So how do you go about hiring graduates? Here are some tips.
Posting a job vacancy can be pretty stressful in the current economic climate. With each job receiving so many applications (a study conducted in 2014 when the UK was still recovering from the global financial crash of 2008 found that graduate job were receiving an average of 39 applications), it can be a full-time job just deciding which applicants to interview.
The CV
The conceit of a CV is that a person has tried to market themselves in the best way possible. The information that they choose to include and how they present is the only data that you have. It should be read with a degree of cynicism since lots of people lie.
A different study found that of the two and a half thousand hiring managers asked, 56% had caught people lying on their CV. That statistic only reflects the people who were bad at doing it. Effective liars are not caught. In any case, most of the lies will be a slight embellishment about one’s hobbies or interests. It is less common, but people do sometimes lie about their professional experience and their education as well.
The fact is that you need to quickly and effectively read a person’s CV and make a judgment about them. This can be difficult, but if you spend too much time on every application, it will take too long.
Amongst the information that a person will include on their CV is whether they attended university, the subject that they studied and the honours that they received upon graduation. This is particularly important because doing a degree is a big decision and the subject that someone chose to study can tell you a lot about them.
The skills
Each degree will have taught its students different things. For instance, the key skills biotechnology graduates could bring to your company include a fine attention to detail, a good memory, and the sorts of analytical prowess that scientists learn, and which allows them to discover new things.
A science graduate will also have learned patience as well as persistence since experiments can require a lot of failure before they start to work.
It is perhaps for a few of these reasons that STEM graduates earn 20% more in entry level positions. The market ostensibly values these skills more than it does ones that are taught by other disciplines.
However, the market is not the only metric by which you should judge the value of a person’s education. If you were to consider the value of an arts and humanities student, you may dismiss them out of hand, especially for a role in the world of business.
Don’t English and Art students just sit around reading and painting all day? What currency can they bring to a role? The answer is that they have all sorts of skills that are seldom found in other graduates. Creativity is the lifeforce of successful businesses, just as innovation is too.
The humanities teach lateral thinking. Those graduates are able to interpret things beyond numbers and give you answers you may never have thought corresponded to the question.
Depending on the demands of your business, you should carefully consider the skills of graduates in the future. They may just surprise you.
