The objective
Some people emerge as high fliers on graduate schemes. Can we do research that increases our chance of spotting these people at selection? Can we identify the attitude and behaviours that make them successful, and use this knowledge to shape ALL graduates to adopt the behaviours of those that are most successful?
The research
We interviewed graduates 3-7 years into their career, who had been identified by senior management in their organisation as having added significantly more value than their peers. The graduates were drawn from 6 large organisations in different sectors; telecommunications, food retailing, engineering, financial services, and manufacturing. We carried out structured in-depth interviews with graduates and their early managers, covering biography, job search, qualifications, attitudes, critical incidents during their graduate scheme and how they managed these challenges, and their motivation.
Outcomes
We developed a 66-item Graduate Success card pack covering the attitudes and behaviours of the most successful graduates during the first two years of employment, to make these explicit to new graduates. These cards are now being used with interns and on many graduate schemes at induction and over their first year, to shape successful attitudes and behavours.
Our entire graduate development suite is based on this understanding of what the most successful graduates do. We have also developed selection methods, graduate induction and and keynote speeches for our clients based on this research.
