FROM OCTOBER 2015’s RECRUITER MAGAZINE

A new report by GradWeb finds the UK is currently a seller’s market for savvy graduates for the first time in eight years — meaning a generation who knows their apps from their elbows

The goal of every recruiter is to be able to read their candidate’s potential performance at a company and hence predict their ability to progress in the role for which they are being considered. To do this, they need robust assessment processes, interviews and tests. It’s a long process and no more so than when the assessment process is for upcoming graduates. 

To nudge the industry closer to the ideal, graduate recruitment specialist GradWeb’s ‘Future Talent Insights Report 2015’ aims to answer some key questions and also makes some recommendations to improve the process. 

The two-part report, now in its second year, analysed hundreds of thousands of items of data at various stages of the recruitment process, across a number of sectors and organisations. The result is an attempt to lay out for its readers an educated path built to help them do the right things, in the right ways and in the right places to maximise their chances of success in what it anticipates is going to be the most fiercely contested graduate jobs market for nearly a decade. 

Seller’s market

Skills gaps across sectors, disciplines and even basic employability know-how are so well known as to be a cliché in the UK, with many graduates not meeting the hiring requirements even if they are available and interested in the roles on offer.  

According to the Association of Graduate Recruiters’ (AGR) last Winter Survey, its members reported 1,422 vacancies went unfilled, despite national headlines saying that 15% of young people were unable to find work in the first year of leaving full-time education. 

The issue though is not just the fault of seemingly inexperienced graduates but also that of off-the-mark employers, the report suggests. It is often the recruiters who need to get better at tapping into graduates’ true capability and thus avoid accidentally screening out appropriate candidates who have the potential to succeed in employment.

It also behoves the employer to establish deeper relationships with local universities to provide support to students as they prepare to enter the world of work — and thus identify talent earlier in the recruitment process. It’s a move that will also enable recruiters to build an emerging talent strategy that’s viable to the current graduate market. 

The report finds that in 2015, a seller’s market is in place for the first time since 2007. Graduates who have been both successful academically and have built up such strengths as resilience, communicating & influencing, innovation, analytical thinking, strategic thinking and adaptability/managing change have always been in demand, but will be 

even more firmly in the driving seat this year. The finite population of graduates who meet these criteria required by most graduate recruiters will be in control. 

Hurdles

Economic recovery is gathering pace in the UK but recruiters are having to do their jobs with more or less the same budget as previous years. Seldom do they see their own department’s funding and resources boosted in line with their own company’s improving financials. 

This can present a significant problem for recruiters who are being forced to employ even greater levels of ingenuity and skill to provide comprehensive search strategies that cover all the bases, however often they may change. As a result, recruiters are having to work longer and harder to secure the right candidates for their clients and companies.

Process

Building on last year’s inaugural report, the authors of the ‘Future Talent Insights Report 2015’ found that any end-to-end solution needs to be based on job analysis findings to ensure that the ‘success’ criteria are valid. Briefly this means employers need to critically analyse the roles they are hoping to fill, tailor their interviewing and recruitment tools to suit, take into account the wider social and economic context of applicants, and only then will they have the best chance of achieving a ‘success’ recruitment.

As far as possible the tools and exercises employed in the job analysis need to reflect the organisation’s culture and values as much as possible to give candidates a realistic preview of what the role is really like.

During the assessment process, for example, the use of situational judgement tests (SJT) can be an effective tool in sifting through candidate performance levels at an early stage. SJTs can be designed in different formats, such as text, video or avatar based, to make them as realistic as possible and offer candidates an engaging preview of the typical tasks in the work role.

Also, when it comes to psychometric tests, the results of the report showed there were significant relationships between high scores on numerical and logical reasoning tests and high performance at later stages in the assessment programme. 

The authors gathered data from more than 60 employers, which between them received 470,000 applications in 2013-14.

PART 2

The latest generation of potential university applicants are beginning to realise that choosing the right subject to study is paramount to their future career success, with science and technical subjects on the rise. Computing, chemistry, physics and mathematics in particular are

enjoying a renaissance. The candidates are getting smarter about the job process long before they’ve even spoken to their first recruiter.

Subjects that have declined in popularity the most since student fees were introduced in 2012: 

⦁ Drama

⦁ French

⦁ Law

⦁ Physical Education

The authors of the ‘Future Talent Insights Report 2015’ believe it is safe to assume, therefore, that STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects have stepped into the void — clearly good news for those employers who cry out for these graduates with such knowledge and skills.

Just as recruiters are becoming more discerning in their methods, potential candidates have also become more savvy. 

For instance, video interviewing as a core part of a recruitment process is unlikely to faze a generation brought up on Facebook, Instagram and other instant forms of social media. 

The average number of assessment stages — number of different tools or exercises a candidate had to complete before moving on to the next stage — was four:

(1) Application form

(2) Psychometric/cognitive ability test

(3) Telephone interview

(4) Assessment centre

Meanwhile, 35% of employer respondents are now using a situational judgement test (SJT) or situational strength test (SST) in the early stages of the application process.

The report’s authors also recommend more of a shift to what they refer to as ‘contextualised screening’ whereby candidates’ achievements are looked at in context instead of in the absolute terms of application forms and Q&A sessions (see 'The Big Story', Recruiter, October 2015, p20). This points out the rise of diversity to near the top of the list of recruiters and employers’ agendas. 

The report noted that: “We were therefore disappointed to see that, while there was a reduction in the dominance of ‘White-British’ applicants, they are still faring remarkably better through assessment processes than those from other ethnic backgrounds, especially black candidates who account for only 9% of applicants, and even worryingly, 3.89% of offers.

“We are aware of a few employers who are bucking this trend in a significant way and have been having a number of deeply interesting conversations with clients about analysing their processes for adverse impact and developing strategies to tackle the issues underlying their disappointing diversity performances.”

• If you would like to find out more or contribute to the Insights Report, contact [email protected]