3 quick tips for graduate employers: How to beat the renege

At Campus Futures we work with a number of leading organisations helping them to identify, attract and recruit outstanding early careers talent.

Within the graduate recruitment market in particular, competition for the very best candidates is fierce and given the time-gap between making offers and a new employee joining, it’s vital to keep people enthused from the get-go. Here are 3 simple tips to ensure you keep people engaged and minimise any reneging on offers:

Communication is key.

We love all things digital, but don’t fall into the trap of only relying on email or social media to get messages across. Go old skool too – make sure your early careers manager, their buddy, mentor and future line manager all chat to them over the ‘phone to welcome them on board and check in with them regularly over the weeks or months before they join. Emailed offers/contracts are fine but there’s also huge value in sending a physical offer letter or contract. Candidates have told us they feel much more bought in when they’ve had to sign something and send it back.

 

The information age.

Knowledge empowers candidates; the more information they have about their new role, the more engaged they will be. Don’t bombard them with superfluous information for the sake of it, but do make sure they have as much information as possible about their new team, its mission statement, key projects, their likely role and objectives, locations, company benefits and so on.

 

Feeling part of the team.

We’ve mentioned sharing information about the team and projects above and we’d encourage you to start doing this as early as possible. Organise informal drop-ins to meet the team or a summer event to get new hires together. Get their employee passes, email addresses, log-ins for the intranet, collaboration tools arranged well in advance of their start date and share them with your new starters. Even though they might not be able to use them until they join, they’ll already feel a part of the company. Why not fill their email contacts book and messaging tool with the details of people they are likely to be working closely with to give them a head-start building their networks. Tell them that you’ve done this and that their names have already been added to project plans and you’ll make them feel even more a part of the team.