Hiring Graduates.
Today’s job market is perhaps more competitive than ever before, with a sea of Job applicants flooding in, certain roles becoming obsolete and many more being created every day
Traditionally a good portion of the job seeking population is dominated by recent or soon-to-be graduates. But with more of us graduating from university than ever before, other new talent entering the workplace, and often fewer jobs on the market… sometimes the math doesn’t work out.
The discrepancy results in many graduates stuck in a job seeking loop, even deviating from their desired career path, or starting out in roles they might be considered academically ‘overqualified’ for, in order to work their way up. This has sparked debate about the worth of a degree in a world where everyone has one… and most employers are asking for experience instead.
That’s where the dilemma comes in for us, as employers. If we’re stipulating five years experience as a minimum, the perfect candidate who has only been out of university for five months is ostracised from the opportunity.
Real world experience is more valuable than academic credentials, you might say.
So why should we be giving graduates more of a chance… and why not.
4 Myths about hiring Graduates: Busted
1: They’re digital natives:
Not just in the tech industry but across the working world, digital skills are increasingly valuable. Whilst it’s important to remember that digital skills can be developed by anyone, we often consider the younger generation to be ‘digital natives’ - they’ve grown up with social media, devices and even remote ways of working and studying as a second language, where many of us who started out in the working world of years or decades in the past, have adapted to new systems over time, some taking to them naturally and others not so much.
This goes back to the relevance of ‘new’ jobs, many of which are defined by tech. Who had heard of a social media manager ten years ago?
There’s a case to suggest that if you’re looking to enhance the digital skillbase of your team, it's worth seeking candidates who are well versed in using digital platforms and tech within their education or personal lives.
Whilst the usage of social media by age range varies widely between each platform, an overall trend is that younger groups use social media more, and for a number of platforms the majority of adults under 30 who are active users vastly outweighs the percentage for older generations. Of 18-29 year olds, 71% use Instagram, 65% use snapchat and roughly 50% are on tiktok. The percentages for the next age range surveyed, 30-49, showed 48%, 24% and 22% for the same platforms, which decreases to 29%, 12% and 14% among 50-64 year olds, and so on.
2: Grads are a blank canvas?
Some say that by virtue of their limited past experience in the professional world, graduates are ‘easily moulded’, that they come without the bad habits that can be picked up by less-than-ideal surroundings, and are thus easier to fit into your organisation.
We would note however that young people and graduates have unique backgrounds as much as older generations, and this ought to be recognised. Lack of years does not necessarily equate to a lack of life experience.
Not only do all graduates come from different academic areas, they’ll have a host of interests and experiences that led them there, as well as different origins, lifestyles, ethnicity, religion, and importantly an individual worldview formed by all these things; that means a valuable perspective and a voice at the table.
If graduates come open minded, keen to be moulded and grow with your company, great! But don’t miss out on the value of recognising their particular qualities.
Enthusiasm vs struggle.
The appeal of new graduates is often their hunger for advancement, willingness to work hard, and the abundance of their numbers…But in a fluctuating job market this competition can be a drawback too.
Highly qualified graduates will be looking for their dream job. The more challenging that is to find, they may simply be looking for a job. Be cautious of hiring a graduate into a position that isn’t right for them. With limited workplace experience, it can be difficult for new grads to judge whether a role is for them or not. As an employer, it’s better for you and for them if you can be honest about the fit. That being said - Do give graduates a chance to explore job roles that they might not be aware of, and find out in practice what kind of career will suit them.
Grads diversify your workforce...
It’s true that when we look to graduates as a Talent pool, we see a diverse range of genders, ethnicities, social mobility, and other characteristics. But if this is the main reason you’re looking to hire grads, there are two problems here:
They’re still… All Grads. Age bracket and educational background are two factors of diversity that can be easily overlooked. Exclusively hiring university graduates may deny opportunities to those from disadvantaged backgrounds who lack the formal qualifications, but are just as capable and suitable for the role. Plus, grads will be mostly (not all but mostly) in a similar age range - true inclusivity means not discriminating on age range, the same as anything else.
Beware of Tokenism. It’s really important to make roles available to people from diverse backgrounds. But if you’re targeting grads just because they are grads, and young employees, or worse, targeting women or ethnic minorities for that very reason, you’ve fallen into tokenism. While it’s important to diversify our workforce and leadership, including employees ‘just because’ of their demographic, or making them more publicly high-profile in the business in order to demonstrate diversity without doing the real inclusivity work within your team to back it up, is tokenism, and this is disrespectful to their status as a professional, and is often exploitative of them and that demographic.
As with any sub group in the talent pool, we don’t want to pigeon hole or generalise Graduates, any more than those of a particular gender, ethnicity or background. Some of the myths above represent assumptions that we can often make about graduates.
Luckily, in an ever changing and diversifying market, there’s space for everyone to be seen as unique. That means understanding the individual, not defining them based on a category or label we can assign to them, whether that is based on their age, academic status or anything else.