Delivering a successful graduate program - 10 Golden Rules

Blink and here we are, getting ready to for open for our 2021 graduate campaigns. You’d be forgiven if this season has slightly snuck up on you – 2020 was busy, with the most challenges and changes our industry has seen for some time! But how can we make sure we’re in the best position possible to hit the ground running for 2021?

1. Know your organisational and program objectives - Is your remit to focus on achieving Diversity Targets? Are you tasked with driving efficiencies? Have you considered how you will achieve these objectives in relation to your approach to attraction, recruitment process and development?
2. Be clear on what your Graduate Value Proposition (GVP) is - What is your message and offering in terms of your attraction, recruitment process and development? This is critical to effectively manage candidates’ expectations.
3. Analyse what a good graduate looks like - Do you have a success profile and framework in place? Has it been reviewed/adjusted to reflect the transformational changes we’ve all experienced in terms of technology, ways of working, resilience, self-motivation and drive, learning agility etc. Use this as an opportunity to engage with your stakeholders – get their input and secure buy-in to the profile, and the ongoing program.
4. Review your Attraction Strategy – be clear on what your goals are (e.g. building your employer/graduate brand, generating a diverse pool of candidates etc.) and who your audience is. Ensure your messaging is targeted, genuine, authentic and provides a true representation of your GVP and success profile. And don’t be tempted to go for the most possible applications, but really think about how many applications you need in your pipeline based on expected conversion rates and your vacancy numbers.
5. Check your Recruitment process is relevant and effective – use an assessment matrix to check that you’ve covered all behaviours from your success profile multiple times throughout the selection process. Their candidate journey is a great opportunity to bring your brand/graduate program story to life – make sure the selection process is face valid and relevant to the role. Review your 2020 post-campaign reports to check that there is no adverse impact and that the process is predicting success in the final stages – are there any tweaks that can be made to improve this?
6. Consider your Keep Warm, Onboarding and Induction Strategy NOW – we all work so hard to find our next graduates, so it’s worth putting a structured communications plan in place, ensuring our next cohort remains engaged and committed to joining. Along with the usual employee set up, developing a sense of community, re-visiting your learning value proposition and giving them access to their development journey is critical.
7. Review your Project Plan and consider your resource – know your key dates! Clearly communicate your opening and closing dates for applications, when they’ll hear back about each stage in the selection process, your AC dates and start dates. Make sure your assessors are booked in for the ACs well in advance. And check that you’ll have enough resource in the team to get through the huge volumes of application screening and video interviews… consider whether it might be better to outsource this heavy lifting, to allow you and your team to focus on the real value-add tasks that you’re uniquely qualified to do (e.g. stakeholder management).
8. Re-assess whether you’ve got the right technologies in place – we’ve all been in the challenging position of being mandated to use a clunky HR system/ATS, not built for the nuances of volume or graduate recruitment. See what can be tailored, automated and integrated to reduce the manual effort and work arounds. Try to ensure there is opportunity to accommodate personalised candidate experiences and communication. Check that you are capturing all the relevant data that you may need to report on at a later date. And think about the later stages in the process – with restrictions continuing to change, consider virtual ACs, online keep warm activities and virtual inductions.
9. Be Human – don’t get drawn into being too automated and transactional. We’ve all been through a lot and showing your candidates a bit of extra support, care and meaningful feedback will really stand out.
10. BREATHE – you’ve got this! There is still time to make some meaningful and pragmatic changes to your 2021 Graduate Season. Focus on your priorities and the quick wins where you’ll see real impact.

We’ll be here to support you as you embark on 2021. Over the next few months, we’ll continue to share our insights and experience. Sign up to our first Graduate Insights Event: 10 Golden Rules for delivering a successful Graduate Program - Thursday 18th February 2021, 12:30pm AEDT. We’ll be sharing proactive and pragmatic advice for hitting the ground running and overcoming barriers to delivering a successful graduate program.

To find out more, contact Kate Buchanan or the Fusion Team for a chat - we’d be delighted to support you.

Kate@fusiongc.com.au or 0452 626 416

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