Top tips for launching a graduate scheme

I’ve launched graduate schemes many dozens of times over the last twenty years, both in-house and more recently with clients. In this blog, the first of a three-part mini-series, I share my five top tips to set your new graduate scheme up for success.

1. Be clear on the WHY

There are a couple of typical scenarios where a business wants to launch a graduate scheme. Most frequently:

• Making ad hoc hires of graduates, interns and placements individually has reached a tipping point where it is more efficient and effective to take a co-ordinated, programmatic approach.
• The business is scaling-up and the experienced hire market is exhausted. You need to grow your own as an alternative, sustainable talent pool.
• Someone senior has joined the business and wants a graduate scheme - often due to past personal or professional experiences on a graduate programme or benefitting from one in another organisation. 

However rarely do these scenarios really clarify the ‘WHY’ behind a graduate programme. You must start by identifying the problem statements you are trying to solve (skills, ageing demographics, commercial ROI, innovation, recruitment agency costs, diversity, succession) and the measures of success. And being clear on the why doesn’t just help you to design the right programme and processes – it also ensures you get and keep all your key stakeholders crystal clear on what you are working to achieve and why.

If you want some further support with this you can check out these two resources - the Gradconsult five pillars for an early careers strategy and these great toolkits from SAGEA. 

2. Understand the status quo

You may already have recent graduates, or current interns, working students and placement students across your business. If this has been done ad hoc, or through direct entry hires you are unlikely to have clear data to know what talent you already have where, where they came from and what may already be working well that you can harness. Start by collating the ‘best imperfect’ data you can (through surveys, focus groups, alumni you know of and working with HRBPs). Involving your alumni in any launch is critical not only to capture existing best practise but for lots of other reasons - more on this later in the series.

3. Avoid the big bang

It is always tempting to go to market with a ‘big bang’, an all singing and dancing campaign and market-leading development offering. But this way danger lies. You are always going to make mis-steps in the early days and the smaller the pilot group, the easier it will be to both identify and correct these mis-steps swiftly. Consider the following approaches:

• Position your first programme as a ‘learning experiment’ or pilot group internally.
• Adopt an agile test, fail, learn, adapt project methodology and review process.
• Position your initial branding/employee proposition to graduates as co-creators and influencers of future programmes, rather than as recipients of a fully-fledged programme. This will help to set expectations.
• Start with some discrete/less complex areas of the business.
• Work with HRBPs and hiring managers who are supporters of the concept, keen to help you experiment, learn, improve and make the programme a success.
• Recruit a small enough population of graduates that you can get to know personally and build up a trusting relationship with, so that they tell you what you really need to hear.
• Set up regular listening groups in year 1 with grads, hiring managers and key stakeholders to pick up and respond to feedback, celebrate successes and understand what is working.

4. Model the resource requirements and costs

The resource requirements, time and costs to run a 2-3 year graduate scheme quickly escalate, even if the number of hires remains reasonably consistent. Why is this? Here’s a quick explainer if you were launching later this year for a graduate scheme to start in September 2023. Your costs for the JUST a 2023 graduate scheme would typically spread across 2022 into 2025 as follows: 

But of course in 2023 you will also start recruiting for the 2024 intake and the same again each following year until the full accumulative effect is reached. By the 2025 budget year you have the costs for four years of different graduate schemes all running simultaneously, as follows: 

• Marketing/recruiting for 2026 intake
• Running selection, keep warm and start of year 1 for 2025 intake
• Running year 1 into start of 2 for 2024 intake
• Running end of year 2/exit for 2023 intake

This means your budget by 2025 is significantly more than your first 2022 budget, and might look something like this: 

Many businesses and graduate teams get caught out by the escalating costs. And if you haven't got that all important WHY and the success measures in place from the start, it can be difficult to justify such significant investment without a clear ROI when the Finance Director comes calling in 2026. So make sure you model the costs and the resource you are going to need up front, in order that you are set up for success and have clear commitments to enable you to deliver on your promises (to the business and the graduates alike).  

5. Hiring/line managers are crucial

It doesn’t matter how amazing your campaign has been, how prestigious your brand is or how much development you offer. If your hiring/line managers are not good people leaders and coaches for your new graduates it will all fall down. So what can you do to set your scheme up for success? These tried and tested methods will help:

• Provide an extensive support network and just in time tools/resources for graduate managers including things like toolkits, videos, briefings, training, FAQS and a whatsapp/slack social channels.
• Choose your graduate managers carefully – seeking out those who have an excellent track record of developing and investing in others, those who score exceptionally well in colleague surveys/360s and embody the values of your organisation.
• Align managing a graduate to internal soft (or hard) reward and recognition methods, including profile and networking opportunities with senior leaders.   
• Curate an induction and core development programme that complements on the job learning and covers all the core crucial (not soft) skills most graduates will need in their transition from education into employment. This should minimise the development burden on line managers and accelerate performance in role. Again more on this to follow later in the series.

We all remember our first boss and how they shaped our view of the world of work – either for good or bad!

What next....

You can read the next two blogs in the series here - part two and part three. And please do let me know what you would add to the top tips, or if you have any topics you would like me to address.

If you are grappling with the launch of a new scheme and fancy a more in-depth chat with someone who has ‘been there, done that’ please just pick up the phone or drop a note to Kerry McElroy or I in the Gradconsult team. We’ve developed a particular specialism in the last few years for helping businesses to launch, refresh or grow their graduate schemes and we are always happy to have a chat over a brew.