This article was first published on Personnel Today – https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/supporting-diverse-graduates/
September is a busy month in the world of early careers with both applications for 2025 and 2024 recruits starting their induction process. Many employers will be thinking about how to encourage and support a more diverse intake of graduate and apprentice employees. To do so successfully employers must at the very least re-evaluate and potentially rethink both their recruitment and onboarding to remove barriers and support a more diverse pool of candidates.
Many firms are getting better at attracting more diverse talent, however are not seeing that extent of diversity in their hires. Too many diverse candidates are failing or dropping out of the process, or declining offers; all of which drives up cost per hire as well as negatively impacting diversity hiring targets.
Broadening the talent pool
It’s a commercial imperative for organisations to broaden their talent pool. Employers are recognising the benefits of a diverse workforce, including enhanced innovation, better decision-making, and improved financial performance. There’s also a growing expectation from clients, employees, investors and other stakeholders to be seen to both have a broader diversity of talent and be taking actions to do so. This diversity is typically, but not exclusively, in terms of gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background.
The challenge
Organisations must evolve their recruitment processes to remove barriers that disproportionately affect underrepresented groups. This is as true with graduate and apprentice candidates, as it is with any other group.
The first challenges lies in revamping traditional talent acquisition strategies to both target and appeal to a broader range of candidates.
Many employers unwittingly create barriers. When it comes to early careers you would, of course, expect there to be some academic criteria within the hiring process, yet the nature of these can introduce biases in the hiring process. It’s therefore important to look beyond purely academic factors. For example, less than half of graduate recruiters require a 2.1 now, compared with 76% ten years ago. Direct experience is also becoming less of a driver, as more firms now focus on potential, and recognise and value transferable skills from part-time jobs, or extracurricular activities.
In truth academic qualifications often bear little correlation with career success, yet they continue to serve as a barrier for many candidates, who did not have the same educational advantage others will have. Similarly, online recruiting processes for many can be very daunting and without an ‘advantaged’ network to support them, leads to higher fail rate or withdrawal from the process.
The interview and onboarding processes can pose additional challenges, particularly for candidates from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Issues like imposter syndrome further compound these challenges. Competency based questions enable those from more advantaged backgrounds to give more ‘interesting’ and varied examples, again further exacerbating the inequalities.
Ensuring the recruitment process is fit for purpose
To address these barriers, organisations must ensure their recruitment process is fit for purpose.
The early careers recruitment process should prioritise necessary, transferable skills, examples of their abilities to learn new skills and the required behaviours.
Coaching and upskilling candidates can make a huge difference. Those that don’t know the ‘rules of the game’ face a disadvantage and it can make a huge difference, particularly for those with no prior work experience, to provide support in areas such as developing confidence, upskilling and network building.
By investing in pre-boarding initiatives (that period from ‘yes to desk’), employers can build that sense of connection with their new talent, and evidence their commitment to investing in them.
Once candidates have started a role, the challenges continue and having a clear, structured programme to overcome hurdles can make a notable difference. It has been shown, for example, that progression in slower for those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. In financial services, this can be as much as 25% slower.
To succeed in the early days, candidates, often need help to develop additional skills such as self-awareness, personal brand building, resilience, network building and verbal communication, plus career management skills.
Mentoring programs have emerged as a powerful tool for supporting the progression of underrepresented groups in the workforce, not just early careers hires. Adopting a ‘mentoring with purpose’ model, which emphasises having a clear goal for what the mentee needs, in the long or short term, training for mentor and mentee , can yield significant benefits for both mentees and mentors.
Lastly targeted (e.g. social mobility focused) internship and work experience programmes as a feeder to graduate and apprentice programmes respectively are being used now. They enable young people to see for themselves what it is like to work in that firm or sector and break down misconceptions they may have.
A multifaceted approach
Fostering diversity and inclusion within the Early Careers recruitment process requires a multifaceted approach that begins with talent acquisition and extends throughout the employee lifecycle. By dismantling barriers to entry, providing ongoing support and mentorship, and promoting a culture of inclusivity, organisations can unlock the full potential of their Early Careers workforce while driving sustainable business growth.
Simon Reichwald is Chief Progression Officer at Connectr and Robert Alp is Development Partner at OnTrack International
