Employability – what does it really mean? And how can it be ‘refreshed’ to give employers that ‘differential’ on campus with students?

Graduate recruiters are rightfully always looking for new ways to differentiate themselves on campus and a fresh look at the employability agenda could offer a solution.

To most students employability or anything related to it is about purely getting a job (not succeeding once in it). And to be fair to them this is reinforced by the fact that a lot of ‘employability training’ focuses on CVs, interview technique and the skills or competencies companies require to getting a job with them.

This student held view feels much like what I was warned about 13 years ago (and maybe even William & Kate last weekend!) concerning the importance of planning a marriage not just the wedding!

Wikipedia will tell us employability is about gaining and keeping fulfilling work; or for their more ‘comprehensive’ definition it is about the ability to move self sufficiently within the labour market. (I do like the point about ‘self-sufficiently’).

Another view is employability requires students to possess not only certain qualities, but that they must also have good insight into what these qualities are and how they can be transferred from one context to another.

The points that stand out to me from wikipedia are around ‘keeping fulfilling work’ & ‘moving within the labour market’ and from the other view that it is about transferring qualities from one context to another. 

In short, employability needs to be seen as so much more than just getting a job. It is, simply put, about being successful in that job & all future jobs and careers; knowing the skills you have and using them to progress your career.

Too many of the skills that students are being focused on, as part of employability, are ‘job getting’ skills and not about building a successful career.

So to differentiate on campus why not give students the skills they need to succeed once in work. We are and will be launching it at the AGR Conference this summer.

New ways to hire intern & graduate talent

As one recruitment cycle comes towards a close and planning for the next begins, the talk in the graduate recruitment world continues about how to find the best talent and with less ‘pain’. And we keep hearing from our Bright Futures Society members how they continue to be frustrated by long & drawn out recruitment processes, which if they are unsuccessful with, they get no value from – despite employers best efforts in giving those who get to final stages some feedback.

I do not have the ‘silver bullet’ but I do (as ever!) have some more ideas….

Bright Futures held the National Finals of our ‘Business Champions’ competition this month, hosted at PwC offices in London, where students, working in teams, came up with a big idea that would make money in 3 months. We gave them some seed funding, a mentor and training from our sponsor PwC, then cut them lose! We started out with 28 teams & were down to 4 for the finals. The Finalists (from 1^st years to PhDs) were truly amazing both with the ideas they made a reality as well as the money they made – all of which went to charity.

But rather than leave it at that, every member of the winning team (from The University of Bath) were then given internship by PwC and the runners up (from The University of Exeter) all secured a place on the PwC Academy. No long application forms to fill out; no telephone interviews to be subjected to and no assessment centres. And here is where it gets even better, the students, regardless if they won or not, learned so much from this experience, unlike normal recruitment processes which are so one-way and painful for all! Plus our sponsor came into contact with some really different students at various stages of their time at University.

But if you are thinking that sounds like a large project to do on your own…

This month I also judged on a CV competition run by our local University and the winner of that competition now works for us – the easiest & quickest hire I have ever made. I was on campus for less than 30 minutes! http://yourstudentsunion.com/jobshop/index.php?page=view_page&page_id=1443

And just to confirm how effective it can be I have since been told by one of the academics at that University she is one of the brightest & most capable students in the year.

And then of course there was my P.S. from February’s blog…(‘Who gets the best jobs’)

All this goes to show there are alternative ways to hire great talent that take less time, are less painful (for everyone concerned & can even be enjoyable!) and really importantly where the students can actually learn a lot from the process.

PS We are running Business Champions again this year & making it even bigger….interested?!