The Best Time to Start Hiring Graduates?

The best time to start hiring Graduates? Now!We’ve already provided you with information on; the benefits of recruiting Graduates; the cost of recruiting Graduates; the best ways of assessing Graduates, and; how long it will take you to assess each Graduate application.

So, you may have put some serious consideration into whether or not you want to implement Graduate Recruitment Programmes into your process.

The missing piece of the puzzle – actually making it happen. This is something that you’d like to know, right?

The first point that I would like to make, is that it’s so important to go live with your Graduate Recruitment Programmes at the best time – this will give you access to the full talent pool. Not only this, but you also need to be in line with your competition – you don’t want them to have the opportunity to pick out the best candidates, and leave you with fewer to choose from.

With that being said, from experience with our Graduate clients – we tend to find that the best time to go live is the middle to end of September. However, this may vary slightly depending on your industry.

Now, why do you think that is?

Well – students are a proactive bunch, and they’ll probably begin looking for a Graduate job as soon as they get back to University for their final year.

Graduate Recruitment programmes are an opportunity that you should capitalise on.

Advertising your roles at the best time will mean that you can catch the most proactive students, and start assessing those applications as early as possible.

The last thing that you would want, is to go live too late. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. You don’t want to have hundreds of applications, that need to be assessed within a short period of time – think about the strain on your resource
2. You don’t want candidates to be dropping out partway through the process, because they’ve received offers from elsewhere – think about the value of your time
3. You don’t want a last-minute, ‘hit-and-hope’ type candidate, that you recruit because they just about scrape through each stage, and you need to fill the role – think about the personality profile of the candidate that you want – do you want someone proactive, or reactive?
   

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Just to round everything up…

We have received the best results from our Graduate clients that have gone live with their Graduate Recruitment Programme’s around the middle-to-end of September. Their results have come in the form of applications and hires. However, they have also found that the hires they make tend to be more driven and committed to do well in their Graduate role.

In short – start early; reap the rewards.

We’d love for you to share the experiences that you have had, and if you have found any of the information in this blog useful.

Please, comment below!

Future-Proofing Graduate Recruitment