For several years now, UK employers have admitted their graduate hires are not ‘work ready’ whether that includes being punctual, working in a team or thriving in difficult situations. Recent research commissioned for The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide revealed the discord between graduates’ softer skills and employer’s expectations highlighting a growing problem in recruitment. As companies restructure and focus on rapid growth in response to the current economic pressures, it’s no surprise to find them also looking for top talent from universities who can hit the ground running and make an immediate impact on the business. When trying to locate this talent employers often look for candidates with high cognitive ability as it is assumed that intelligence equates to future performance in a role. However, UK graduate employers are failing to open the door and tap into a wealth of other capable candidates with great potential.
`Employing graduates based only on high cognitive ability can have a limiting effect on companies trying to build their talent pipeline. CEB recently analysed the behavioural traits and associated performance of 200,000 graduates across 32 countries from 2006-2012, revealing that only 1 in 15 graduates are considered to be ‘top talent’. These graduates display above average ability of eight characteristics such as listening, consulting with others and organisation. These eight behaviours drive effective performance and are a measure of graduate employability.
Utimately trying to locate someone who has all of these characteristics can be costly, with competition increasing between recruiters attempting to hire this rare talent. Furthermore, those investing heavily in attracting these graduates may not even be making a sound investment. According to CEB research, a quarter of graduate hires do not plan to stay longer than a year in their role, costing UK businesses an estimated £183m annually.
Recruiters must scrutinise whether they need the brightest graduates to fulfil future roles in the company, or even those that possess all of the behavioural traits which define ‘top talent’. While only 1 in 15 graduates are considered to be ‘top talent’, CEB’s research shows there are nearly four times more graduates (1 in 4) that exhibit strong execution characteristics (such as being organised) but need help developing their engagement capabilities (such as listening and consulting effectively) or vice versa.
Graduate recruiters need to change their recruitment strategy to focus on ‘building’ talent rather than ‘buying in’ costly hires. Forward-thinking graduate recruiters are starting to take a more sophisticated view of talent, not just assessing cognitive ability and selecting the brightest but looking at behavioural qualities needed to succeed in a role. This is creating broader talent pools for these employers to choose from and helping them to build their talent pipelines from the ground up so they don’t have a succession risk later on.
By taking a more rounded view of graduate assessment (by looking at different behaviours and skills), recruiters can more closely align selection criteria with the needs of specific roles and the strategy of the business. This will enable recruiters to hire the right candidates and retain them more successfully, improving the ROI and effectiveness of their graduate programme.
Currently, companies are self-perpetuating graduate recruitment challenges by focusing on employing candidates that are naturally in short supply. By developing broader capabilities and exploring different sources of talent it will help recruiters build graduate talent pools for future job roles and create leadership pipelines. It’s time we stop criticising graduates and give them the support they need to build on their experiences through volunteering, internships and extra-curricular activities. Ultimately this will help them to boost their engagement capabilities so they are work-ready and have the determination and resilience to cope with setbacks.
Eugene Burke, chief science and analytics officer at CEB
