On 13th March several top graduate recruiters such as Accenture, Morgan Stanley, IPG and BAE Systems came to City University to enjoy a presentation on the latest developments on-campus by Mona Vadher, Head of Employer Engagement, City University and then Graduate Retention: 3 Ways to Keep Your Best Talent by Laurell Hector from McManus HRD. The key takeaways of the event have been summarised below.

1. Identify your crunch point – The average tenure for a graduate is 18 months. Over what time frame do your staff leave in significant numbers? This can give you an opportunity to preempt this decision with heightened communications and minimise the disruption to the business.

2. Introduce short placements or work experience – A “try before you buy” approach work wonders by giving the graduates an opportunity to test drive your organisation.

3. Benchmark – Laurell devised a SOAP line – a Standard of Acceptable Performance – used as a measure of where your expectations are with regard to things like KPIs, codes of conduct, etc. When an individual slips below this line of acceptability you then have an opportunity to correct this and hence retain them.

This is just a flavour of the topics covered during a typical GRN event. To join please apply for membership and receive invites for future events. Our 2018 events calendar is as follows;

• June 12th 9am-11am. Hult Business School, London

• September 11th 9am-11am. ICAEW, London 

• December 5th 9am-11am. KCL, London

It’s free and a fantastic opportunity to develop as a professional graduate recruiter in your sector with a diverse range of graduate recruiters facing the same challenges.