3 things to tell your graduates

Posted by Anne Hamill

It’s September and for many graduates across the Northern hemisphere, it’s induction week. After decades of research into high flier graduates, and working to assist graduates in different sectors and countries to make the leap from academic success to work high flier – what do I believe are the 3 key messages to pass on to graduates in induction week?

1. New game, new rules.
   Focus your graduates on identifying the differences between education and work. I always enjoy the outcomes of asking graduates to identify this for themselves – they are often so insightful and come up with many differences – the fact that you have to work with people you don’t like, that you are given tasks to do where no one knows the answer, that you might need to please multiple people with very different ideas.
   
   Tell them that they are great problem solvers, and will work out how to be successful under these complex conditions. But let them know to expect to drop from an A grade average to getting C and D results and to have to work their way up to A grade performance in the future.
   
   Warn them that a lot of learning will be about learning from mistakes, actively seeking feedback (no more regular streams of marked papers!), and organising your own opportunities to learn from people and opportunities in the environment. Why not set your graduates the challenge of coming up with multiple strategies for dealing with these new problems? How would a high flier deal with these new challenges?


2. Don’t expect structure and predictability.
   In education, when you embark on a 3-year degree, the degree title doesn’t change while you are doing it! You may even know 2 years ahead, the options you will be offered in your final year. At work, things change constantly. Your company may no longer be able to offer you the very thing that enticed you to accept the job back in February. This is not the company being disorganised or deceitful – it is the company being hit by external storms.
   
   Don’t let disappointment to turn into blame, and try to pick up on the whole picture. You may be worried because you don’t know whether you’ll be able to do the placement you want so much to do. But others in the company with mortgages and families to support, may face the fact that a job they’ve done for years and done well is vanishing in a restructure – and may fear not having a job at all. Graduates joining a graduate scheme may be the ONLY people in the organisation who have a guaranteed job for 2 years! But also be aware that turbulence and change throw up unexpected opportunities – they are often great chances to progress your career.
   
   Be open-minded and not focused on following one narrow track. Stay on the alert for opportunities, understand the scheme objectives, see how you can help the scheme managers to achieve these, while also creating chances of working on things that interest you. Create win-win outcomes.
   
   Tell graduates at the beginning of a structured induction, that this applies also to induction itself. Things will go wrong. Senior managers may not be able to run their session, or will arrive late, due to other critical business priorities; the coach for the site visit may go to the wrong location. If you tell your graduates this – then when plans fall apart, you can enlist their support. We now have a challenge. How shall we solve it? What do you want to do with the time? How shall we re-organise the site visit? It becomes OUR induction, not the scheme manager’s problem.


3. Stay relentlessly positive and generous.
   The biggest thing that will help a graduate’s career is to gain a reputation as someone who will always look on the bright side. Be someone who understands that things go wrong, and whose immediate reaction is to reach out to help, not to criticise and fume. Reputations are formed in moments of stress and challenge. The people who rise above disappointments and make the time to thank people who tried to help them (even if their efforts weren’t successful) are spotted. If the scheme manager knows that a graduate can be relied on to be easy to work with and always positive – then they will think of them when there is an opportunity for a graduate to work with a Director, because they know the graduate will be a good ambassador for the scheme. If a senior manager spots a graduate staying positive under very difficult circumstances, they are more likely to want to recruit the graduate into their team on a permanent basis.
   
   Tell your graduates to look around when things aren’t going well. What can they do to help? People notice small things – like when you see that an organiser is under pressure getting things set up, and take the initiative to bring them a cup of tea or coffee that they might not have time to get for themselves. Or like one group of graduates I’ve been with this week, who cleared away all their coffee cups and waste paper from their table and stacked their name plates, leaving the table pristine. I like to ensure that even at the end of a packed induction day with a large group the room looks great, but I’m often caught up in conversations with individual graduates for half an hour at the end of the day. When the individual conversations were over, and I spotted what that group had done – I was impressed.