Talent Management Blog for HR Managers

3 Key Elements to Improve your Graduate Recruitment Strategy

Written by Lumenii Talent Partners | Feb 10, 2021 10:52:50 AM

Developing a graduate recruitment strategy that meets your business’ needs is becoming increasingly important as the war for talent intensifies. Companies have found that relying on qualifications and hard skills are no longer the best predictors of success. Nor are they the quickest way to filter through high volumes of applicants.

Below we provide tips to optimise your graduate recruitment that is easily implementable and that goes a long way to solving these challenges using objective insights and technology.

1. Screen for Skills and Hire for Attitude

The hiring process needs to attract the right talent to your company. Modern graduates seek organisations who will give them meaningful, satisfying work that will vary and evolve quickly over short periods. They value face-to-face feedback on their performance and clear communication about their career opportunities. 

When recruiting, make sure you communicate how you can match these needs. Most importantly, design an assessment process that ignores the blinding lights of academic achievement but instead screens for the right competencies to get to the core of your candidates’ potential. Not only will Volume Candidate Screening save HR both time and budget, but it will also let the recruitment department focus on the top candidates sooner to avoid losing them to a competitor.

2. Stop Judging Talent and Start Nurturing it

Once all applicants have been screened against objective measures and you’ve shortlisted those with the right competencies, you can then start to closely look at the remaining candidates, delving deeper into their suitability for the role. If you have more time to spend on a smaller group of competency-qualified candidates, you increase how informed your decision-making process is.

When a candidate is put in a role in which they have the potential to perform, the company’s chances of facilitating growth in this individual are enhanced. And so too are the company’s results. It is important to not overlook the unique opportunities presented by talented individuals who have just joined the workforce. To give graduates the best opportunity to perform, we need to be cognisant of our own internal shortcomings and investigate where previous hires fell short. After all, the devil is in the details.

Using screening assessments early on in your recruitment process gives you access to valuable data so that you can measure the ROI of your graduate selection process.

3. Turn Graduate Hiring and Development into a Strategic Talent Channel

To recruit and retain talented graduates, organisations need to invest in developing their graduates the moment they come in the door. Volume Candidate Screening can help you by giving you detailed insights into candidate strengths and possible development areas. In the long run, this offsets the cost of recruitment as the graduate pipeline becomes a source of future potential leaders.

It is possible, through a well-designed development programme, to take someone with no experience and equip them with the skills and competencies of a seasoned employee. A well-designed graduate programme brings the added benefit of fully inducting new hires into the organisational culture from the moment they step into the role — something that can be time-consuming and challenging for internal human resources.

Lumenii partners with organisations to build programmes around three key objectives:

  • Volume candidate Screening — by using candidate screening software, you can automate the most time consuming and subjective part of the process. This gives you more time to spend on candidates who have the behavioural competencies to succeed in the role.

  • Hire talent with the ability to deal effectively with change and new challenges — enter Learning Agility!

  • Selecting to Develop — every single graduate participant will have their own areas for development based on their competency potential concerning the role. Learning objectives should be discussed in consultation with their line manager so that their development on the programme is aligned with business needs.

Building an optimally functioning Graduate Recruitment process is by no means straightforward, but it is necessary, and it is achievable. Volume Candidate Screening saves you a significant amount of time, which can be spent developing staff, monitoring and enhancing your recruitment process performance. This ensures that the future leaders within your company are being identified and retained.