One of the main issues raised by clients when discussing their future talent needs with us is the increasing challenge of finding suitably experienced hires. As a result, more and more are looking at new graduates as a part of a longer term strategy to support their business growth plans and related skills needs.
With innovation often being one of the key drivers of business growth for many of our clients, graduates can provide the energy and desire to search for fresh ideas and to help develop new answers to old problems. Successful innovation requires individuals to deploy a combination of technical, cognitive and interpersonal skills alongside a range of competencies developed through education. Identifying innovative thinking in new graduates, is in itself a skill but one that the Step team deploys day in day out for our clients.
Many students and graduates may not define their experiences as innovative, and so it is our job to ask the right questions and establish if they have the right combination of analysis, interpretive and communication skills to meet the requirements of the role in question. Through this dialogue, we are then able to advise our candidates on improvements to their application and how to prepare for interviews. We believe this level of support is fundamental in opening up our opportunities to a wider cohort of UK graduates whilst at the same time creating access to graduate talent for British business.
This is perfectly illustrated through our work with TecQuipment, an engineering company based in Nottinghamshire.
“We were approached by the Sales & Marketing Director, in need of some input into their marketing strategy. He asked for a graduate intern to look in to potential new international markets. The brief was to review thriving global economies, then review the higher education markets in those economies and then identify routes to market in those new areas. It was only ever intended to be a short term project…
Toby Tetrault, an International Business graduate who took up the post, also had a Masters degree in international Strategy and governance. He quickly delivered the project and was encouraged to explore other areas of the business. At the end of the internship he was taken on as the company’s permanent Marketing Communications Manager – a post created specifically for him. His lateral thinking in his new role, subsequently resulted in the company being entered for a prestigious business award, which they duly won!
