How can employers support more diverse graduates as they ramp up their Autumn Onboarding Programmes and prepare for next year’s Graduate Recruitment Campaign?
September is an active month for early career recruits, with the induction of both 2025 and 2020 applicants.
Many employers are thinking of ways to support and encourage a diverse group of graduates and apprentices.
Employers must at least reevaluate their recruitment process and possibly rethink onboarding in order to support a more diverse pool.
A growing number of companies are improving their ability to attract more diverse talent. However, they aren’t seeing the same diversity in their hiring.
The cost per hire and diversity targets are negatively affected by the failure of diverse candidates to complete the hiring process or decline offers.
Talent pool expansion
For organisations, it’s important to expand their talent pool.
Employers are increasingly aware of the benefits a diverse workforce can bring, such as improved innovation, better decisions, and increased financial performance. Clients, employees, investors, and other stakeholders also expect employers to act on diversity.
It is not only a matter of ethnicity, gender and socio-economic background.
Organisations need to evolve their recruitment process in order to remove the barriers that affect underrepresented groups disproportionately. This is true for graduate and apprentice candidates just as much as any other group.
The first challenge is to revamp traditional talent acquisition strategies in order to target and appeal to an even broader range candidates.
Barriers to entry
Unknowingly, many employers create barriers. You would expect that there will be academic criteria in the hiring procedure for early career. However, the nature of those criteria can create biases. It is important to consider more than just academic factors.
In comparison to ten years ago, only half of recruiters for graduate positions require a 2.1. Direct experience also becomes less important, as firms are now more focused on potential and recognize and value transferable abilities from part-time work or extracurricular activities.
Academic qualifications are often not correlated with career success. Yet, they still serve as a barrier to many candidates, who don’t have the same advantage in education that others have.
Online recruiting can also be intimidating for some. Without an “advantaged” network to help them, they are more likely to fail or abandon the process.
Interviewing and onboarding candidates with lower socioeconomic backgrounds can be a challenge.
These challenges are further compounded by issues like imposter’s syndrome. The competency-based questions allow those with more privileged backgrounds to provide more ‘interesting and varied’ examples, further exacerbating inequalities.
Fit for purpose
Organisations must make sure their recruitment processes are fit for purpose to overcome these barriers.
Early career recruitment should focus on the transferable skills required, their ability to learn new skills, and the behaviours that are required.
Candidates who are coached and given the opportunity to improve their skills can make a big difference. The ‘rules’ of the game are a big disadvantage for those who do not know them. Support in areas like developing confidence, upgrading skills and building networks can be a great help, especially for those without prior experience.
Employers can demonstrate their commitment to their new employees by investing in preboarding initiatives.
“Those who don’t understand the rules of the game are at a serious disadvantage, and this can be a big problem for people with little or no previous work experience.”
A structured, clear programme can help candidates overcome obstacles once they have begun their role. For example, it has been proven that those with lower socio-economic backgrounds progress slower. This can be up to 25% slower in financial services.
Candidates often require additional help in developing skills like self-awareness and personal branding, as well as resilience, networking, verbal communication skills, and career management.
Mentoring programs are a powerful way to support the advancement of groups that are underrepresented in the workplace, and not just for new hires.
The adoption of a “mentoring with purpose” model that emphasizes having a goal for what the mentoree needs in the short or long term, as well as training for mentors and mentees, can have significant benefits for both.
Programmes aimed at specific audiences
Finaly, targeted internships and work experience programs are now being used as feeders to graduate and apprenticeship programmes, respectively, especially in areas like social mobility.
These programs allow young people to experience first-hand what it’s like to work for a particular firm or industry and dispel any misconceptions that they may hold.
In order to foster diversity and inclusion in the early career recruitment process, a multifaceted strategy is required that starts with talent acquisition and continues throughout the entire employee lifecycle.
Organisations can unleash the potential of their Early Careers workers by removing barriers to entry, offering ongoing support and mentoring, and promoting an inclusive culture.
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