Students and graduates are not making the right workplace choices and employers are struggling to identify the right โfitโ for their businesses. These are the stark findings of research conducted by Magnet.me, the online network for students, graduates and recruiters to discover and connect with each other.
Analysis of the research suggests that businesses looking to recruit students and graduates are sending out generic mass messages, resulting into tonnes of irrelevant applications. This is leading to:
- A suffocation of the hiring process, as recruiters are not able to spend the time necessary to assess individual applications thoroughly
- Higher costs for recruiters as a result of spending more time on processing applications
- Blurred decision making in processing and hiring the right candidates
- Negative impact on the employer brand, as recruiters have to reject high numbers of applicants.
Furthermore, the research indicates that students are aware of only 27% of graduate opportunities available to them, meaning 73% of their potential employers are failing to reach them.
Moreover, students and graduates (74%) are making universal job applications while not really knowing what the company or role is like. This is possibly an effect of the generic mass messaging from recruiters. Of those that get hired, it leaves a disaffected workforce (68% of graduates admit joining the wrong employer) and high churn rates (28% leave within 12 months).
Vincent Karremans, Founder of Magnet.me commented: โTodayโs graduate recruitment market finds itself stuck in a terrible place. Young people are struggling to wade through generic company messaging to find their way to the right job, while businesses are wasting millions chasing and eventually investing in high numbers of graduates who leave within the first year.
โLooking at the research it feels as though young people and employers are on completely different planets. Both sides are essentially using an out-of-date scattergun approach that is not working. We are calling for a radical overhaul to this approach that refocuses the attention to the candidateโ.
Magnet.me is calling for a โre-focus on young peopleโ, where employers lead on targeting select groups of candidates and engage them with better personal and authentic means. These measures should showcase their industry, their workplace, their culture and their people to potential hires.
โItโs time to move beyond having generic videos of businesses on social media to more of an authentic story telling approach to your business if you want the right calibre of candidates coming to you who will impact your business and its culture,โ added Karremans.
Young people, on the whole, are buoyant of securing a job (69%) but highlight a lack of workplace skills (48%) and Brexit (47%) as the top reasons of that could prevent them securing employment in the next 12 months.
Magnet.me offers these tips for recruiters to enable them to navigate the recruitment process:
- Quality beats quantity. Thereโs no point in reaching out to everyone and anyone. Instead invest your time and money in fewer high-quality candidates and spend time in winning them over to your brand and workplace.
- Do not spam students. They do not like it. Besides that, email marketing is something of the 90s โ very costly and hardly generates actual results (e.g. high-quality applications); it deteriorates your employer brand.
- A picture says more than a 1000 words. Show off your office and culture with photos and videos; candidates can better assess their fit before applying so youโll hire less people that are disappointed with the workplace after youโve hired them. It will also make winning over the right candidate a lot easier.
