As I’ve said, people applying is not the problem, I am attracting plenty of people (people with good degrees and/or expected grades) to the job (good location (not “a small town near Warwick”), good training and a good salary does tend to do this). The problem is how people prepare when they come to interview.

ketchup, for various reasons based around the duration of the training and the specifics of the role, it doesn’t really work for people on an interm basis or people who only want to work for a summer.

IHNRAT

But if you are wasting time on too many low calibre candidates you are doing something wrong.

(1) Its the wrong time of year for fresh grads (unless hiring now for summer start). The best have got jobs.
(2) You can prescreen candidates quite easily by setting them a task that is a little different from normal so don’t just rely on a CV – then only those who can be arsed will be bothered. Might be an online aptitude test. Might be to prepare a presentation. Might be to write a short essay. For a role like I think you described it might be to give them some hypothetical information assimilate it and summarise into 1 page with diagram. I once just listed the 10 key attributes / skills and asked them to score themselves 1-10 on that scale, and then explain why, and name a referee for each point (could be the same one) who would support their ‘claim’. >200 enquiries, 22 responses to the “application pack”, 16 eliminated themselves with that test!
(3) Recruitment agencies have a bad reputation – but there are SOME good ones. They cost money but should be pre-screening candidates to criteria you can set, which saves you time. Don’t ask to just send CV’s. Spend time briefing them. Make them understand your business.
(4) Perhaps you are sending out the wrong message to candidates. When you invite candidates for interview do you come across as a formal professional organisation – or a laid back chat where anything goes? Why not send a letter that highlights some key values you are seeking. Put in there “a professional image to represent our organisation”. If they can’t read between the lines that this their appearance at interview then they fail the test! (Make sure you write your letter professionally with no typo’s like you OP – the very best candidates may not want to work somewhere that doesn’t know when to use “their”!)

Pah. Yoof of today. Don’t make ’em like they used to eh?

Same experience here. The grads we recruit – the majority expect everything given on a plate. One or two good ones every 10 I reckon 🙂

We invest a lot of time building up relationships with the local Uni departments teaching the skills we need. Offering year out placements etc. Majority who have a good year with us get sponsored and come back after graduation.

As I’ve said, people applying is not the problem, I am attracting plenty of people (people with good degrees and/or expected grades) to the job (good location (not “a small town near Warwick”), good training and a good salary does tend to do this). The problem is how people prepare when they come to interview.

Theres two options here…
1. your advert isn’t very appealing, so you aren’t attracting good graduates
2. it is appealing, but all graduates aren’t suitable to be employed.

HoratioHufnagel, Correct. My instinct is the latter given I am getting people with 1st class degree applying from good uni’s.

We get several thousand applications for about 60 graduate roles, and they go through a few rounds of online/telephone screening before they get invited to an assessment day. I’ve interviewed at loads of these days and I’d say about 20% stand out as being very good (and get offers), 60% as being OK but not quite standing out and 20% as being people who I’m amazed got through the selection rounds.

So they are out there, but there are huge numbers of people we have to go through to find the right ones. Starting early helps, we’ve already filled about half the places for a September start.

…can barely interact with someone one a professional basis

Not unusual ime.

Quite a few people look the part and can talk the talk but imho mature professionalism is something that comes with experience

I remember my first interviews *cringe*

Just a thought, you said you’re attracting lots of people with good grades so presumably some of these people are good candidates is it possible that your screening process is getting rid of them before the interview stage? I know people who are really good at exams and are therefore set to graduate with very good degrees in the summer but they are still reliant on mum and dad to cook and clean for them. The point I’m trying to make is that these people might not have the level of maturity that you’re looking for. Things like part time work, moving away from home to go to university and being heavily involved with other activities outside of university will make a graduate a better candidate IMO even though it might result in them receiving a lesser grade.

I got both my “proper” jobs (I got made redundant from the first, not fired) based on the three things you have asked for. Not too much at all. Harder to filter out Muppets if you are not having a recruitment agency act as a middle man, but with job oops as they are you shouldn’t need to waste money on an agent! One key thing I noticed In my search, was some of my mates were tied to home and friends more than making progress in life. I relocated for both jobs. Many people just plain refused to consider jobs that they would have to move for. Location might make a crude filter for you? stick to your guns, there are many grads out there who deserve the opportunity.

If you only get grads that have done zero research on your job/company then something is clearly putting off the ones that have taken the time to look at it more carefully. Do you honestly think every graduate out there is lazy and badly dressed? Do you think they have the same problem at Goldman Sachs?

Is it worth using shortish telephone interviews to screen out the ones you doubt you’d like so as to waste less time? Not sure you can be too picky about how much they know about your company before they arrive but understand your point. I got on pretty well in interviews back in my grad days but didn’t do much research – was a bit harder back then though as web in it’s early days.

My dissertation at the end of my degree (done part-time while in my early 30s and working) was on whether graduate employees were any better than school leavers in non-specialist/non-degree related roles (my employer at the time stopped recruiting graduates for general roles and offered apprenticeships to 18 years olds instead)

The results that came back from the various organisations I asked suggested that too many graduates were still immature and had no drive or work ethic, whereas many school leavers who had rejected the uni option really wanted to get on and work, earn and succeed (slight over-simplification but the gist)

Always wondered if the subject and results may have lost me a couple of points when the dissertation was marked!

we have plenty of graduates here, there’s 3 in the department now, one or two have been a tad overwhelmed by the level of responsibility but I think all of them have been well worth employing.

what’s the salary? no point being coy, it’s a forum username.

what’s the pay like?

I need a rise

poisonspider – Member

@CaptJon – I don’t think (read: hope) you actually meant this but it’s worth clarifying. Surely you wouldn’t expect to have to put ‘Please dress smartly and do some research on the Company before coming to the interview’ in the advert, would you?

Not explicitly, but do you have a list of essential and desirable criteria that outline your expectations?

Graduate this, degree that. ARGH!

It annoys me when people advertise jobs for people with “a degree”…

I have relavent experience but can’t apply but my mate who partied his way through an unrelated degree can?

Obviously engineering or some other specific required degree for a specific job is perfectly understandable but how does having any unrelated degree but no experience make you better?

I have a number of grads. One asked me for a pay rise yesterday. Which was interesting as it was essentially double plus more leave and he has been with us for…..9 weeks. It was a very enlightening conversation.

what poly said, +1000

NZCol – Welcome to the world of the entitled….

Throw in the “I’m on the Grad Scheme – I will be a senior manager next month once I’ve finished my placement here with you meaningless plebs”

A degree used to indicate you could apply yourself to study and had a bit of a work ethic*

Not so these days it would seem, we’re now screening out around 95% of our applications and finding realistic expectations is proving harder. My requestor by the way couldn’t really articulate why he should have his payrise other than ‘i should be paid more’, i’ve suggested a zero base with a very detailed performance related process for him which he has now rejected as he doesn’t think he would get what he gets now ! Self awareness is clearly not something that is promoted these days. Quite scary really.

I think that being a graduate is not the high-bar that it once was. And so the shorthand of “graduate position” on job adverts is pretty meaningless.

As an employer, you are going to have to work a bit harder to find the person that you want (Poly has made some really good suggestions).

I work in pharmaceutical research, and across my industry we have people with life science degrees and Phds coming in at entry level (ie: doing the filing an photocopying) as i did 15 years ago. We don’t have any problems with people thinking that they are too good for the role….. and they work hard to move up the ladder. Maybe engineering students are all just c*ck-ends? 🙂

I recruit up to 3 or 4 graduates a year for engineering roles in our company

Typically receive 100+ CVs for each position

We run a stringent CV review policy, where at least 3 people vet each CV

Poor grammar & spelling or badly constructed CVs are binned straight away

This will typically boil the list down to 30 or so CVs

Then we run short telephone interviews to get a feel for the candidate – this will weed out another 15 or so candidates

We then run open days, interviewing 4 to 5 in an afternoon.

This allows us to get recently employees, who have been with us for a year or so to get involved in the interview process and planning of the day

The cream rises to the top – we still see some real drongos, but we can rapidly identify good candidates

Also – advertising in the right areas is key – we utilise the University recruitments webpages extensively – they are all free

Someone above said that January is a bad time to recruit graduates – rubbish – there are lots of quality graduates who have not got a job from last summers graduation

Good luck

Someone above said that January is a bad time to recruit graduates – rubbish – there are lots of quality graduates who have not got a job from last summers graduation

I’m not sure, of my cohort in Computer Science most of us had jobs before or very soon after we graduated. Amongst my wider group of friends the only ones who didn’t have jobs or weren’t doing further study after 6 months were the ones who either had degrees in things like Art History, got 2:2 or worse.

Maybe it’s just that I went to a good university, or studied in STEM subject but I don’t believe that most graduates don’t know how to properly prepare for an interview or hold a professional conversation.

my cohort in Computer Science

Ah, but compscis are very employable in general – a more vocational degree than most.

Everything written above seems accurate, but I’d add you’re also in competition for the best grads. You don’t need to just find them, you need to be a better option than other places. I can only speak for my experience (compsci) but not only do you need to choose a graduate (or however many) they need to choose you*. And that’s even assuming they’ve not decide not to apply as suggested above.

However, I’ll also echo that having a degree is no sure indication of quality. I used to do some teaching at a prestigious uni, including postgrad (masters students). People that already had degrees (some measure of academic ability?) were surprisingly shocking.

Though I also wonder, if you’re “good” (by whatever measure) yourself, and have your own high standards, it’s hard to objectively judge others? I know I had to work at that (in an academic setting).