Move forward 35 years to yesterday & I am talking to an undergraduate from one of our Societies who has just surveyed 100 students on what they want to do as a career – 60% have a fair idea and 40% have no idea but they all want to meet & talk to a range of employers across a variety of sectors (many untraditional sectors for graduates too) so that can find out for themselves what is right for them. Oh and they also know they need to develop their job hunting and work based skills! 

Yes the recession has changed students in that they are understandably panicing and making more applications (and quality is suffering as a result) but what has not changed is students still want to meet employers and find out for themselves what is right for them AND use the Society to do it. So has anything meaningful changed? From what we see the answer is ‘yes’ because more students than ever are wanting to engage with employers - we have 5 new Societies start up this year already & our membership grew 33% in November alone – and that is one good thing that has come from the recession! 

Business leaders and trade unions agree…qualifications without being prepared for the world of work is another obstacle for graduates today; so a series of round table events by Adecco concludes.

‘Young people need help translating their qualifications into successful careers’ said the MD of Adecco. ‘It is more business, social and life skills that we need to prioritise if candidates who look good on paper are to be taken on and to become truly successful’ he went on.

Bright Futures is all about preparing young people for the world of work, giving them an array of opportunities throughout their time at University to offer more than their qualifications when job hunting. This then provides graduate recruiters with a great pool of talent to target and hire from.

Here at Bright Futures we have already gone beyond job hunting skills for undergraduates and have now added ‘Modern Life Skills’ to the portfolio of skills, which includes developing their ‘emotional resilience & intelligence’ (an area receiving focus from these round table events) that we and our clients deliver to their target talent.

And as ever let’s stop making this issue of employability (however you choose to define it!) as something that needs to be done to students. So many students now know that they need more than a good degree. What is needed is the right framework, direction, motivation and support for undergraduates to drive this for themselves. You only have to see what some of our best Bright Futures Societies are doing to get ample evidence of this (plus the fact that 60% of our 2010-11 committees had jobs before they finished University). So without wishing to sound like a battle cry (!) let’s pull together as employers & HE to empower undergraduates to tackle this issue. Give them the opportunity and freedom (with the right infrastructue and support behind them)  to use their initiative and energy to innovate and engage more and more students in what we all know to be a key issue for us all.

These are just some of the questions facing graduate recruiters and in a world where we are all expected to do more with less it’s a tough ask. We all want to attract and hire the best talent and the way that most applicants are assessed uses the competency based model. This approach seeks to identify individuals who have demonstrated the desired competencies, in the past, that are needed to do the job / role they are hired for.

But there are two issues with this approach today. The first is savvy graduates know exactly what competencies you seek so prepare multiple examples of each to trot out as soon as they are asked. This too often leaves recruiters and assessors with no choice but to pass them as they have shown the desired competencies but with a nagging feeling the applicants are not right or that they know nothing really about the individual as a person. Not to mention recruiters are becoming tired with the same questions and same answers – so we are losing their engagement in the process. Applicants too feel like they have not had the chance to show who they really are.

The second issue is that the competencies assess an individuals ability to do a job but not if they will truly excel in it – and that is what we want, graduates who will excel. Why is this? Simply put, just because someone has talked about leadership in the past or strong team working ability in say their telephone or face to face interview it does not mean they love taking on that role or will actively seek opportunities to use that capability and therein lies the flaw.

The strength based approach focuses on what individuals love doing, what they are naturally good at – not what they will do if they have to or because they know they need to so that they pass an interview or assessment centre. And it stands to reason that if you secure graduates with the natural strengths that your organisation needs then they will use those strengths all the time when they join your business.

Also and interestingly  the feedback we have from applicants is that they like the different approach (even though they cannot now prepare for it as they questions are less leading) but most importantly they feel they have been given the opportunity to show who they really are.

And if you still need convincing to take a look at this approach, when we introduced it at the telephone interview stage for our clients the success rate at assessment centre went up dramatically.

So in summary this approach has been designed (and is being used by employers) to increase the number of graduates who naturally excel in the workplace, something that would make all of our lives that bit better!

If you would like to find out more then get in touch and I will send you a link to the recent webinar we ran for our clients on Strength Based Interviewing.

He was responding to the recruitment challenges faced by businesses, which include the huge volume of applications now being generated due to both the lack of jobs available (leading to more panic applications) and the success of companies’ attraction strategies. This increase in applications has brought with it a lot more cost (in both people & technology) yet he claims the feedback from Senior Managers is that the quality of the hires has declined. He believes this is due to a failure to handle the process in a targeted way.

Implementing efficient processes plays a key part in responding to the volumes of applications & the pressures of having to reduce costs; but this drive for efficient processes mean too many organisations have as their primary focus such metrics as speed to hire and cost per hire whilst, claims Ellehuus, they have lost sight of how to identify the best talent fast.

A different metric.

This, it seems to me, is a tough dilemma – how to hire better & better people as efficiently & quickly as possible? For example, should recruitment costs be measured be up to the point of hire or over a slightly longer period of time, say 6 months, by which time your investment has had a chance to begin providing a return or not – so  a ‘speed to value’ metric perhaps? True, this would be tougher to measure but probably a much more important metric as it focuses on the quality of the talent hired, based on the results they produce.

So what can be done specifically in our graduate world to get better talent in fast?

I would argue that graduate recruiters on the whole know exactly what they are looking for in their future graduate talent. So target the talent you meet – don’t throw them back into the pool. The challenge I would make to graduate recruiters is can your organisation create different ways of bringing people into the business which by-pass some of the current and let’s face it cumbersome & painful process? One of our clients did it with us this year through our Business Champions competition, offering internships to the winning team without an application form, numeracy test or assessment centre insight!

Or what about running bespoke assessment centres just for the talent you spot through your on campus events & activities, & not waiting for them to then go through a long application and screening process? In offering this opportunity you would at the very least get a lot more students at your events! Accenture are doing something similar taking students from their Bootcamp events straight to final stage assessments & very successfully.

Still, and too often, the investment made on campus is ‘lost’ or at the very least not maximised. The great talent companies meet on campus & through events are asked to apply with everyone else (who have not bothered to be proactive) and are ‘lost’ or at the very least slowed down back in the process.

Rising to this challenge & finding a new way to recruit great talent fast represents such an opportunity that our Client Conference, this August, will focus how our clients can tackle this issue in a simple yet effective way. See you there?

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.

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?!

Whether or not this is true or not is not something I want to debate here. My instinct is that life has always been a bit like this with the fortunate seemingly getting ahead more easily. I am not sure this will ever change but what I do know is that being well connected and having a good network makes a difference both when starting a career and throughout it.

So, a great network makes a real difference. This applies to students & graduates seeking to get a great job BUT is also is true for employers seeking to hire the best talent, the better your network on campus the better talent you secure.

So how do you become well connected (if your family or organisation are not!?) It comes down to something that is core to both me and to my organisation and that is…to take personal responsibility for making things happen. If you are not born well connected with a great network (like most of us!) there is nothing to stop you becoming well connected & making one. Just get out there and meet people both face to face and online (just look at what Justin Bieber did through YouTube!), not forgetting to follow up with them afterwards & keep in touch (through things like blogs)

The Bright Futures Society would be a great, personal example of the value of a great network and how being proactive with your current network helps you keep growing your network

• I was approached to take over the running of the Bright Futures Society (previously SIS) as a result of the network I had built for myself on campus

• I saw the Society as a great tool for students to build a personal network and become well connected. We do not care what University students are at, what their route to University was but if they want to take responsibility for themselves and their career then involvement in the Society will really help.

• Running the Society has helped me take another huge step forward in terms of my network and being well connected. I have met some great people through it both students and corporates who I would not have met (so easily) without it

We have 3 guiding principles at Bright Futures when it comes to being successful.

1. Know what you want (know your goals)
2. Build a mastermind group i.e. surround yourself with people who can help you achieve what you want (a network)
3. Take personal responsibility – get off your ****side and make it happen!

And adopting these 3 principles will ensure you successfully build a network of well-connected people and so become well-connected yourself.

Join the Bright Futures Society as a student and we will help you become well-connected; get involved as a graduate recruiter and we will help you grow your network of talented undergraduates & graduates.

So who gets the best jobs…?

“The people who get on in this world are the people, who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them” George Bernard Shaw

This is my favourite quote. You may not start out well connected but there is nothing to stop you becoming well connected.

P.S. I have just heard one of our Bright Futures Committee members has secured a job with one of our clients. She was rejected on paper but as a result of her ‘Bright Futures’ network and meeting that client face to face & impressing them she was then put onto their selection process and ultimately offered a job on their graduate programme. Everybody wins!

The competition for graduate talent rages on. With the biggest challenge for recruiters seen to be candidate drop out due to simultaneous applications to multiple organisations (AGR Jan 2011), the need to build meaningful relationships with undergraduate talent is more important than ever.

With this in mind & following a very popular event with the AGR on this topic, that I chaired, I wanted to share the ideas generated with and by graduate employers.

1. Work with Careers Services from your target Universities – not just posting ads on their website but taking part in Employability Awards they run (such as the very successful one at Birmingham); Insight to Management Events like at Loughborough & Leicester’s Tomorrow’s Managers; inviting them to your offices to really understand your business and who you want to target.
2. Recruit more interns and placement students. It is the best ‘interview’ you will ever do and then ‘convert’ them into graduates.
3. Work with Academic Departments – from strategic activities such as sponsored degrees like Logica run at Winchester or the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP); to guest lectures; providing case studies; sponsoring awards and prizes.
4. Employing Campus Brand Managers – with key objectives such as promoting your careers & skills events; running their own innovative events for you; spotting relevant talent (acting like headhunters); creating facebook groups to raise brand profile and awareness online
5. Running Competitions – There are online & physical on campus Competitions. On campus examples include ones run over a short timescale such as ‘By how much can you grow £5 in 24 hours’; to The Apprentice / Dragon’s Den style events. Or ones run over a longer period of time like the IBM Business Challenge or Bright Futures ‘Business Champions’.
6. Working with Clubs and Societies – from specialist ones such as the Engineering Society or Finance Society to larger ones with Societies at multiple Universities like AISEC or Bright Futures. Innovative events Societies run include: ‘Dinner with Industry’; Speed Networking; Insights to Internships; Mentoring programmes etc.
7. Using your Graduate Alumni – Use your best people (obvious you might think!) when you go on campus, those who enthuse about what the company do & their roles AND can relate to the students experience / current career dilemmas.

Whatever you choose to do the message is clear if you want to successfully compete for the best:

-          Target talent early

-          Build face to face relationships

-          Or as one of the Bright Futures Presidents’ put it ‘get personal’.

Whatever you do to recruit interns or graduates, be that online, on campus or outsourced, it is critical to measure it. One example of a heavily used measure is how many hires do you secure from each University?

This is all well and good but as that great quote from John Wanamaker goes ‘Half the money I spend on advertsing does not work, the trouble is I just don’t know which half’. So which activities, that you are spending money to create those ‘hires’, worked best? The Job Board? Target email? Careers Fair? Employer Presentation? Academic Recommendation? Word of Mouth?

You can ask these questions through an online application but even they are not that accurate. For example, a client of ours decided last year to only do on campus activity, so no online job boards, yet 176 candidates stated in their application form they heard about the role through an online job board. The truth is they are so bombarded with information they all too often forget where they saw what and when.

So much money is spent attracting talent to apply (online, events, marketing etc) but too often working the process of attracting applications is seen as the job done. We would argue attracting great talent should really be about identifying those individuals, faster than your competitors, and making sure that not just the best ones apply but that when they do they can be picked out quickly and easily from the hundreds or thousands of others.

In addition to this, students themselves want to feel like individuals, they want to feel that when the stand out they will  not be treated like one of the masses but be picked out/spotted/headhunted. So our advice would be…do exactly that – pick them out! Those companies who do will, we believe, win the battle for the students ‘hearts and minds’. This is why, we believe, the process of delivering a ROI can be used to then stand out with students in a very noisy marketplace.

Looking specifically at on campus activity, for example, as this is very much back in vogue now. One ‘trick’ is still being missed by most and that is capture the details of those students you meet on campus, especially those who impressed, AND follow them up directly. A simple email, or better still a call, will really make your organisation stand out. Recording who you met when on campus is easy. All you need are some pre-prepared sheets and a clip board or two – nothing could be simpler!

The tough bit is to then make sure the follow up is done, then track them to make sure they apply and prove to be as good as them at first appeared. It will be worth is as it will both help you demonstrate ROI and ensure you secure the best talent.

With 2.2 million students in UK Higher Education alone, and with so many graduates with strong A levels and getting a 2.1 (see my last blog) it is crucial to find ways to effectively target the right talent on campus. What can the Universities themselves offer to help you recruit your interns & graduates?

Firstly, which Universities to target? If you know the courses you want to target use www.unistats.ac.uk to find the Universities who run those specific courses.

Also think about the type of individuals you want to hire – for example, do you need more practically / vocationally biased in which case you may want to target the newer Universities. The other factor in who to target should be how easy the University make it for you to work with them - in other words good, old fashioned customer focus. So don’t just automatically think target the Top 10 Universities.

This decided then, one of your first ports of call should then be the University Careers Service. They have always been used to promote graduate & intern vacancies & opportunities. Although it is important to remember that Careers Advisory Services (to give it their full name) are not there to tell students what they should do as a career or persuade them to follow a certain route (i.e. work for you!), their role is to advise.

Activity on campus as an employer has changed – gone are the days of only needing to turn up at a University for a careers fair, the old fashioned ‘milkround’, and expect to meet all the relevant and engaged students you could ever need. There are just too many students wanting too wider range of careers, with all kinds of other time pressures on them for this to be effective on it’s own any more; as well as a huge amount of other much more focused activity being undertaken by employers all seeking to grab the attention of the best.

You need to use new methods to get onto the radar of graduate talent such as business games or challenges & case studies. These can be organised through the Careers Service.

Increasingly Careers Services are innovating themselves and with a real focus on directly improving the skills of students ready for the world of work such as the ‘Achieve’ Programme being launched at the University of Liverpool next year (http://www.liv.ac.uk/careers/) or the ‘WoW’ programme at Liverpool John Moores (http://www.ljmu.ac.uk/courses/114715.htm) . As well as some great, tried and tested highly participative events like ‘Tomorrow’s Managers’ at the University of Leicester (http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ssds/sd/careers/events/tm) or the ‘Insights to Management’ at Loughborough University (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/service/careers/section/events/insight10.html).

Another route, as well as Careers, would be targeting Academic Departments directly.

Working with key academic departments to provide, for example, ‘Guest lectures’ is not quick to make happen but is very effective; other activities include sponsoring faculty prizes; involvement in research projects, the list goes on.

The reality is to consistently recruit great intern and graduate talent year on year, you have to invest in building links with key institutions, and the good news is they are increasingly keen to build links with the commercial world – more so each year.