Universities have been fully commercialised…

Two big events have happened in the last 10 days from either end of the political divide, that will affect HE dramatically.

Firstly, The National Union of Students have recognised, & verbalised what many have known for some time, that students are going to have to pay for their studies – although they suggest, not through the current fee structure but rather they are recommending  a ‘graduate tax’, payable at once you start earning a certain amount & rising as you earn more. Making the point that you only pay for your higher education if you then go into the world of work, otherwise it is free!   

And at the other end of the debate the Government have put Universities and Colleges into Mandelson’s new super Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.  The point here being that Universities feed business and are about innvotaion & skills (no longer education itself). Will this end the debate once and for all that education is no longer an end unto itself, but a stepping stone into the world of work? Follow this logic through and Universities will have to work much faster on their agendas for giving students the skills they need for the world of work.

In general I am in favour of this but we must not allow life at University to be all about preparing for work – University is an environment where individuals learn about themselves, and learn how to learn, I would hate to see ‘targets for skills’ becoming key drivers at University as we have done in schools - yes, students need skills but life after Univesrity is increasingly tough and competitive so let them have their fun too!

Why doesn’t HE promote work experience more successfully?

I have just read a survey funded by HEFCE that states: “Only 32% of UK students undertook an internship or work placement, compared with 87% of students in the Netherlands and 84% in France.” And yet a recent CBI report showed that “78% of businesses thought employability skills were ‘amongst the most important factors to consider when recruiting graduates’.
Everyone knows work experience is becoming more and more of a differentiator for graduates when job hunting. Yes it tough to find work in the curent climate, but Universities who are making industrial placements optional, to give both the Institution and students an easier time, are in the long run letting the student down.
Higher Education needs to send out a clear and consistent message that work experience adds to learning and helps students acheive their ambitions on leaving University faster.

Does the Government have a workable solution for the 2009 graduating year?

There has been much talk about the Government helping this graduating year & the decrease in graduate jobs through an internship programme (including and most recently ‘The Graduate Talent Pool’)  but as so often with Government – big on talk and low on practical ‘make it happenness’. Large numbers of employers are not going to enthusiastically embrace this to go through the pain of recruiting graduate for a 8-10 week placement for two good reasons:

1. Most large recruiters already run internship programmes so have no more 8-10 week roles that would add value to the business

2. Which leaves the small and medium size companies to pick this up. Why should they, when they are under huge pressures already, go through all the pain of recruiting to have the graduates for a short time? I know we will be told that these graduates could do such a great job that you will keep them long term but employers cannot be sure of that from the outset.

So what is the solution as one is clearly needed?

Financial incentives is one – no government can keep relying on the goodwill of employers (as it seems to me that is what they are relying on) to take on these extra graduates and thus make the Government look good – especially in the current climate when Parliament is so poorly thought of.

And second an easy way to quickly and time efficiently recruit these graduates is needed. To do this genuine help / expertise / knowledge needs to be given to employers to help them spot the right talent quickly, so that rather than wading though volumes of CVs and interviews, they can access the right talent fast. And I genuinely beleive the current & all too traditional methods of doing this just will not work. For exmaples University Careers Offices are already too over stretched, online Job boards generate volume which creates the problem outlined already.

A new solution is needed which draws on other groups  and parties (including the students themselves who are all too often left out of coming up with the solution) as well as the smart use of technology. And if David Lammy or any one else from Government (by some tiny chance!!) is reading this then get in touch and I will share my ideas – but as I got the brush off recentlky from DIUS I do not hold out much hope!

There really are jobs for graduates

Communication and the ease of it today is great but it has a huge downside. There has been so much doom and gloom, reports dominated by redundancies and companies going out of business that this has affected the new graduate workforce of the UK. They believe there are no jobs so they are not job hunting - so instead even more are going travelling or taking up post graduate study.

The rationale being that come 2010 – when they return to the job market things will be better when it comes to jobs. But this is just not the case.

So many finalists are not applying that many of the big firms still have vacanies to fill – so there are jobs out there now! Taking on the costs of a post graduate degree just to put off job huting is an expensive mistake.  Employers wants graduates with real world, work based skills not more academic knowledge. And come 2010 there will be another 300,000 graduates leaving University to compete against for jobs. 

So what’s the message? If I were a finalist today or a graduate from last year, knowing what I know, I would apply to as many companies as I could and if I did not secure the job I want this summer, I would get work experience and apply again for next year – as that work experience will help me stand out for the rest.

Why does the BBC think graduates are stupid?

The BBC today (Sat 28th Feb) ran an article about there being too many graduates for the jobs available. That the ‘mickey mouse’ degrees are worth nothing. The truth is employers care less and less about the degree subject itself and indeed the University itself but rather focus on recruiting graduates based on the skills they have.

With this well worn debate no-one ever seems to consider the students themselves and their awareness of the whole situation. Undergraduates across the UK are hugely conscious of how tough the graduate market is and are developing the real world skills they need to maximise their chances of getting a graduate job.
The BBC &  media in general must stop talking about graduates as if they were small children in need of looking after and recognise that huge numbers of them are taking personal responsibility for what happens to them after University.

Increased applications for some, means retention issues for the future?

With many of the investment banks and others sectors reducing their graduate recruitment or not recruiting at all – other companies and sectors are clearly benefiting with increased, quality applications. (And who says undergraduates aren’t aware of what is going on in the world around them?!) But being the pessimistic culture we are, many are now talking about this only storing up retention issues for the future; the rationale being when the economy picks up again – as it inevitably will (and what will Robert Peston have to talk about then?!) – then all those graduates who joined ‘2nd choice’ sectors and companies will leave.

Instead I say see this as an opportunity, as a ‘2nd choice’ employer to become a permanent 1st choice employer. Do a great job with the graduates who you do hire in 2009 and then use their success stories in your recruitment in 2010, 2011 and beyond to become a permanent 1st choice employer! Get your graduates to be open and honest about what they had initially planned to do and then go on to show how much they have developed as a result of the company they joined.

There is always opportunity to be found as long as we are always looking for it!

A quick thought about talent

Graduate recruitment has become obsessed with ‘talent’ and me included. The top recruiters all want talent and only talent! A recent article in managament today got me thinking about this. One of the points they were making is that to survive the current economic climate we all need to be positive. Our attitude will help us get out of the economic downturn faster. But if we are busy saying we only want talent that implies many do not have talent.  Keep spreading that message and many may give up or stop trying. And right now we need everyone trying and striving. So perhaps we as graduate recruiters to do our bit for the global economy need to be saying we want ‘talent that fits’..rather than blindly obsessing about talent?!

Graduate Recruiters are too busy being busy…

Every graduate recruiter would agree that the advent of online tools have revolutionised graduate recruitment (as it has most industries) You can now communicate your message to huge audiences and as a result generate large volumes of applications with much less money than you used to. This however has a downside, it creates more applications which means more resource taken up dealing with the applications, crunching the data and trying to make sense of it all (not to mention all these new job boards springing up offering essentailly more of the same i.e. more mass email traffic)

Meanwhile students, especially finalists, are receiving greater and greater volumes of emails from would-be employers saying ‘we are great come and work for us’ – so much so they are deleting most of it without reading it and very importantly then looking for other ways to get the information they want. This other way, more and more, is through talking to real people from the business. Students want to spend time talking to employers and their graduates.

But here lies the problem, graduate recruiters are so busy dealing with applications, planning their online activity, crunching data and reporting on the status of the campaign they do not have the time to spend the additional time they need to in front of more students – despite the fact the students, their future employees, want to do this!

“Fewer, Better Applications” should not only be our mantra but also drive our actions. Graduate recruiters and their demanding bosses need to STOP and take a fundamental look at how they can attract & generate more of the very best and to my mind this means spending less time in the office playing with online activity and more time on in front of the ‘customers’ – the job hunting undergraduate!

Don’t just ‘Establishing Relationships’ with talent, get to know them!

When wanting to recruit the best talent, waiting for when individuals (in this case graduates) start looking for jobs is a big mistake. I have always believed the best undergraduate talent, by the time they get into their final year already know who they are going to apply to. They certainly don’t think “I wonder where I can find what consultancies or engineering companies there are for me to apply to?”! They know who they are already. So serious graduate recruiters must get ahead of the game. Find ways to target talent early. AND don’t just ‘build relationships’ with that talent, which for most means marketing your messages to them but find ways to get to know them and importantly their abilities (through such activities as on campus events, competitions, internships, part time work etc). Then identify who of those, based o n their abilities and ’fit’ you want to recruit and offer them jobs before they get into the final year.

Easy? ‘No’. But will it help you successfully compete for the very best talent? Yes it will!

Why too many graduate recruitment programmes don’t really deliver

Why do some many organisations (and a surprisingly large number of very big players) not really know why they recruit graduates. And don’t think ‘to develop future leaders’ is a good enough reason as it is not!

Only a small percentage of the graduates you recruit will become leaders in your organisation (but those who do will be truly excellent) however this alone would make it a very expensive programme on it’s own.  

So why should companies recruit graduates or perhaps a much better question is ‘what does the business need and can a graduate programme deliver on it?’ All businesses need not just future leaders, but talent at all levels and capable teams – graduates of all types and capabilities (and this cost) can be part of this and thus deliver. Graduates should no longer be seen as the just elite and ‘destined to rule’! A few may well do so but many are just keen to make an impact in their chosen field and role. Organisations can and should tap into these seem of talent and this deliver on projects, roles within the business. 

So, for example, in terms of roles and positions can become in the business: A few future leaders, true but also ‘leaders’ in their field / area of the business. And as these are quite long term companies also need to look at other measures of success (and not just retention, as that does not really measure the value the graduates and the programme delivers). So what else?

Some ideas might be…Are the graduates careers progressing faster than non-graduates? How are the projects they work on being measured and can these be then used to show value? I particularly like this one as you can dramatically speed up the return on investment using this method – we have a groundbreaking programme to deliver exactly this.

There is another key element to the ensuring your graduate programme delivers. Give them the skills today’s graduates need (and yes this will include letter writing, business email etiquette; it’s not their fault they have just never been shown!). Critical to the success of your graduate programme is to give them not just the standard skills (communication, influencing, managing etc) but also how to manage & drive their own careers, how to build networks etc. These will go along way to ensuring your graduate programme delivers.