Graduate recruitmentby Sarah Murray

Graduate recruitment
by Sarah Murray

It is part of the mythology of the modern world of work that the days when it was possible to enter a big company as a graduate fresh from college and stay there for 20 years, provided one was not incompetent, are long gone and will never return. Today, the world changes too fast, it is sometimes alleged. People are more likely to hop between jobs. How reassuring, then, to learn that many big companies are still keen to catch graduates young, shape them over a long period and turn them into executives.
At AstraZcncca, the pharmaceuticals company, graduates can choose between several different specialist schemes, such as in engineering, finance and product strategy. At any one time, 15 people are on a three-year course working towards qualifications as chartered management accountants. The explicit intention, says David Powell, Audit Director for Global Operations who manages the scheme within the company, is to 'bring people on to be future finance directors and finance vice-presidents'.
Could the company not recruit qualified management accountants on the open market? Mr Powell says it could and sometimes does. But he argues that the virtue of a formal graduate scheme is that trainees experience life in different business units during the training and acquire contacts which serve them well in the future.
Paul Farrer, Chief Executive of the Graduate Recruitment Company, a division of recruitment company PFJ, notes that graduate management trainee-schemes are heavily over-subscribed by applicants because they understand the nature of the future marked out for them if they are successful; every position has about 30 applicants. During their time on a management scheme, graduates will be rotated through various business units, get access to high-profile people in the organisation, gain broad skills and be handed opportunities to work their way up. 'Organisations are hoping to get their CEOs of the future from these schemes.' he says. That is not to say they don't also recruit outside them, but, for people who come in from outside, there is less certainty, less of a definite future within the company.
With graduate trainees, the aim is to turn them into business unit managers in seven or eight years. Organisations differ widely in how successful they are in this aim.
At the top of the retention league are employers in the public sector, information technology and oil. At the bottom are construction and retail companies. Some employers manage to lose half their graduate intake in the first year.