The Evolving Graduate Market

Well, the world economy is certainly changing and this ‘recession’ will have a real impact on the graduate recruitment market for both employers and recent graduates looking for their dream job. With fewer graduate opportunities available and the need for employers to find the best graduates to fill their reduced vacancies and get more immediate results from them; the relationship between the two will definitely evolve in a different direction and indeed this has started already.

So as an employer what is your new focus? You have a reduced head count on your graduate programme and probably a directive to make the process of finding those people more cost effective and to also maybe improve the on-boarding process so that your retention levels are better and so reduce your ongoing recruitment costs for replacements! Sounds tough...

The first port of call must be one of my pet topics – Employer Branding. You will need to ask yourselves whether you have an employer brand that will attract, engage and retain the best talent. Regardless of the current problems in the economy and what sector you are operating in the demographic challenges that you know exist within your organisation won’t be going away. Yes, maybe the odd Senior Executive may not retire as soon as you had feared but if your organisation is anything like the rest then you will have a talent gap that you need to fill for tomorrow’s leaders to find their way into and through your business. So how do you know if your EB is worthy of the task?

Start from the beginning; do we provide our employees with everything that we promise? Do we nurture and develop our talent and ensure that they are engaged and committed to our business? How good are we at telling the world what a great employer we are? Does our web-site offer the window onto the world that we want? Do all of our recruitment staff have a single vision of what makes our business work and what will continue to make it work in the future? Do our processes make sense and work and deliver?

So many questions and so little time but it’s a process that you need to go through to genuinely understand exactly where you are in the market because the simple fact is that even if you are currently looking for a lot less graduates than previously, you are looking for the best and the best are very discerning and still have a choice of career partners (that’s what they see you as) which still means you have to be on your game to attract the best talent.

We all know that the Global university production of graduates has grown massively over the past 10 years but the talent at the top end is still there in the same volume and they still know they are good!

If you want to talk through an overview of Employer Brand or ask us to give you an Employer Brand audit as a first stage in fine tuning things for you then we would be delighted to help. We have worked with global, national and local businesses that have recognised this need and have positioned themselves for the future by doing the hard yards now whilst they have breathing space and a need to focus on making every single penny they spend on Graduate Recruitment count!

www.consortio-recruitment.com