Graduate recruitment marketing

Guest article: Dan Hawes, Graduate Recruitment Bureau
This article originally appeared in the book Targeting Students: A Marketing Guide

What I know about graduate recruitment marketing
We used to go to careers fairs but we didn't find them the most responsive or effective method for hiring graduates. We've since deployed several other marketing activities that generate a far better targeted response. Our online jobs board is at the core of our business.

Targeted responses - that's the key to our work. Our clients are very specific about what they look for and we have to be able to identify the target very quickly. We're not into generating huge quantities of students and graduates; we know exactly what our clients are looking for and we go out to get them.

It's almost headhunting, but we are very client-led. Students who register their details with us fill in their qualifications and tell us what they'd like to do. But when a client uses us, top of the list in our search criteria is qualifications. Students will often try to register for jobs that they're not qualified for. When we search we always make sure qualifications match.

The Graduate Recruitment Bureau set up in 1996 after some years of research and funding. We set out to offer recruiters solutions and graduate recruitment strategies, and we consider ourselves experts in this field now.

Marketing to graduates is fascinating. Today's tribe of graduates is constantly moving and communicating with them is an art. Unless a recruiter can get inside the head of a graduate their message will fall on deaf ears. Being creative and different and setting yourself apart from the competition is essential. But it's not easy. What works one year won't necessarily work the following year.

Five years ago postcards in pigeonholes worked very well for us, but it gradually got less effective and we moved to e-marketing. E-marketing is working very well for us; I visit a lot of universities and I walk past the computer pool and it's always very busy - you've got to embrace that, you have to communicate through the means that students are using every day.
You really have to try to get into the head of a student. I realise, walking around universities, that I don't notice most of the noticeboards - and neither do students. It's very competitive on campuses, very noisy.

In graduate recruitment, one major shift in recent years has been the postponement of looking for, and then starting, a graduate job. At the moment, only 65% of the approximate 300,000 graduates a year plan to start work immediately. The remainder either think about postgraduate study, time off or temping.

I can understand why students are increasingly looking at postgraduate study; there are so many graduates out there, to set yourself apart you have to do further study. In some jobs it's become essential. Taking a year out has been made more popular - the young royals have helped change the image - and increasingly employers don't view it as poorly as they did. Employers really see how a student can become more open minded, a more rounded person by immersing themselves in different cultures and trying new things. Also they feel students will have got it out of their system - rather than joining a firm straight away from university, taking the training and then saying right, I'm off travelling. Because that's always in the back of the head of employers when they hire a graduate: is this person going to want to go travelling? We happen to think travelling after university is advantageous to both parties, and a lot of our own staff have taken a year out.

It's always tricky knowing when to target students. They don't have time in their final year. There's more pressure on them and they have the attitude 'I've paid for this degree - I need to get a good result'. Looking for work is a full time exercise and they don't find time easily to do that. Sometimes recruiters get a poor response and wonder why. Well we know there are contributing reasons: either it's the wrong time to talk to them or they may be considering other options.

We target students from freshers to graduation. It's important to have a dialogue with them throughout. Although someone in the first year isn't thinking about a job at all, what they are thinking about is ways to increase their chances of work when it comes to it. That has been a big shift of focus for our marketing.

Some marketers are even going back to school-leavers. There's a long lead time on that investment - you're looking at someone who's going to change their mind a lot in four years. But that's how competitive this sector is - if you get someone who's on four As and on their way to Cambridge, you need to get in there early.

In terms of creative, what puts students off most is pretending you understand them. It stands out a mile. They are very cynical. If you can get through to an influencer and create positive word-of-mouth you have pretty much won the battle. Anything else around that can be superficial. We have several competitors whose theme is very light-hearted. We've done the opposite of that because we think getting a job is pretty serious. We only want people who are serious to respond to us. Don't get me wrong, new ideas can be very successful. But there's a fine balance. If you go in for drinking references, traffic cones etc it's very tired and not effective -
students have moved on.

Graduates still offer companies useful skills to grow their business. Despite the investment of time, it is still worth investing in graduate recruitment. People talk about cost per hire, but the most important thing is quality per hire. It is very important that companies still recruit graduates, but communication is key. You need to understand the issues facing them and address those in all your communications. A lot of companies want to do things very quickly. They should take more time to prepare and research, because it will pay off.

Companies can also succeed by playing to their differences. They should think about what's good about their organisation and what will attract people. At GRB we do that ourselves. Our website is often commented on as giving very professional but personal image. We looked at what we're about and decided we wanted to have faces on there - so many job boards are faceless, you're dealing with a computer. And we don't advertise too much because we don't want to appear to be trying to hard. Nothing turns off students more than if you shout from the hilltops. In some respects we like them to come us, rather than us to look for them.