FEATURE


Graduate Success cards, which provide tips based on in-depth research into what top graduates do that makes them stand out. Graduates are encouraged to use these to seek feedback on how they are doing – “Which of these do you think I’m doing well, and which ones do you think I could improve on?”


Idea 8. Maximise exposure to high potentials Don’t use all your second and third year graduates for 1-to-1 buddying. Instead, make it an assignment for the top 20% of earlier intakes to take responsibility for shaping the attitudes and responses of a group of 5 new graduates. This is great managerial experience for their CV. Also - can you use your high potential population to manage or mentor your graduates – so their attitude and approach rubs off on them?


Top graduates will have the abilities to progress rapidly, but a handicap is often their obvious youth and hesitance. An engineering and services company runs a session on personal impact at induction – covering dress codes, advice on personal style of dress to maximise impact, body language, and how to make an impact at meetings.


Idea 9. 20 days in training, 200 with managers Graduates spend 200 days with their line managers. How much time and effort is spent in ensuring all managers deliver the ‘Gold Standard’ of graduate management? One FMCG company has led the way by providing structured training for all graduate line managers. They also offer ongoing support using webinars, and quarterly webcasts on best practice; and they created a Reference Guide and portal for managers.


Idea 10. Round peg in a square hole placement A food manufacturing company introduced a policy of stretching their graduates by moving them well out of their comfort zone in one placement. This stretch placement might put an IT graduate in charge of a night crew on production – with the aim of proving to graduates that they were capable of much bigger things than they thought, and widening their horizons. Graduates on stretch placements were given intensive support – great managers and supervisors, and frequent contact with the graduate team.


Idea 11. Graduate-specific appraisal We worked with a power company to completely revamp graduate appraisal. The new process focused graduates on how they added value (via delivery, ideas, use of networks). It focused managers on giving feedback on behaviours proven by research to be typical of high-fliers. A rating scale was devised that focused graduates on accelerating their learning, rather than competing to get the top rating. The result – a much wider spread of ratings, so that graduates who needed extra help were quickly identified, without demotivating them by labelling them ‘below expectations’.


Idea 12. Skills in managing ambiguity Graduates are a product of six years of structured education – they find it hard to work with rushed briefings, no ‘right answer’, and multiple stakeholders. We worked with a telecoms company to create a one day session with 40 graduates to train them in how to manage ambiguity. Graduates learned a questioning strategy to tie down ambiguity, how to document fast – and use this


to check understanding, and how to work with multiple stakeholders. One graduate said, “This day was of more practical use than my Prince training, for the tasks graduates have to manage.”


Idea 13. Give graduates a training budget Graduates benefit from attending mainstream training, as it extends their contacts, and helps them absorb the culture. One company made a conscious decision to bring graduates together to provide half the development, when there learning need (e.g. how to manage ambiguity) is unique to graduates. But they also give graduates a budget to manage themselves, so that they can pick up mainstream courses at a time that’s right for them.


Idea 14. Career Tactics training When they arrive at your organisation, graduates’ career skills lie in searching job boards, and making online applications. Do you want these to be their key skills as they end the formal programme?! Training in the skills of internal career management is essential for retention, and is likely to have a bigger impact on ROI than any other development. Our clients are now putting it top of the agenda to equip graduates with the skills needed to find or create internal opportunities, so that they stay and progress fast. We now have a database of over 1,600 interviews with people who’ve driven successful careers across all sectors – graduates like being given hard facts on the tactics and skills that can fast track your career – and the data makes the case for why organisation hopping is rarely a part of rapid progression. Career tactics training can be a key retention tool for engineering and finance graduates, who are targets for poaching.


Idea 15. Management information dashboard The recession has resulted in cuts to many graduate budgets. Graduate teams are keenly aware of the crucial need to keep Board level backing for their scheme. Companies are now starting to take a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) approach to provide senior stakeholders with regular management information. A powerful management information dashboard might cover progress towards agreed goals, current performance data, reporting stories on graduates who have added real value, and tracking the career progression of graduates from past intakes.


Pick an idea, any idea, and put it to work for your scheme. Or let us know your innovations and great ideas. Once recruitment is finished, we don’t need to compete – sharing information helps ensure all graduates develop fast and stay with the organisations that have invested in them.


This is an extract from a T&P paper 50 Great Graduate Development Ideas – if you’d like to have the full article, please contact info@talentandpotential.com.


Anne Hamill is Managing Director of Talent & Potential Ltd., and a representative of the Development Community on the AGR Advisory Council. anne.hamill@talentandpotential.com.


GRADUATE RECRUITER 17


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