Afternoon all,

I write in my professional capacity, partly for advise and partly to see if I am being unrealistic in my expectations. I work for a small, privately owned company in the midlands and we are currently looking to hire 3 or 4 graduates to entry level positions within the company. The role has a detailed training programme attached to it, has some pretty solid career progression and has the opportunity to earn to good money in commission/bonuses on top of a pretty good basic. The challenge I am having is not attracting people to the vacancy, but the standard of interviewees when I get to see them. I want people who, when attending an interview, come smartly dressed, have done some research into the role and company and can talk reasonably coherently about themselves and what they want to do in their career. What I am getting is people who are badly dressed, have done no research and can barely interact with someone one a professional basis. I don’t expect everyone to turn up in a pinstripe suit with a ream of research under there arm, ready to sell the world to me but at least do your tie up, look on our website and be able to hold a conversation.

So STW, I ask you, am I being unrealistic in my expectations of graduates? Am I missing something really obvious (yes is almost certainly the answer to this…)? Do graduates simply not expect to have to dress professionally or to do research and so expecting them to do this is naïve?

Your thoughts, as ever, are appreciated.

Depends what degree they have done where. Some have ’employability’ modules and skills built in, other won’t. Some will have done placements which required interviews, others won’t have had any practice.

Do you specify what you expect in the advert/application pack?

It could be that people are applying to so many jobs they aren’t tweaking things to mean specific needs as their expectations are low after so many rejections.

I don’t think you are being unreasonable and I would urge you to stick to you principles and do not lower your expectations. There will be some out there that meet the grade, however I feel it is sadly typical of this country where the younger generations feel like the world owes them a living!

Again sadly, it’s not just a graduate levels that it seems difficult to find anyone decent to employ. Not so long ago I needed a Maintenance Engineer and (foolishly) went to the Job Center to filter the interviewees. Sheesh, the motley bunch of freaks and weirdos that actually made it to interview staggered me. How these people exist God only knows. I interviewed about 10 from a filtered list of about 100 and only one was any where near being employable (in ANY capacity, nevermind the role advertised).

My advice would be to seek graduates with 2-3 years experience. By then they will have dropped the ‘attitude’ and realised it’s not going to be offered on a plate.

poisonspider – Member
“sadly typical of this country”
“younger generations feel like the world owes them a living!”

HOUSE!

@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?

What field are the jobs in? As far as I’m aware in engineering it’s expected to turn up to the interview in a suit but you might then be working in shirt and trousers or even polo shirt depending on the department

(Source: Current engineering finalist)

Are you suggesting that’s not true? It may be cliched but that doesn’t stop it being accurate.

If the company is that small, is 3 /4 graduates going to not overwhelm a bit?

Find a good ‘un, ask them if they have any hard-working colleagues with ability and decent attitude?

I’m not overly concerned what the degree is in. Ideally it would be either a business related degree or something IT based. The role is, without boring you with the specifics, non-technical business support for the IT and telecoms industry.

Edit, we employ 40 ish people so no issue with that intake. We have had referrals from people but the same things have happened.

Must they be graduates?

I presented myself extremely well and actually researched company history and core values before attending the open day. I havent got very good qualifications but am now at only 20 years old and 2 years at my place being promoted to a higher responsibility role with heavy dealings with various management tasks.

Perhaps widen your net slightly if possible. You will know the right candidate when they turn up. I was 1 of 45 applicants, so interviewing 10 id say youve got a way to go yet…

^^^ This, why ask for a degree when it sounds like you want common sense, hard work and a good attitude.

Pick the right person not the paper they carry

poisonspider – Member

Are you suggesting that’s not true? It may be cliched but that doesn’t stop it being accurate.

the point is, it’s ALWAYS been true.

Sounds like there’s something wrong in your advertising/selection process. Given how many graduates there apparently are chasing very few decently paid graduate positions it seems unlikely that there aren’t decent candidates out there.

Are you suggesting that’s not true? It may be cliched but that doesn’t stop it being accurate.

Every generation says that about the previous one. So either you consider that you’re the same and that the older generation were wrong or you’re wrong.

There will always be (and always have been) plenty of graduates who have no real world experience and no idea of what working in the real world means.

Post the job in the careers service of local universities – Warwick would be a good focus

I think Bradley has a fair point. If you’re not overly concerned about what the degree is in and the role doesn’t need degree level, subject specific, knowledge, what are you hoping to gain from having a graduate?

I recently recruited an Apprentice Engineer and he seems very capable and has got the right attitude to work and of course we have the opportunity to send him for further education in the future if necessary.

feel your pain, all the ‘best’ graduates get snapped up by the big four and other large employers grad schemes. What us small firms are often left with are the people who didn’t get through this stage. It would be very unusual to convince the ‘best’ graduates to choose someone they have never heard of on the basis of a job spec that they probably arnt looking for!

In terms of offering advice, I don’t have much to give as we havnt found the solution either. the crux of it is that the best grad’s need to be ‘marketed’ too before they will even know about you otherwise they will go work for KPMG and the rest

Sounds pretty reasonable requests. Maybe the salary/package you’re advertising isnt attractive to the type of people you want to hire, so you’re only getting the lower end of the graduate market?

As above – stop looking for graduates

Why not phone your local FE college that does BTEC courses and ask to speak to one of the tutors in a relevant department about it, they’d be falling over to send you a few of their better candidates

I’m on the other side of the spectrum right now mate (about to graduate and currently looking for graduate jobs), don’t worry though we’re not all like that! A couple of points, where are you advertising the jobs? I don’t know if you’ve spoken to local universities but we regularly get emails from ours advertising local graduate jobs.

Assuming that you’ve done this maybe you’re not attracting the right type of student i.e. all the students that you would be interested in recruiting have looked at your vacancy and decided that they don’t want it, could this be happening? Have a look at what your competitors are offering graduates to get an idea of how your offer is comparing to theirs. As a starter I’d be looking for good training and a competitive starting salary for the industry, other fringe benefits such as private healthcare etc are not as important as the salary as they won’t help to pay off student debts! (Although on second thoughts a cycle to work scheme would be nice so I could get a new bike 😛 )

Assuming that you’re offering a decent package maybe the students you want to recruit just aren’t noticing the vacancy/your company? Speak to local universities and ask about graduate recruitment events and see if you can get a stall at one of these. (IMPORTANT! If you go down this route make sure that you have free pens to give away on the stall. Students love free pens/small notepads/highlighters etc and it will help to attract them to your stall as will a happy smiling face.) Doing this will give you the opportunity to speak to and meet the level of graduates you’re looking for and give you another opportunity to sell your company. Have a look around for graduate recruitment websites as these will get a lot of visits from graduates and it will get your name noticed (a good one for engineering/science type jobs is gradcracker.com, the only other one I can think of off the top of my head is prospects.ac.uk which is a more general one.) Individual universities will also have dedicated job boards for graduates where they will be able to advertise your vacancy.

Have you thought about taking on a placement student? The plan for a lot of students is to find a work placement for the summer before they start their final year. The competition for these is a lot higher than for graduate roles as there is no where near as many going round. This way you can also see how they work before you offer them the job so you can think of it as an extended interview. I know many people in my year who had accepted graduate offers from companies they worked with over the summer within a couple of months of starting back at uni.

Other than that keep trying and speaking to different universities who should be able to help you attract graduates who can at least turn up to interviews looking smart if nothing else (we do exist 😛 )

Every generation says that about the previous one. So either you consider that you’re the same and that the older generation were wrong or you’re wrong.

There will always be (and always have been) plenty of graduates who have no real world experience and no idea of what working in the real world means.

I’m not sure every generation has said that. They may have had issues with the younger generation; their hair’s too long, their music’s too loud, they have no respect anymore etc etc. but this attitude that they’re doing us a favour just turning is more recent (the last 10 years or so)

True, they probably don’t have much real life experience but they’re supposed to be intelligent, it’s not rocket science is it?

Good luck working for a small company Ketchup, we don’t have money for free pens, beer cake or graduate schemes.

You may need to hit the ground running and work 🙂

Not wanting to break some peoples heats hear but if after 3-5 years of training you think you need more training paid for by an employer WTF was your degree it!!

You’re taking a sample though and extrapolating. Are all graduates really like that? Something is clearly going wrong that the OP is only getting this section of graduates through the door.

@ketchup – thank God for that, excellent advice.

I don’t think you’re necessarily typical though.

In my previous capacity I was involved on several occasions in the recruitment of Mechanical Engineering trainees (graduate / HNC level) and was amazed at the poor standard of the candidates that we attracted. The package was very good, as were the prospects at the time (7 years ago -£24k, pension, health care, world travel etc).

Every single one of them was an utter waste of space. Take your pick from poorly turned out / lack of research / illiterate / and in some cases childish! The guy that we did hire got fired off after 90 days because he was taking his work home with him and getting his mates to help him do it.

It was all a bit of a shock to be honest as I, and many others – DerekStarship of this parish for example, had been hired under the same circumstances 15 or so years before and we were all capable of doing the sums, cleaning our shoes and being able to string a sentence together.

I’d highly recommend a friend of mine who has set up a consultancy to address this very issue. She is worth talking to – http://www.gradconsult.co.uk – give her a call.

That doesn’t sound like a very desirable job so you’re not going to get very desirable grads. Try and sell it a bit better

on the other hand, we get loads of (ok, a few) engineering graduates here.

they’re almost always extremely clever, hard working, interesting, passionate people.

some of them are even better.

Shakespeare, a winter’s tale:

“I would there were no age between sixteen and
three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the
rest; for there is nothing in the between but
getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry,
stealing, fighting…”

we’ve *always* complained about the behaviour/attitude of young adults.

bugger.

lunge – Member
I’m not overly concerned what the degree is in.

hmmmmmmmmm

That doesn’t sound like a very desirable job so you’re not going to get very desirable grads. Try and sell it a bit better

+1

If you’re not sure what you want them to have graduated in (i.e. bothered to research their course) why would you expect them to have researched your company? If I’d spent 3-4 years of my life working towards a degree and paying for it I’d probably want to find jobs that appreciated that effort and the skills/knowlage that I’d learnt.

What you’re seeing is the ‘everyone else’, those that went to uni with no idea what they wanted to do, probably weren’t/aren’t that motivated by it, and are now applying for job where the recruiter doesn’t know what they wanted them to have done because it didn’t really matter. It’s a downward spiral of ambivolance.

Thanks for all your thoughts so far.

Adverts – we advertise in the local universities (Warwick included), some of the general job boards (jobsite, CV-Library, etc.) and also in some of the graduate recruitment sites. As I said at the top, the volume of applicants or indeed the quality on paper is not the problem, the quality of applicants when we meet in person is.

Non-graduates are an option we look at and have encountered similar issues.

The salary is, based on talking to uni career people and other recent grads, about right for the level of experience (or lack of) that we are looking for. Equally, it is not enough to attract people who are already established in a career.

The location is good, it’s in town centre of a good size town that people do want to live in and there are a couple of cities within 30 mins train/drive as well.

OK then, what is they job?
How much are you paying?
What do you expect the grad to do and how long till working flat out?

@mikewsmith it doesn’t really even need to be pens, you could spend a fiver on a big tub of haribo and it will act in the same way, after all its only there to attract students to your stand and to act as a conversation starter. Re the training thing though a lot of university courses are quite broad where as a lot of jobs will tend to be quite narrow with respect to the type of work carried out. My degree (mechanical engineering) is a lot more vocational than some others (see philosophy or history of fine arts for example) and could theoretically be working as a engineer designing satellites next year but I would still need some training in order to focus what I’ve learned at university on the job at hand which would be quite niche. Other than that training does not necessarily mean a grad scheme, it could also just be support to work towards chartership in my case and having experienced people there who are willing to help me out with certain things.

@poisonspider I don’t think I’m that untypical, yes there are some people on my course who I look at and wonder how they will get a job but there are a lot of others who I don’t think will struggle to secure a good graduate job (some already have)

That doesn’t sound like a very desirable job so you’re not going to get very desirable grads. Try and sell it a bit better

+1

There’s plenty of bright professional grads people out there, but for some reason you aren’t attracting them.

Exactly what does the job advert say?

Training and “career progression” are ubiquitous words that can be found in almost every job advert there is, so i’m not sure they will help sell the role.

Might need to update the ad or use an agency?

(I’m not sure you need a graduate either)

That doesn’t sound like a very desirable job so you’re not going to get very desirable grads. Try and sell it a bit better

.

It’s a whole lot more appealing than the 2 lines up there make it sound, I’m not sure STW is the place to put the full job spec and benefits up.

Re. the specific degree, again, I am being deliberately vague here but (somewhat simplistically) I either need people who have a good knowledge of the workings of a business (hence business based degrees) and we will train them on the technical aspects or someone who knows the tech and we can teach the business side.

I do take on board the comment that we are getting the guys who have no idea what they want to do, that’s not an unfair comment at all, but I would still feel that if you have been invited to attend an interview and you have accepted that offer you would make some kind of effort.

Have you just started recruiting recently? January probably isnt the best time to be recruiting graduates either. Most of them start looking at this time of year with a vie to getting a job in June. If they can’t get a job secured with still a student the rest of the good ones will probably have got something sorted by now.

That doesn’t sound like a very desirable job so you’re not going to get very desirable grads. Try and sell it a bit better

+5 or 6 or whatever it is

For the job you describe you don’t need a graduate. The ambitious types who wear suits to interviews and do their research won’t be interested; they’ll be off to London or another city that can offer them the career progression they need. Instead, you’ll get, as my Dad would put it, the dross.

A methodical local person who is after a decent 9-5 job and nothing more sounds about right.

@lunge no of course you are not being unreasonable. What I’d say is you need to be doing some more screening first, either via a phone interview or via a recruitment agency / headhunting firm. For the latter clearly you have a cost to pay but it will save you time. It’s hard to believe the approach your candidates are taking with regard to lack of preparation, the Uni careers centre will have prepped them on all of this. I would add that it’s now 6 months post graduation and probably a year since the graduates of 2013 started applying for jobs so the talent pool will have been diminished somewhat assuming you want people to start now vs summer 2014.

lunge – Member

we advertise in the local universities (Warwick included)…

…The location is good, it’s in town centre of a good size town that people do want to live…

i disagree, the location sounds dull, frankly.

‘a small company near Warwick’ is hardly an appealing prospect – and i’m really boring.

the people you want will have good degrees, and will be looking to start their lives in London/Bristol/Edinburgh/Sheffield/Frankfurt/beyond.

not Kenilworth.

ah in that case do you/would you be willing to take on a placement student? A student in the summer before their final year will be almost identical to a graduate in terms of attitude and work ethic and like I said summer placements are a lot harder to get than graduate jobs so the competition for them is a lot higher among students and you will easily find yourself attracting the top students. Offer them a graduate job early on in there final year before they’ve started applying elsewhere (assuming that they made a good impression and all that) and they will likely accept it and save themselves having to apply for jobs/attend interviews/study for exams and complete coursework all at the same time. Its a win win situation for you and the graduate.

Anyway I’d best get back to revision.