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I recently made a presentation at 2011 HRINZ National Conference, August 9, 2011

Early this year the first GradConnection Graduate Motivations Report (the report) was published reflecting on what students and graduates are looking for in a New Zealand graduate employer. In tracking approximately 75,000 visits to their website over a nine month period in 2010 GradConnection was able to quantitatively outline interesting trends, desires and motivators that the future leaders of our businesses are requesting when they embark into their working careers - information that until now has been simply guess work for employers hiring graduates, entry level staff or students into graduate programmes.

This session was interactive and informative, developing and teasing out key themes in the report and other supporting research. A live case study of a well known New Zealand organisation was worked through showing what they are doing to provide the right working culture for our leaders of tomorrow to flourish in. As people learn best from hearing other peoples experiences (positive or negative) a panel discussion made up of some our well known New Zealand organisations added first hand insights. The panel included:

• Belinda Lally -FNZ Limited (previously Office of the Auditor General & Telecom New Zealand) 
• Richard Westney -KPMG (previously Fonterra) 
• Anoka Nallaiah-Transpower  

I also provided additional information from other employers I work with as well as current international trends picked up from the UK Association of Graduate Recruiters conference held in Wales in July.  

To see the Presentation Slides go to http://conference.hrinz.org.nz/Site/National_Events/conferences/2011/Conference_Presentations.aspx

Last week at the 2011 annual Australian Association of Graduate Employers (AAGE) Gala Dinner, GradConnection won the Best Supplier award. This award recognizes the best service supplier within the graduate industry. The award is voted on by graduate employers across New Zealand and Australia. It is the first time the award has been won by GradConnection.

To see the full story on Scoop, check it out here.

March 2011

GradConnection in a Press Release by Scoop

In light of the recent earthquake in Christchurch and the news that the March University Careers Fairs have been postponed in Christchurch, Tim and Rob the New Zealand owners of GradConnection have organised a an event to provide Christchurch students with the unique opportunity to be informed and chat live with a variety of employers next week. The Grad Aid event will be on 24th and 25th of March. Grad Aid has been organised in conjunction with GradConnection clients to give Christchurch university students another way find out more information about a number of graduate and internship opportunities on offer around the country.

Director Tim Watts says ‘the response from employers has been fantastic, sure these guys are all competitors but they were quick to come together and get involved in a unique way of interacting with Christchurch students, we at GradConnection are just happy to be able to do something that supports these students and their career services teams who have had a pretty rough time recently’.

The Grad Aid event will sit along the other fantastic support already on offer by the career services teams at Canterbury and Lincoln Universities. Best of all GradConnection is doing all this all for nothing! The event will be free for employers and free and easily accessible for the students of Christchurch to participate in.

Who is coming?

BDO, WHK, Staples Rodway, KPMG, EY, Deloitte, PwC, Audit NZ, Telecom, BNZ, ANZ, Westpac, NZICA, Talent Technology, Fonterra

How are GradConnection going to do this?

Live streaming (hosted via GradConnection Facebook page) - 24 March 2011 & 25 March

GradConnection will be streaming Grad Aid live to all Christchurch students with internet access. The show will allow organisations a slot to discuss their organisations careers opportunities on offer and take questions from students. The Grad Aid show will be hosted on the GradConnection NZ Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/GradConnectionNZ - Events tab). The format of the days will be broken up into 25min slots with a short 5min gap between.

Forum Q&A session (hosted via GradConnection forums)

GradConnection currently operates a successful forum on the website (http://www.gradconnection.co.nz/forums/). The forums are a place where students discuss both the aspects of finding a graduate job or internship and specific employers in the graduate space. The forums are to supplement Grad Aid Live. We will be running these real time interactive chat sessions on for all participants and GradConnection employers under their own ‘threads’. These forums will allow students who missed out on asking a question during the Grad Aid live session the opportunity to ask it and get answers from the presenter or any other staff from that organisation logged in from anywhere in the country.

To see episodes of GradAid go to [More]

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.

March 2011

Each year the recruitment of top talent in to the organisation becomes more and more competitive and employers undertake new and more innovative ways to connect with the tertiary talent pool. Building on the success of the Deloitte’s social media strategy and strengthening market position they introduced a new ‘face-to-face’ event into the 2011 recruitment calendar… the ‘ 2011 Deloitte Great Debate and Networking Evening’. Such evenings were held at the University of Auckland, Victoria University in Wellingotn and Otao University.

The debates involved two students (one on each team) and two Deloitte staff on each team – a total of 6 participants. The topic was‘If you want to be truly successful your career needs to be based offshore’. Each person had 3-5 minutes each to speak. These events were a huge success, and much fun was had by the teams and the audience.