This is a recent article written for the Employment Today Sept/Oct Issue
The last five years have seen a dramatic shift in the way employers, both large and small, approach graduate recruitment. It is all about buy-in from senior management or the realisation from an employer that they have an ageing work- force with a lack of fresh ideas, enthusiasm and no succession planning.
More recently graduate employers have realised that there is a greater range of disciplines they can look at to fill their graduate positions. This not only allows organisations to expand the talent pool from which they are recruiting, but also to bring in a dynamic group of young tertiary talent—resulting in a wider range of ideas, opinions and a balanced organisational culture. In the last two years, GradConnection has seen banks consider engineers for their analytics positions and professional services firms considering science graduates for their consulting teams. In particular, with the emergence of graduate leadership programmes, organisations are interested in hiring graduates from broader disciplines if they are passionate, driven and have a desire to succeed.
Comparing public sector with private sector organisations who actively hire New Zealand graduates makes for dire reading. Currently, the majority of responsibility for employing tertiary talent falls on the private sector, with only a handful of public sector organisations regularly recruiting graduates. While the private sector is actively increasing its recruitment of graduates the public sector is stagnating.
Of late, we have seen a shift in thinking from the senior management in organisations who are either initiating discussion about the recruitment of graduates or acting on the recommendations of their HR professionals. This buy-in from senior management is essential and allows organisations to enter the graduate market at an increased pace and with a more comprehensive graduate programme.
The final organisational shift that GradConnection has witnessed is that succession planning is coming to the forefront. Organisations are realising that they have an ageing workforce and little, if any, emerging talent is being developed to become the future leaders of the business.
Key trends—graduates
From the database of students who use GradConnection as a tool for researching, comparing and contrasting the different graduate employers in the market, we compile an annual Graduate Motivations report. We have found Graduates are first and foremost looking for an environment that supports them—they are looking for mentoring closely followed by continued education support. They are also conscious of an employer’s social responsibility, aware of their place and impact on our wider society. GradConnection’s challenge to all employers is to look at the talent flooding out of our tertiary institutions around the country and ask: “What is our organisation doing in this space? Do you consider that your organisation is investing in this untapped talent source? If not why not!"
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