In today’s changing job market, companies of all sizes compete to recruit the best talent. If you are looking for strategies that could elevate your hiring approach amidst this competition, look no further! 

What’s the best way to attract fresh talent? Where do you find your future super star employees?

You find them amongst recent graduates! 

Hiring top graduates offers fresh energy to a company’s work culture.

These candidates are eager to acquire skills and have the potential to become long-term assets for your business. 

Hence, it is essential to stand out in the market and attract new talent in this way. 

However, you cannot succeed in modern-day hiring with conventional recruitment strategies. Instead, you require new and innovative graduate recruitment strategies.

Keeping this in mind, here are the top tips you should implement for hiring top graduate talent. 

1. Highlight your work culture

Gone are the days when candidates used to accept a company offer merely based on salaries. Today, graduates connect with a company by aligning professional and personal values.  

This group is well-versed in exploring online information and conducting background searches. Hence, to connect with such talented candidates, you need to highlight your company culture on the internet. 

A good strategy is to promote an employee-focused culture. Graduates are drawn to companies that offer a blend of fun, career satisfaction, diversity, and flexible work arrangements. Taking the time to highlight such a positive message on your company website and other online channels is advantageous. 

2. Go digital

If you are a small business without a dedicated, internal HR and Talent Acquisition team, all is not lost!

Use platforms such as Seek and LinkedIn to reach and interact with a large pool of candidates. Just as you’ve worked hard to get across your company culture on your own website, make sure you highlight it in your job ads and always come across professionally.

Some tools make it easier to filter candidates with screening questions, so take advantage of this option to get through to the most suited candidates right away.

This approach is an affordable and quick way to attract emerging talent.

3. Offer benefits beyond a paycheck

For graduates, their first job is not only very exciting, but also lays the foundation for their career. To stand out and attract the best, make sure that you offer them opportunities to grow on the job. Whether that may be through structured, funded learning and development via third party suppliers, or by setting them up with a mentor within the company, they are sure to appreciate it.

A decent salary is vital to attracting the right talent, but a fulfilling and satisfying career is crucial to intrigue most graduate employees. 

Keeping this in mind, benefits like training programs, gift vouchers, and diversified roles are some attractive elements in a job that you can implement. 

4. Provide flexibility

Digitalisation has changed the global work environment. You no longer need to hire people and accommodate them in a physical workplace. Instead, most top graduates would prefer to work in a hybrid role or remote location. 

On the other hand, some profiles allow you to provide a flexible timing schedule. Thus, be sure to communicate this flexibility to young graduates. This way, candidates will feel more comfortable and opt to explore the opportunities within your company.  

5. Offer internship experience

You can use a comparatively new approach to hiring students before they graduate. Top candidates are frequently on the lookout to gain work experience in addition to their studies to get ahead in launching their careers.

If you can make yourself and your company available for students to gain on the job experience, you might just find a young professional who is enthusiastic, keen to learn and hard working, someone you will want to hold on to!

This is a great way to create a positive image of your company in their mind which in turn gives you a high probability of them remaining loyal to your company.

In Summary

Graduates are some of the most ideal candidates for employers as they are eager and committed to success in their careers.  

When a future employee sees that you are invested in them from the beginning, your retention rate, as well as job satisfaction, will continue to rise. This will lead to an overall improvement of your team and a stronger company workforce as a whole. 

If you are interested in hosting an intern, reach out to our Corporate Partnerships Team!

At Gradability, we already work with over 11,500 Host Employers and through various internship programs (incl. the Professional Year program) have changed the lives of over 35,000 students since 2008. We are the leaders in our field and are always on the lookout for partners. Head over to our About Us pages to find out more about who we are and what we do and get in touch with our team if you’d like to find out more about partnering with us.

 Nick Lim,

Corporate Partnerships Executive