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With the hectic March recruitment round now behind us, GradConnection NZ is proud to announce that we are the new sponsors of the University of Auckland Engineering School in the 2012 Interfaculty Sports Tournament!

With engineering being the second largest employer industry on the GradConnection’s website, it seemed fitting that we partner up with Auckland University’s Engineering School for this tournament. Since its inception in 2009, and following on from the success and high levels of staff and student involvement throughout the last couple of years, the tournament spans over 9 of Auckland University’s faculties competing in 7 types of sport including cricket, doubles badminton, touch rugby, volleyball, men’s and women’s basketball, netball and rugby.

The sponsorship is a great opportunity for GradConnection to engage with future graduates as well as giving us brand exposure to 40,000 students and 4,000 Auckland University alumni. Other perks include prime brand positions on playing jerseys, promo material placement at games, as well as placements on all marketing material promoting the sports tournament. In line with the tournament spirit, we have printed GradConnection banners to show our support to the Engineering School teams. We are planning barbecues for the players as well as working on organizing a special guest for rugby coaching!

Throughout the last couple of weeks and in the coming couple of months, we are making sure the GradConnection CheatSheet flyer (as seen in the previous GradGazette newsletter) is circulating around the Auckland University campus, so as to ensure we have a continuous presence among the university and its students.

GradConnection is also looking to form student focus groups in the Engineering School Faculty to help us narrow in on the efficiency of our current website and identify areas for further improvement. We are excited for all the sports tournaments to get underway so that we can get amongst the students and show some serious support for our teams.

We have no doubt the Engineering School will do amazingly well and we are delighted to announce that we have already taken out 1st place in Cricket! With more similar successes to come we’re sure. Get behind the Auckland University Engineering School with us, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates!

After an unnecessarily long and agonizing, thirty-something hour plane ride from my hometown Zagreb in Croatia, I began my journey in New Zealand. 10 years later and still in Auckland, I find myself as a third year university student.

I'm finishing off my Bachelor of Business with a double major in advertising and finance at AUT. I'm often asked how I settled on advertising, to which I think the reply would be it sort of settled on me. I went after what I was good at and once you find you're good at something you sort of naturally start to enjoy it. As for the finance side of things, I'm still working that out! Job-wise, I've been lucky enough to land a marketing manager role at GradConnection NZ as can be seen. This all began after scanning through my inbox one day and noticing an email from GC team regarding a new position. After a overly lengthy cover letter and abnormal levels of hope, I got a call back for an phone interview that, with my luck of holiday timing, couldn't be taken from sunny California. However, upon my return I took the phone interview and got to the face-to-face stage. Long story short it all had a happy ending and I was offered the job.

Working for Rob and Tim is proving to be an interesting endeavor in which I eagerly await the many challenges thrown my way. The relaxed but productive atmosphere and constant personal growth opportunities are currently topping the favourites list here, but surely more will surface with time. I'm excited for what this year will bring and look forward to hearing from you guys here on the website. Should you need anything do let me know!

Tune in soon.

Erin Boyle recently wrote the following article appearing in seven regional APN newspapers

Graduating from study is an exciting time. There is no doubt embarking on a tertiary course can do great things for your career but to make sure you successfully move on to the next step you will need to consider a few things.

For quite a few disciplines, organisations are keen to hire in advance, so placements for lawyers, accountants and engineers in particular are often done up to 12 months in advance. For those in their final year of study in 2012, it really is a good idea to start planning for those intakes.

Tim Watts and Robert Milne are the directors of GradConnection New Zealand and they say students need to be prepared in advance for their future careers. ‘‘The graduate job market is quite different to the traditional recruitment concept. A lot of the big corporations, like Contact Energy, Telecom, Fonterra, the major banks, they do almost all of their candidate sourcing from March to May for graduates to start the following year. They tend to work out what skills they will require across the board and not just for the ‘in demand’ candidates, like engineers. They will often look for people to fill HR, marketing and all those sort of organisational roles.’’

GradConnection was started three years ago by three Wellington friends who decided to launch their concept in Australia. Then, two-and-a-half years ago, Watts and Milne opened the New Zealand company and, since then, GradConnection has been growing from strength to strength. ‘‘Last year, we averaged about 17,000 hits a month and that peaked at 26,000 visits during our busiest times. We have around 60 clients ranging from major corporations to large nationwide accounting firms.’’

Gradconnection.co.nz enables organisations to create profile pages that can take potential job applicants further than the traditional job ad. These businesses can develop more of a brand presence and showcase all the opportunities and career paths offered. Future graduates access a wide range of tools, as well as potential employers, just by creating a personal profile and chatting on the forums.

Watts and Milne are thrilled with how students, graduates and organisations around New Zealand have responded to the GradConnection website but say that more businesses throughout the country need to be accepting of the skills and talents graduates can bring to organisations of all shapes and sizes. ‘‘New Zealand really does a poor job at investing in tertiary graduates compared to our cousins across the Tasman’’ says Milne. ‘‘So we want to encourage more businesses to come together and feel empowered to hire graduates. A lot of organisations have negative preconceptions about graduates and see them as the ‘too hard basket’, but we want to show that there is so much value they can add.’’

For those who have completed their studies but haven’t managed to secure employment yet, never fear as there are still many opportunities around and Watts has some words of advice. ‘‘Whether you were unsuccessful ... [More]

The Australian Association of Graduate Employers (AAGE) hosts an annual three-day conference, bringing together graduate employers, recruitment professionals and service providers (whose businesses are connected to the graduate recruitment industry) from around Australia and New Zealand to learn, develop, share and network with each other.

The AAGE Conferences allow delegates to focus on broad issues impacting on the industry, to have the opportunity to learn from industry experts, discover the latest trends and to discuss solutions and methods in which to handle industry challenges. The Conference format encourages the open sharing of knowledge and experience, which serves to elevate the graduate recruitment industry as an increasingly important, strategic part of a business.

 New Zealand Delegates.

This year was the 23rd AAGE Conference held at the Hilton Sydney and GradConnection was once again proud to be a gold sponsor of the event. There were around 400 delegates in attendance this year, with a group of eight New Zealand delegates, including Rob and Tim from GradConnection NZ, Otago University, and five GradConnection New Zealand clients: Gentrack, Russell McVeagh, KPMG, Transpower, and Staples Rodway.

  New Zealand delegates hailing the NZ flag.

This year’s theme ‘What’s Your Special Ingredient this year?’ was an acknowledgment to the hunger of graduates when embarking on their career and how employers can satisfy their expectations. The conference hosted a range of seminars and impressive keynote speakers, followed by a comprehensive selection of break out workshops. Highlights for us included:

- Practitioner Seminar: Aimed at those relatively new to the graduate recruitment industry, this seminar covered best practice approach to budgeting, marketing, screening, assessment and reporting. It was facilitated by Su Kulk of Colonial First State, Emma Hale of SA Water and Anna Clarke, OneSteel.

- Leader Seminar: Looked at how to manage the strategic direction of your organisation’s graduate recruitment and development program. This was facilitated by representatives of companies including BP, Westpac, Orica and PwC.

- ‘What Makes You Different’: A workshop on how to build a graduate brand that sets you apart, presented by Andrea Culligan, CEO of Unimail. 

- ‘The Edge Boutique’: A workshop providing insight on making bespoke Graduate development easy. Presented by Josh Mackenzie, Managing Director of Development Beyond Learning and author of The Graduate Edge.

- ‘Designing a Graduate Assessment Centre’: How to design and facilitate an assessment centre to improve your recruitment success, presented by Adele Preston of Orica.

The GradConnection team also made our own presentation on ‘Online Graduate Attraction around the World’. This looked at various online strategies used worldwide, focusing on how to attract star students using the latest online technology. We wanted to introduce everyone to the increasingly important data, analytics and online worlds. Dave Jenkins presented some very interesting conclusions from our GradConnection data. He gave an overview of what is possible with google analytics and how ... [More]