Creating a graduate programme is a great opportunity for your business to expand its people offering. Early Talent initiatives provide a space to bring in a diverse, enthusiastic cohort to support and expand your existing teams. They also help to address a number of other people and development initiatives that your organisation may be facing – across diversity, skills, knowledge and resource gaps.
If you are considering setting up a programme, it is crucial to address the purpose and objectives before you embark on the design phase. Having this clearly defined will enable you to build a programme that accurately meets the needs of your organisation’s strategy.
As Steven Covey said, “to begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination…so that the steps that you take are always in the right direction”.
In the context of designing Early Talent initiatives, the most important question you should ask yourself before kicking off is:
“What is the purpose of this graduate programme?”
Many organisations set up graduate programmes because it feels like an easy solution for scaling your company quickly. However, it is important to define a set of clear goals for your programme to hit. This will shape your entire approach to hiring, onboarding, managing and promoting graduates and ensure great return for the business. Answering this question will also give you clarity as to how you should structure your programme in terms of duration, rotations, responsibilities gained, training required etc.
It is important to answer this question by yourself, before asking all other stakeholders who will play an active role in the programme the same question. It may surprise you to find out that others have a very different initial outlook as to the purpose of your programme. Ensuring that all key stakeholders are aligned before you kick off is important for several reasons. If stakeholders feel like their needs aren’t being met once the programme has begun, it will be very difficult to reinterpret their requirements as it may require an overhaul of candidates, training and evaluation. With stakeholders aligned on objectives, you now have a bought in working group who will help drive deliverables from a big picture perspective, as well as the day to day management and training.
Once you are in the midst of running a programme, it is helpful to revisit this question with your key stakeholders, to make sure that your scheme has not fallen to scope creep, and still feels relevant to the needs of your business. If the answers have changed, you should look at the set up and structure of the programme to make sure it is still effective in delivering expectations. This will give you time and space to make adjustments as necessary.
When you have finished the first cycle of your programme, you should also revisit your original intentions as a way to evaluate how successful the scheme has been. If the objectives haven’t been met – it doesn’t necessarily mean that the programme hasn’t been successful – it may mean that the goalposts have shifted internally. In that case – review the value add of the programme and what return has been achieved instead.
What are popular objectives for graduate programmes?
- High volume recruitment: For some businesses, graduate programmes can be a great solution for rapid growth. If you need to scale teams quickly, then creating a cohort can address this because you have a whole group joining at the same time – creating efficiencies in training and time needed from senior leadership. In this scenario, your time and attention should be focused on creating a collegiate atmosphere where individuals are collaborating and frequently sharing knowledge – so they feel bought into the mission of your organisation’s growth.
- Specific competency gaps: Maybe your business’s objective for setting up a programme is because you have a deficit of knowledge in a specific capability. Skills gaps can be plugged by targeting specific universities and degree specialisms in hiring. Once your specialist cohort has started, your programme’s focus should be around drilling down into technical depth.
- Future leadership: Another popular purpose for creating a graduate scheme is to pipeline and develop your senior leadership team of the future. If this is the case, you will want to create opportunities for graduates to shadow current senior leaders, undergo management training and be exposed to cross-functional projects with high levels of responsibility from early on.
Summary: To create relevant, value add initiatives it is key to define your organisation’s purpose for building a graduate programme, with all key stakeholders, before designing the scheme. At regular intervals you should evaluate whether the programme is meeting your original set of expectations.
