People-Woman-Coffee The likes of L’Oreal have been working to design innovative graduate schemes in a plight to secure new talent.

We were at the most recent Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) conference where it was made clear that while graduates are showing loyalty to their careers, they’re not to companies in particular.

Attracting graduate talent

However, according to Negin Cooper, Graduate Recruitment and Development Manager at L’Oreal UK&I, this doesn’t mean that employers should get lazy, instead it poses the perfect opportunity to reinvent their graduate programmes.

Over the past 12 months, there has been a huge shift in graduate behaviour, as young people are now spending a great deal of time considering their options and so it’s important that businesses make their schemes appear attractive, she added.

Ms Cooper explained that L’Oreal’s goal is to gain another one billion customers by 2020 and ensure it has the workforce to meet that.

Graduates are at the front of this audience and that’s why they are becoming an essential part of the labour market, she said.

Spot the best talent

In order to attract these new graduates, L’Oreal has had to get a little creative and so hold “lock-ins”, where representatives from the organisation go to UK universities to host sessions on skills, which is then turned into an assessment centre to test these students on their potential to work for the business.

Despite the fact that research from the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) has found that 1 in 4 graduates leave a business at the end of their scheme, Ms Cooper believes it is vital to form partnerships like this to spot the best talent.

Ms Cooper went on to say that L’Oreal worked with Rolls Royce recently on a gender diversity piece, which highlighted the challenges that both firms face.

While both organisations are very different, they’re both on the lookout for engineering talent, she explained.

To attract the best, most compatible graduates for your organisation, speak to Discovery Graduates today

 

SOURCE: http://www.cipd.co.uk/pm/peoplemanagement/b/weblog/archive/2015/11/06/shift-in-graduate-behaviour-prompts-employers-to-rethink-development-programmes.aspx