6 Trends To Improve Your Graduate Recruitment Strategy

by Laura Belyea, COO at Talivest

As a Graduate Recruiter, if you don’t invest in technology you could be missing out on savings for your graduate recruitment. And in the war on talent, your brand will be left behind. The competition will trailblaze past.
GradIreland’s recent Masterclass on trends, innovation & technology showcased how brands like Deloitte and startups like Tandem HR use technology to improve graduate recruitment.

Here are 6 trends from the event to improve graduate recruitment:

1.Bots Behind the Lens
Imagine a video interview managed by a bot. David Barrett from cut-e talks about how their product uses AI to analyse speech from video interviews. The purpose? To find better candidate matches.

Sound creepy? Perhaps. What it does mean is you’ll spend less time watching, analysing and re-watching videos as part of your graduate recruitment. This gives you more time to meet candidates who would be the right fit.

2. Gen Y = Mobile First. Gen Z = Mobile Only
Most companies are only now adopting a “Mobile First” strategy. You’ll get left behind if you forget about the next generation, Gen Z, who are “Mobile Only.” Not only that, Gen Z are the most concerned that bots will take their jobs.

With this in mind, Howard Grosvenor from Aon helped Vodafone build a mobile assessment tool for people to find future jobs for when bots take over. The best part? You use emojis to answer the questions. The tool then helps you discover a role that might suit you when you finish college. Perfect for graduate recruiters.

3.You Gotta Gamify To Make It Stick
Gaming and Gorillaz – the perfect PR stunt? It certainly worked for Jaguar who partnered with the band. Jaguar built a Gorillaz branded problem-solving app to recruit their next top talent. Instead of a long process to apply for roles, candidates had to “crack a code”.

The company fast-tracked successful code-breakers into employment at Jaguar. This innovative way of recruiting has helped Jaguar find top talent in a whole new way that appeals to candidates and improves their brand.

4.Chat Is In, Longgggg Applicant Tracking Systems Are Out
Candidates are tired of completing applications through that same, long-winded Applicant Tracking System. Deloitte identified this as a problem and decided they could do better.

Finola Gallagher-Taaffe and her team from Deloitte implemented ChatAssess, a messaging system that helped candidates fast-track applications at career fairs. The result? They had an 82% completion rate. They also found candidates that matched Deloitte’s values quicker than using traditional graduate recruitment methods.

5.Crowdsource Real-Time Feedback (And Make It Fun)
Giving and receiving feedback is a challenge for most organisations. Millennials are looking for feedback more than other work generations.

Tandem HR has tapped into this and created a solution – a mobile app that crowdsources feedback. And it’s fun too. Jim O’Brien from Tandem showed how you can click a button to meet up for coffee with the person who gave you feedback. This has led to increased face-to-face feedback in the organisations that use Tandem.

6. Referrals Are Getting a Revival
Employee referral programmes have long been under-utilised. Gary Berney from referral start-up HireUp revealed a shocking statistic: The industry average for referrals is just 11%. Why is this referral rate so low?
Put simply, it’s too hard for employees to refer friends. They have to go to the Intranet, find the role, figure out how to send it to a friend and do a lot of work. Often, they don’t hear whether or not their friend got the job. This is a massive turnoff. HireUp removes these steps to make it far easier to share roles with others.

About the author
Laura’s role is to successfully support the growth and strategy for Talivest, as well as provide product support with her expertise within the HR industry. Previously posts were director of HR & operations in Telefonica, Elizabeth Arden and ICON