Attracting Grads Around the World - an International Recap

Published 07 September 2009 by Andrea

After traveling throughout the US, UK and Canada, our team has found some interesting results in the graduate market.

Firstly, Australia is kicking butt and taking numbers. Australia's unemployment rate doesn't have a sniff on the UK or the US, and doesn't forecast to get much worse in the up and coming graduate recruitment cycle.
To give you an example of the current results, the AGR conference in Wales in June revealed statistics to show the following:

For the past few years, the UK has been enjoying an average of +11% increase in job vacancies. In 2009, there was a 24.9% DECREASE in vacancies with a median vacancy of 20 positions; the largest decrease in positions being in infrastructure industries, such as Engineering and IT.

Interestingly though, there is no change for recruiting internships so at least a further long term focus is still held in the minds of our European neighbors.

The most interesting thing I noted was that the UK has a stat showing over 60% of the employers surveyed DO NOT MEASURE their grad campaigns for effectiveness and efficiency!

Prospects UK , a not for profit jobs board and research company in the UK, surveyed over 14,000 students and some further interesting statistics were revealed in that women were getting paid MORE than men in graduate programs, where our Australian stats show this to be the opposite.

We may do some things better, but we still have the line to cross!

In the UK, there were over 15 jobs boards dedicated to graduate recruitment alone, all desperately trying to gain the business of the fewer employers recruiting for students in 2009 and 2010.

With over 350,000 students graduating in 2009 and just over 35,000 positions, the fight is going to be massive.

The dichotomy of this being the results of the TMP Worldwide survey released at the conference showing that over 80% of students believe in the doom and gloom but they ALL believe that employers should still be putting money into quality brochures and websites as they wouldn't be interested in working for an organisation with "shabby" marketing material.

A strong focus on niche and targeted marketing are in order for the northern nation and with a heavy focus on social media, but still unsure stability on the success of the platform.Canada on the other hand was a complete flip side.

With an 8-10% unemployment rate, employers are not focusing their strengths on branding in the student sector. Their focus on contract employment is becoming a key point of reference until the GFC sorts itself out and there are very few agencies focused on achieving successful branding for Canadian companies.

Surprising considering their neighbours just south of the border have agencies, websites, publications and numerous jobs boards that focus entirely on attracting quality grads to their organisations no matter the unemployment rate. I mean really, no matter the climate, the difficulty in finding quality candidates is immense!What I was impressed with by Canada was their intent from their university advisors to enhance a student transition from uni to work. Stemming from understanding your digital tattoo (http://www.digitaltattoo.ubc.ca) universities are advising students on how to become better employees before they even debate the job market and for them to be accountable for their actions online, in life and then in the workplace.

The US has over 2000 universities and tertiary education centres, which makes it a very difficult path for employers to travel nationally.

Strong focus is put on careers service relationships and this is evident by how many careers advisors attend the NACE conference each year to not also enhance their offering to students but ALSO to employers.

Social media is hot but has been for so many years now, employers are more refined in their use and their success methodologies. In saying that, our American buddies use ALL of the social media platforms whereas we here in the great southern land opt for 2-3 maybe of the highest volume social media opportunities. Our reasoning is most definitely lack of resources, which I'm sure will affect the US in due time.

Youtube, podcasts and webinars are point of reference for students seeking high quality employers and the determination of interactivity and personalising their positioning in the marketplace.

Their spend on SEO and SEM is directed by their marketing departments and is highly utilised by their recruitment team instead of their recruitment team attempting to manage the additional platform.

The Americans live and breathe their entrepreneurial thought processes through everything they do and are willing to take risks to brand themselves outside of the rest of the market share.Australians do what I call the -5 +1 rule. we sit and wait for everyone to make the mistakes, then we go in for the jugular creating and utilising the best new and proven method the strongest.

In summary, getting out amongst the rest of the world to understand not only their attraction practices but their induction and retention schemes is a brilliant way to educate yourself, your team and your organisation..

Go on get out there...
Andrea

Should you have any further queries about the international and Australian graduate attraction market, please don't hesitate to contact me.