Many employers are going further than ever to seek out the next wave of graduate talent. Some are now sending speakers to talk at student societies and run games such as escape rooms, in which individuals work together to solve clues to escape and win the game.
E-commerce giant Amazon, which puts on campus yoga sessions to elicit interest, says it hires more than 1,500 UK graduates a year. The company focuses on finding recruits with mathematical and analytical skills, and those with business abilities. A maths or science degree is helpful, but not essential – one senior leader graduated in Egyptology.
An early step in the Amazon application process is a video interview, for which candidates film themselves answering questions. These are reviewed by Amazon staff, although many companies now use artificial intelligence in the recruitment process. Unilever, for example, uses a system called HireVue to analyse candidate videos. The company believes this removes discrimination in hiring.
But Georgina Yellowlees, Amazon’s head of talent acquisition for the EU, says: “We don’t want to look at a candidate for just one role, but for general future growth. You have to look at the whole person and at the moment I don’t think AI is at the point where it can do that.”
Unconscious bias in recruitment is a hot issue for employers. New research from the Open University suggests employers have a tendency to employ clones of themselves, with nearly a third of senior managers hiring people who are like them.
Some companies, such as GoCompare, are introducing the use of anonymous CVs to reduce recruitment bias and expand their talent pool. Meanwhile, at accountancy and consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), head of student recruitment Louise Farrar explains that the firm offers a degree entry route, as well as degree partnerships that combine study and work placements at the universities of Nottingham, Reading and Newcastle. The hiring process culminates in a half day of activities at an assessment centre, including a group exercise, a written exercise and tests on leadership, business acumen and communication skills. “It is all competency-based. There is a pass rate, so they pass or fail essentially,” says Farrar.
Starting salaries for graduate schemes average £30,000, according to High Fliers Research’s survey of 100 top graduate employers, while at least a sixth of schemes pay more than £40,000. Discount retailer Aldi is one of the best payers, with graduate area managers starting at £44,000. The company says it looks for “determined and charismatic leaders” with an “innate” aptitude for business and meeting targets. “Because of this, Aldi looks to recruit strong-minded, hard-working people that share the business’s ambitions,” the retailer says.
The overwhelming message from recruiters is that students should build up work experience to boost chances of getting hired – through internships, for instance. However, despite new rules from the government, research suggests that one in five internships is still unpaid.
Professor Kate Purcell at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research says: “The difference between paid and unpaid internships is a qualitative judgment. Employers are obliged to pay a salary to cover expenses, but people whose parents can’t afford to subsidise them are at a disadvantage in accessing these opportunities.”
Graduate recruiters are under growing pressure to make the process inclusive, give a fair chance to lower income and ethnic minority students, and resist dividing jobs into “male” or “female” roles.
Many employers seem to be making the right moves, but it will be a long time before graduate recruiters manage to remove bias entirely from the process.
