Creating high flier graduates at induction
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When graduates come straight from university to your company – the first week will imprint them either with high flier skills in dealing with ambiguity, or a consumer mentality. Take our quiz to see if you are creating the right expectations…the answers may not be what you expect!
Will you send the message “You have been rigorously selected; congratulations on being top talent” or “You are our senior leaders of the future”?
While graduates love to hear this, it also creates false expectations that may come back to haunt you. This message (especially if said by the CEO) sets unrealistic expectations. Graduates think in time frames of 10 years at the most, and often get frustrated due to an unrealistic expectation of rapid promotion. If they don’t see immediate progress, they will feel the organisation has failed to live up to its promises. The sad reality is that most graduates won’t be your senior leaders of the future; AGR figures suggest that 40% of them may have left your organisation within 5 years. And other graduates may settle in to do a great job as top specialists or talented middle managers – this is a great contribution! Not everyone wants to be CEO.
What to do?
Brief key players not to communicate an ‘expectation’ message (“What you can expect us to deliver for you”), and instead send a ‘challenge and contribution’ message. “You’re facing a major challenge – you’ll want to be equally successful at work as you were academically. We’ll provide you with great opportunities to drive the best first 10 years of your career – along the way you will undoubtedly make mistakes and meet setbacks – but we are convinced that you have the resilience and problem-solving abilities to overcome these and find the support and help you need to succeed.” See the difference?
Will graduates meet the CEO and Directors and converse with them as equals over lunch and in sessions?
Again, this is a common feature of graduate inductions. Yet graduates are politically naïve, and we’ve seen many of them trip up – by making mistakes of protocol, because they think this is the way the world works outside induction. It’s easy for induction to make graduates think they are more important than they actually are. Graduates often feel a major bump when they arrive at the hectic environment of their first placement, where many other things take priority over their needs, and they need to be self-directed to get what they want. Another problem is that graduates know too little to make best use of the fantastic insights and advice of the most senior people, in their first week. Give them this in their second year, and they will do wonders with the opportunity! What to do?
At induction, instead of wheeling in the top brass, give graduates plenty of access to your highest performing previous graduates, to share tips and tactics. This is what graduates really need in their first week – to know how to take control of their placement like a high flier. Also let them talk to managers of graduates who are prepared to be honest about how they’d like to manage a graduate – and what the reality often is. Get them to focus on how the graduate can help to get the best experience in a placement.
Will you have exciting, fun exercises that will entertain them?
OK, you’re probably twigging by now that these questions are setting you up! But do consider whether having lots of pre-programmed fun activities are giving graduates much too rosy a picture of what to expect when they start work in earnest.
What to do?
Of course you need to have highs on your programme – but think about creating highs that arise from tackling a challenge successfully. If you have fun exercises, get the previous year’s intake to organise them – this sends the subliminal message that graduates are workers taking on challenges – not just consumers.
Are you explicit about what high fliers actually do, that makes them stand out?
This is probably one of the most important things you can do to create more high fliers – tell them what impresses you! We’ve done research into the high fliers at 6 different large organisations – and there are a number of key behaviours that will make any graduate stand out. We’ve created a pack of Graduate Success cards, that give that information directly to graduates, and exercises which can be carried out at induction or welcome events. National Grid put these behaviours at the heart of their graduate performance appraisal, as part of a concerted effort to create real clarity around what high performers look like – and the results won them the 2013 AGR Strategic Alignment Award.
What to do?
Ask yourself whether you are really being explicit about the behaviours you love to see – and reinforcing that throughout their scheme.
Will you ask graduates to rate their induction?
Whether this is a good or bad thing depends entirely on how the questions are phrased. There’s a danger of creating a consumer attitude from the start, if you take a customer service approach of ‘how was it for you’? If the only feedback graduates get involved with during induction is the Graduate Team asking how well they have measured up to expectations, you may well be creating a rod for your own back. The Graduate Team are not providing customer service to the graduate cohort; their role is to shape them into high fliers.
What to do?
Can you focus your evaluation on the results of induction and how graduates could help you work on what is done for the next intake? Can you start the process of becoming skilled at seeking and giving feedback from Day 1 of induction – ensuring that they seek feedback on their performance as well as providing feedback on yours? Then when graduates give you evaluation data, they are doing so in a thoughtful, mature way, and with a commitment to work with you on improvement.
If this quiz has helped you to consider new options, that’s great! Or maybe you aced the quiz and have more ideas to share? Do comment on our blog, to share your best ideas on induction…
Download our free 50 Great Graduate Development Ideas e-book for more ideas about designing induction. If you are interested in providing your graduates with more explicit information about the behaviours which will mark them out as high fliers, consider using our Graduate Success Cards at induction, or as part of graduate manager education on how to shape high fliers.