A recent induction presentation focusing on

• Transtions
• New skills
• Importance of learning and openess to change
• Networking

Enjoy

Whilst designing an induction for some new grads it got me thinking about two of the great business stories of the last decade - the rise of Apple to be the most valuable company in the world and the fall of the Banks. And the challenge of getting a group of bright new grads, just starting work to understand that there are no short cuts to Sustainable success.

Designing and running effective graduate schemes is hard to do. We know this because so many of them do not work well with high drop our rates and poor progression into critical roles. This is particularly true for schemes which are targeted at attracting and developing leaders.

Our experience shows that the most important aspect of developing a graduate is to have an engaged and capable line manager.

To run a great grad scheme you have to work with more than one management level.

Talking to clients there seems to be a rule of thumb for where their senior exec leadership team should come from.

A third should be bought in to the job at executive level, a third are previous experienced hires and a third should have started as graduates or equivalent.

The reason being the graduates carry the culture, the experienced hires bring in harder to train technical skills and the executives bring new leadership qualities.

This is an interesting way of thinking in terms of what it means for graduate numbers and why should some organisations be different.

Assessing graduate performance is harder than people think. From our experience there are at least five factors that companies need to address.

It is easy to assume that new graduates are engaged with the organisation when they start. In particular line managers think this, after all the grads are the chosen few.

However, the reality is that most graduates are working out if they like their job and if they like your company. They are still at the satege of trying you out.

One of the questions we get asked a lot by clients is what do we think about Generation Y, are they really that different?

And our answer is we are not that sure. What is very clear is that there have been great societal changes and technological shifts over the last 20 years. This has led to big changes in how people see themselves and how they see their interactions with others. So I guess prima facia there is a case for there being a big intergenerational difference.

• The Fusion Foundry Graduate transitions programme
• The Naked Graduate Induction programme
• Career planning for graduates
• The Line Manager induction session
• The graduate advanced skills academies
• The celebration end of programme event