EASY EXPERT
Rebecca Fielding Managing Director of Gradconsult
EASY EXPERT Welcome to graduate recruitment
If you’re new to the world of student recruitment, I’m here to give you a great big welcome.
You have joined an innovative, collaborative and fun sector at an exciting time. And I can say that as someone who has worked in it for 17 years!
Every year seems to bring new challenges (Apprenticeship Levy anyone?), exciting technological developments (AI and virtual reality – eek) and a deeper understanding of the important role our profession plays within people’s lives (candidate experience, fight for feedback and filling the void in school careers provision). Yet amongst all this complexity, change and innovation, there are a few simple things you can do to really learn about the sector quickly and make an impact from year one.
Here I share those top tips for anyone new to the industry…… 1. Ask about the business case. Why are you bringing entry talent in and what problems is the business trying to address? It’s only when you know this that you can really deliver.
2. Don’t just accept your target list of universities.
These can often be based on history and tradition rather than current evidence and
data. There are lots of good reasons to interrogate and question that list and whether they are still the most effective places for you to target. 3. Become a data geek!
Use the ISE data dashboard, surveys, and HESA to really understand the broad labour market trends and the facts around your target market. This allows you to become the expert in your business and make evidence-based recommendations.
4. Build your professional network. There are loads of conferences, regional networking events, sector focus groups, training courses, breakfast seminars and research launches to attend across the year. Go to as many as you can and make connections across the sector – you’ll learn so much and be able to offer your business sector knowledge/insight as a result.
5. Make the most of your suppliers. Many suppliers have been in the sector for years, have amazing networks, great experience, research and insight to offer you. Asking for their advice and ideas will not only give you the benefit of their experience but also strengthen your working relationship.
6. Use your early talent ‘army’. Early careers jobs can be big, busy and complex – you will often find you need to
be in three places at once. To address this make the most of your extended team: your interns, students, graduates, graduate alumni in the business and graduate sponsors. They can help you with talks, on campus events, recruitment and more.
7. Get to know careers centre colleagues. They have excellent knowledge about their students, subjects, academics, campus/colleges, what your competitors are up to, any institutional priorities or projects (that you could benefit from) and what is most likely to work well for you. Asking for and using their expertise to tailor your on campus activity can have a massive impact.
If you’ve found these tips helpful you might also like the ‘Accelerate your first year in graduate recruitment’ one-day course run by ISE (2018 dates to be confirmed). It’s packed full of current market data and trends, best practice approaches to graduate recruitment and is of course a great way to build your network. I hope to meet you either on the course, or at an event, sometime soon and once more welcome to the wonderful world of student recruitment!
Top Tips Milkround
Ahead of the 2017 milkround period, we spoke to Alex Bennett at L’Oreal and Katie Mond from Frontline to find out what their top tips were for this exciting yet exhausting time… • Use the business! Taking employees to careers fairs, presentations etc – as wonderful as we recruiters are, students
like to hear about experiences ‘from the horse’s mouth’, from senior management to the current interns.
• Track the ROI. Make sure you are getting the best out of each event, and that it achieves the goals you have set out.
• Give back to students. They want to walk away from an interaction with you with something useful (not just a branded pen!). Running skills session can be a great way to do this.
• Consider historical data – what are the
conversion rates and return on investment for universities and events run previously? This will inform your milkround attraction planning.
• Personalise your approach, for example - engage with students and be approachable. This will demonstrate your organisation’s culture and mission and will attract more students.
• Sit facing forward on the many train journeys you’ll take to careers events – you’ll feel much better on arrival.
TheStudentEmployer
ise.org.uk 39
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46
