Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR, the HR blog written by members of Human Resources UK.
Well this week the group has been discussing HR like no other week. Today’s article comes hot on the heels of yesterday’s networking events in London and Bristol and will shortly be followed by tonight’s event in Birmingham. By the end of today over 100 of our members will have met! So, thank you to all of you who attended.
Today’s article is an exceptionally relevant piece due to the current state of the recruitment market. It is rare that a week goes by without further figures highlighting the poor state of the graduate recruitment market. Today experienced career coach and engagement specialist Paul Goring looks at who is the main beneficiary of a graduate job; the graduate or the employer? (Ed Scrivener)
A graduate’s first job – who benefits most?
So, the recession is bad for the graduate job market we hear; less jobs than ever before (AGR survey 2010 says vacancies down by 25%), the average salary seems to have been stuck at £25,000 for a couple of years and the number of graduates competing for each job is rising all of the time.
Student debt is putting increasing pressure on salary expectations and job security concerns mean that even where graduates are in work the majority constantly looking for the next step in their careers (70% in a recent US survey). We are constantly having our heart strings tugged by the media and student bodies about how tough it is out there for new graduates but perhaps we should take some time to ask the critical question; what about the poor old employers? Admittedly being jobless and having high turnover and poor ROI are very different problems.
I have recruited in the UK and Europe for global financial services and FMCG businesses and graduate recruitment remains, in my opinion, the toughest recruitment decision to consistently get right. Why? Well, because in my view, UK graduate candidates particularly are still demonstrably undercooked in terms of their employability skills and their aspirations. Also, training demands are typically Generation Y and their global career mobility means picking and keeping the right candidate is getting tougher and tougher.
When recruiting a graduate, one has comparably the least amount of tangible evidence to go on, especially where the essential work experience bit is missing. Plus, one often faces a candidate across the interview table / room who, more often than not, does not really know what you want, or how to show you that they have it....
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| Hired 1,200 graduates recently |
The large recruiters of graduate talent compete, as they always have done, for the top talent with suitably large budgets. They have well grooved employer brand, attraction, selection and retention strategy and are prepared to lose candidates along the way to get the people their business needs. The big players know that there will be wastage along the way and that their ROI calculation is based on the number that stay, move into senior roles and thrive.
My concern is for the smaller, less frequent, graduate recruiters. If you want to recruit say 1-5 graduates a year, if you have a fixed small budget and you are not in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, how do you start and how do you expect to retain your talent and is it all worth it?
Making an impact with the most brand savvy generation that has ever lived is tough. Some companies, through genius advertising (Prêt a Manger a few years back) or quirky careers fair strategies, make the connection but it is really tough to pre-empt and positively answer the question ‘who?’ when graduates see your vacancies. Perhaps the brand of the employer is just as crucial as phone, shoes, clothes and car?
The relationship between recruiter (employer) and graduate employee has evolved at an alarming pace over the past 10 years. Just as there is an ongoing desire to achieve the strongest A Level (Highers) results and Degree classification possible, it seems that the fight is now on to obtain employment with the most creditable blue chip company or household brand company, as quickly as possible, since that seems to be where the superficial career kudos lies. The loyalty factor to the first employer is receding at a rate which must make the employers question their expenditure and look closely at their ROI.
Creating a talent pipe-line is, of course, completely necessary when any business looks at their staff demographics, age top heavy senior positions and lowering retirement ages. But there is no point having a talent pipeline if the talent never reaches its destination or if the pipe-line springs a leak – that can be an expensive business!
Asking the question ‘why do we recruit graduates?’ is, I think, key. Taking first job graduates is a brave move. Yes, you get raw talent and, increasingly, the pick of a very big pool of talent but what do you actually get long-term from that strategic decision?
I worked for an SME in the 90’s and in a conversation with one of the senior managers, in my recruitment capacity, I questioned the suitability of a graduate scheme of 12-14 graduates a year for a company of our size (800/850 staff). His view was simple, pointing at one of the rising stars of the business who was walking across the office, he said, ‘if we have to select, recruit, train, develop and lose 13 of the 14 graduates we take on over a two year cycle, if he is the one that we keep and he makes it, then it is worth it.’
That example compares neatly, for me, with the emphasis on the ‘what do we get’ review of graduate recruitment that is now more prevalent especially with many businesses feeling the pinch of the recession and where every penny being spent is scrutinised endlessly. Businesses simply can no longer afford to bring in 15 to get one star and, in fact, more have to realise some tangible return beyond a speculative investment.
Given the combination of a low retention rate, high training costs, high career aspiration levels and salary needs, the temptation must be to sit tight and recruit second jobbers once they have more skills, career focus and sector stability? But their income expectations will, of course, be higher, there will no doubt be agency costs and no guarantee that you will keep them. Every choice seems to be a tough one.
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| Ernie, the fastest recruiter in the west |
I guess that we are all used to the budget review process that inevitably makes us question our strategies, results and whether the metrics we employ to measure success actually gives us more than a simple set of statistics. We are, as recruiters, resourcers and HR professionals forced to reflect on the way that we do things and question if there is another way and, as a result, I think increasingly the graduate market is becoming a different place.
Perhaps the next key question is what do we want / need to get from our graduates and what do they expect / need to get from us? I regularly lecture at my local University on the concept of employability and graduate recruitment. One of the best ways to get to the crux of the issue quickly with the final year students who attend is to write on the white board, ‘What do Employers Want’ and ‘What do We Want’ with reference to their careers and especially to their first graduate job, then asking them to construct the two lists.
When, at the end of the session, the group realises, often with great surprise and concern, that few if any of the entries appear on both lists, they then know that we/they have a problem. Perhaps some of us as graduate recruiters / employers should do the same exercise to hammer home the reality of the situation. If one party wants marriage and the other a short fling, someone will get hurt.
There used to be a real cache about having a graduate scheme and many employers in the 80’s and 90’s fenced off budget, invested in elaborate training programmes and involved senior management figures to help nurture the talent but it seems, from where I sit, that the market is now very much bipartite.
The elite employers and students continue with their courtship but the rest of the market are having to focus much more on matching not just skills and potential but also price, asking themselves ‘how much to train and retain’ and then crucially ‘is it worth it?’
About the author
Paul was the Recruitment Manager at Endsleigh Insurance until 2007 when he moved to Paris for two years and became the external consultant on AXA Insurances' Global Talent Acquisition Strategy Review Team which led to extensive Generation Y, Employer Brand, candidate engagement and career event research across Europe. In 2009 Paul returned to the UK and founded Consortio Recruitment Solutions Limited, which he is at pains to emphasise is not an agency! Primarily they are focused on helping businesses find and keep talented people through process review, employer branding focus and management skills training. Consortio are also active in the FE and HE market, helping improve student employability skills. Paul also heads up another business, The Brand Button, this is a workshop & training based business focusing on personal, business and career development through personal branding. Paul is a member of the Association of Graduate Recruiters, the Institute of Recruitment Professionals and is also qualified with the British Psychological Society to Level B int.
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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK. Next week’s Discuss HR will be published on Thursday 6thOctober and will be written by Leadership Coach Dorothy Nesbitt.
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