human- centred design principles
10. Choose your partners wisely
11. Recruit for potential
12. Map the development programme
13. Integrate into the wider people strategy
14. Set operational KPIs and strategic ROI measures
15. Experiment
I could go on. Indeed I have found it very difficult to narrow my tips down to these top 15! But I do now have some cracking blogs to come on other topics in the months to come. Look out for those soon. In the meantime I sincerely hope you have found the series useful and that it saves you some of the pain and pitfalls I’ve experienced along the way. Do let me know what you would add to the top tips via the comments, or if you have any topics you would like me to address in the future.
And if you are grappling with the launch of a new scheme and fancy a more in-depth chat with someone who has ‘been there, done that’ please just pick up the phone or drop a note to Paul Siaens, Rachel Salmon, Tim Elgar or I in the Gradconsult team. We’ve developed a particular specialism in the last few years for helping businesses to launch, refresh or grow their graduate schemes and we are always happy to have a chat over a brew.