Based on thought provoking discussions with some of Australia’s leading Graduate Managers at our recent Australia-wide Masterclass Series we thought it timely to expose the Top 5 Graduate Recruitment & Development trends evolving in our Industry.
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Dashboard Reporting & Metrics
Graduate managers unanimously spoke about their frustration of having limited to no LIVE dashboard reporting capability within their current recruitment systems (ATS). The ability to see live, real-time application numbers by; role, university, state, gender and sourcing channel was noted as being of key importance. Many of the existing systems lacked the flexibility to customise and deliver such a dashboard. GradApp (see gradapp.com.au) was discussed as a cost effective option for graduate managers to customise their recruitment system needs and get access to LIVE Attraction and Selection dashboards.
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Psychometric Testing – A lack of Value for money?
A large number of organisations and graduate managers are questioning the key service deliverables they are being offered by testing providers. We consistently had feedback on the following:
- ROI – We had a real OMG moment when one graduate manager shared that they are being charged $300K for their Graduate Psychometric Testing solution. And this was just one example of how our market is starting to question their return on investment and/or feeling ripped off by their current supplier. As a guide, Fusion recommends seeking a solution that includes cognitive assessments for $30-50 per candidate and around $80-$120 for behavioural assessments.
- Candidate Feedback – Feedback reports for all candidates NOT being included as standard by a test provider is NOT good enough. It was agreed that we should demand these from our suppliers.
- Support – Business hour helpdesk for candidates NOT being provided as standard by the supplier is also NOT acceptable. Discussion highlighted that some suppliers are charging extra to provide service desk support for resolving candidate and technical issues when they should be taking ownership and providing this as standard.
- Candidate Experience – The time taken to complete tests is often well over a recommended 40 minutes and with many graduate managers wanting to focus in on a more positive candidate experience there needs to be more consideration given to which assessments are most appropriate.
- Results/outputs – There is an increased appetite for understanding test results and reporting outputs that can be used for both recruitment and development.
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Customising Development Programs
It was agreed that as an industry we should be moving past the basic “70:20:10+mentoring+buddy” cookie cutter offering that is used to promote development programs. The appetite now is for being able to articulate detailed program content to candidates and deliver a program that is truly customised to individual graduate needs. It was also agreed that Success and Development profiling along with community/real project initiatives was the direction innovative graduate managers were taking moving forward.
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Recruitment Cycle times shifting
The surprise discussion amongst graduate managers was the acknowledgement that 30-40% of the industry has shifted some, or all, of their recruitment timelines and initiatives to the back half of the year (July-October). Many of the small to mid-size Graduate Intakes (3-30) were reaping the benefits of recruiting later in the year with less noise and competition from the big graduate employers. Key to this strategy was the acknowledgement by these employers that based on their data and measures, the quality of the graduates recruited later in the year was of the same standard as those recruited at the start of the year with the biggest difference being a potential 20% drop in the number of applications received.
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ROI
Based on HR and Graduate Managers needing to deliver value for money across their Attraction, Selection and Development initiatives for their business, ROI is always an on-trend discussion. With many small to mid-sized new entrants participating in the discussion, most graduate managers were planning on maintaining their graduate current intake numbers heading into 2017 while trying to decrease spend and increase successful outcomes. The challenge being set down is to deliver improved programs with the same or less budget.
For any further information on the above trends or for solutions to the challenges you may be facing, please feel free to have a coffee conversation with us.