Inviting more tech grads into the recruitment process

The uncertainty across the job market in 2020 saw a reduction in graduate hiring overall, but this bounced back in early 2021 with many employers looking to make up for labour shortages and the impacts of border closures.

In fact, according to GradConnection, more companies are entering the graduate recruitment game in 2022. Many established programs in large corporates are doubling or tripling their intakes, welcoming more than 1600 new hires in some cases.

How can hirers ensure they are attracting the right candidates from the most diverse pool of new talent?

Lisa Tobin is Managing Director, Technology for SEEK.

Lisa Tobin is Managing Director, Technology for SEEK. 

Alignment with purpose

Graduates of this generation are looking to align their personal brand with their professional brand, and by extension, their employer’s. SEEK research from February this year shows 84 per cent of candidates aged 18-34 believe an employer’s purpose impacts their desire to apply for a role.

Low unemployment combined with the skills shortage, especially in tech, means graduates are in a powerful position to make choices about their career path based on their own motivations, not just what programs are available. Employers need to understand what drives graduates to accept a position if they’re to stand out from the competition.

With application processes and assessment centres moving entirely online during the pandemic, and now combining in-person and virtual elements, how do you give graduates a sense of your company, your people and your culture in a hybrid world?

This can be as simple as maintaining a sense of human connection to counter the fact that graduate processes can be homogenised and impersonal. In many cases, a phone call or a follow-up email can make all the difference for candidates that are weighing up offers from multiple programs.

Farewell to the funnel

Most technology graduate programs use a coding test early in the process to assess a candidate’s competency. Results allow for quickly ruling out applicants without needing to review a CV, written submissions or academic records.

While this is an efficient way to sort through thousands of applications, it does not give graduates the opportunity to showcase all their strengths. A process that assesses critical technical skills, team orientation and alignment with company purpose can help to remove some of the psychological barriers that may prevent graduates applying. It can also have flow-on effects for the diversity and number of applicants that sit outside the standard graduate demographic.

In recent intakes at SEEK for example, we have offered placements to someone making a career change from civil engineering, a self-taught coder with a background in design and a student with a master’s in data science. Graduates that may have counted themselves out of a process centred on testing.

Autonomy and support from day one

According to the 2022 AAGE Candidate Survey, candidates were most likely to choose an employer based on the opportunity for career progression (19 per cent) and the quality of the training and development programs (16 per cent) over compensation and benefits (1 per cent).

Designing a graduate program and rotations as a pathway into permanent roles allows candidates to personally invest in the business with a longer-term view.

At SEEK, software engineering graduates participate in two rotations over 12 months. Rather than getting “posted”, our Pitchfest process sees graduates choose their rotations based on pitches from engineers about the work they’re doing. This empowers them from day one and provides an authentic experience of SEEK’s culture so graduates feel like valued members of our Product and Engineering community.

So, what’s the key to attracting great graduates and keeping them? Building a program with diverse learning opportunities and clear career pathways that builds passion around company purpose is a great place to start.

Lisa Tobin is Managing Director, Technology for SEEK.

Applications for SEEK’s Software Development Graduate Program are open now. Head to seek.com.au/work-for-seek/graduate-program/ for more information.

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