A graduate will bring energy, excitement, and a breath of fresh air into your organisation – characteristics that can get lost by the older, more experienced members of your sales team. They haven’t yet learnt the hard-nosed cynicism and disillusionment and will throw themselves into learning new skills and new experiences with a passion that will reinvigorate your whole team.
According to the Institute for Student Employers, graduate vacancies are up by about 40 percent on pre-pandemic levels. This year’s emerging crop of graduates will have a wide choice of organisations that are going to be competing for their attention.
Due to the pandemic, the way in which companies seek graduate recruitment has changed significantly. Recruiters are having to reassess ways in which they attract this demographic for their corporate clients.
If you are keen to encourage a fresh influx of young graduate talent into your sales organisation, focus on our recruitment tips to attract the best.
Connect on an individual level
And even more importantly, connect on their level. The class of 2022 has grown up with their smartphone permanently welded to their hands. They have more or less lived their whole lives through the screens and will expect the ease of communication to continue in this way.
Approaching graduates in a way that is congruent, familiar, and empathetic will attract their attention and increase the curiosity value for them to find out more about your organisation.
Write clear, precise, and honest job adverts
Your graduates are approaching you from a lifetime of being in educational establishments, and the workplace is going to be new and unfamiliar territory. As a result, you need to make sure that the job adverts and job descriptions you write are clear about what is expected of the graduate.
Equally, they need to paint an enticing picture of the progression that the graduate could expect as they work their way up the company ladder, comparing starting salary with the salary levels they could expect, plus the additional perks and benefits that come as standard for all employees.
Proactively identify graduate perceptions of your business
Have you checked out the social media profile and online presence of your company recently? Is it up to date? Does it reflect you as a company? Are there bits on there that make you noticeably cringe?
The younger generation is much savvier about brands, and they will pick up clues about you as a company from your online and social media marketing that might actually put them off. Apart from the fact that it would be interesting to understand why this would be, you want to ensure your brand is enticing rather than off-putting.
Explore the experiences of previous graduate recruits
Spend some quality time catching up with graduate recruits from previous years to put together a more comprehensive profile of what it is like for a graduate to join and work for your company. Put together some case studies highlighting their experiences and how quickly they have worked their way up to good positions and managed to double/treble salaries within a short period of time.
Their stories are key in your recruitment drive for graduate candidates. Their experiences will not only help the current crop of job hunters, but they will also provide a foundation of knowledge to help you create a recruitment drive that is targeted and relevant.
Looking to hire a graduate for your sales team? Upload your vacancy today!
