AGR Graduate Development Awards 2013 - The Winners


This year’s AGR Development Awards were held back in March, at the Inmarsat Conference Centre in London. After announcing the names of the nine lucky winners in the last edition of GR, we now take a closer look at each entry in turn, giving a sample of the judges’ comments about what impressed them.


Preparation for work by Higher Education (Single Initiative)


Winner: The University of Law (incorporating The College of Law)


• A very focused, thorough initiative which is getting great feedback and tackles a larger issue.


• Vision clearly identified a shortfall in information which threatens the profession as a whole and provides accessible information which is relevant to the industry to overcome this.


• A great programme addressing social issues of demystifying law for many.


• Impact is clear, with good numbers showing uptake and excellent qualitative feedback, including quotes from students outside the college - Very impressive.


• Solution is extremely well structured and progressive, and laudable for being open to students outside of the college.


• Open access element to resources for students beyond those registered at their own institution shows a much wider impact.


• Within the college they demonstrate good engagement, with employability embedded across the curriculum.


• They have already looked at feedback to plan their future steps.


Preparation for work by Higher Education (Overall Strategy)


Winner: Aston University


• Judges were impressed by the bold and ambitious target of getting 100% of students with placement opportunities not just work experience.


• Setting growth targets for coordinators as well as centralised clear roles.


• Includes transfer of learning support from these placements. • Entry was clear and based on an honest look at the likely direction of travel of other universities in future.


• Lots of collaboration in their approach. • Not afraid to learn from best practice elsewhere in the university. • Evidence of doing a great job of getting buy in from faculties, where there may have been some resistance, as well as students.


• Early measures of success are good and nice to see they are sharing their lessons with other universities.


Graduate Induction (Under 50 Graduates)


Winner: National Grid • Very clear aims and vision.


• The induction was very relevant giving the grads up to date, live business challenges to address.


• Real sense of grad ownership of their induction, it was not done ‘to them’ but empowered them to drive it.


• Clear structure for the stakeholder roles and responsibilities including use of different metrics around ‘line manager perception’.


• The close alignment between induction and the overall ‘line of sight framework’ whereby competencies are aligned to their leadership framework.


• They also have good stakeholder engagement throughout the whole process.


• Impressed with the transition activities described to world of work not just learning about National Grid.


Graduate Induction (Over 50 Graduates)


Winner: Accenture • Judges were impressed with significant progression from last year’s award winning entry with the introduction of engaging technology in the form of ‘The hub’ and transferable learnings in terms of reducing print costs of materials and time to print.


• The hub is a powerful and truly innovative development focusing on a key issue around immediacy of feedback.


• Good use of figures to illustrate throughout. • Concept of meta-messaging getting graduates to feel messages not just tell them; going beyond standard transition to work thinking.


• Considers induction to the world of work not just Accenture. • Induction seems to go one step ahead of what the graduate even knows they need.


• Incorporating global best practice but maintaining local feel within induction.


• Very impressive stakeholder identification and engagement process – a community of around 200 people.


22 GRADUATE RECRUITER


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