Association of ideas
Thursday, 16 April 2009Before joining the Association of Graduate Recruiters on 1st August last year, Gary Argent had been a one-company man. A ‘techie' by training (with a degree in computer science), he'd joined Logica back in 1991, undertaking the usual mix of technical, account management and project management work. Then, in 2000, he was invited to run a session for new graduates about what they could expect to encounter on the project management front - and found he loved it.
From 2000 to 2003, his involvement in the graduate arena broadened to include both induction and development. "Logica involved the rest of the business a lot in their recruitment and development processes," he says, "making use of both recent graduates and more experienced people. The company was also quite ahead of its time in terms of the links between recruitment and development, seeing the need for a strong interface between the two teams. They did a very good job of tying the two disciplines together."
In 2004 Gary took over Logica's graduate recruitment team, which was responsible for bringing in around two hundred new graduates a year. And Logica was, of course, an AGR member. "I went to my first AGR conference in 2004," says Gary. "It was a great event - and I couldn't believe how open it all was, in terms of people sharing information and best practice. I went again in '05; shortly afterwards Carl Gilleard (the AGR's chief executive) invited me to join the Association's conference planning team and then, in 2006, the board."
A logical move
"Some time around then, I'd decided I wanted to stay in the recruitment space," he continues. "When the business operations manager job first came up I realised that the job-description matched closely with what I wanted to do, so I submitted an application. I went through the same selection process as all the other candidates, and after an interview with Carl and Terence (Perrin, AGR chair) I was fortunate enough to be offered the job.
The new role had been created partly to develop the range of the AGR's offering to its members, and partly to add further capacity to its small and very busy HQ team. "Membership had grown massively during 2007-8, and the AGR had run its biggest conference ever in 2008," says Gary. "But people often don't realise how much the AGR manages to do with a very small team - despite having only about four-and-a-half people, we manage to run over sixty events a year!
"Membership expectations are rightly very high," he continues. "My role was to provide this extra capacity, and also to bring in recent industry-side graduate recruitment experience. Carl and the board had also seen the need for the types of services offered to increase, and I'm playing a part in that process. In some ways my role is quite clearly defined, with a number of clear goals in mind, but with my background as both AGR member and experienced graduate recruiter I know I've got a real opportunity to help shape the offering by deciding what to focus on and then pushing for this. The job's broad title reflects the fact that it's a very varied role - I can honestly say that no two days here are the same."
Early priorities
"A big part of my initial focus was simply on getting out there with the members - both existing and prospective - to see exactly what they need," he goes on. "Of course, just after I joined the whole picture shifted radically with the downturn, so it really was a question of all change. Hence the recent briefing papers we've produced, including the one on return on investment - this was basically created in direct response to the kind of questions that our members had been putting to us about how to demonstrate the value of their graduate schemes to the business. We did a lot of listening, found all sorts of examples of good practice out there, and then brought it all together.
"Another focus has been on getting our three classes of members - recruiters, suppliers and universities - to work more closely together, with the AGR sitting at the centre of the relationship. When we get them all together, things really start to happen. The annual conference is a good example of this, but we don't want people to have to wait twelve months for the opportunity.
"This was also one of the reasons behind the decision to rebuild our website. We're already well on course with this, by the way, and the new site is on track for release this month. There were two main priorities: to make it easier for our members to find stuff on the site - which we know was a bit of an issue - and to provide more opportunities for people to communicate with each other, as well as introducing things like RSS feeds to collect relevant information and pass it on to our members. We recognise just how far technology has moved on in the last three or four years.
"There's also been a view that perhaps we've been a bit better at supporting our less experienced members, both on the recruiter side and on the supplier side. We've sometimes been accused of not offering quite the same level of service to our more senior and experienced members. So we're actively increasing the opportunities for networking among this kind of member, and developing new events that will offer added value as well as bringing them together more."
Graduate development and selection
One area receiving renewed attention from the AGR is that of graduate development. "These days, businesses need to be confident that their new graduates will start to provide value quickly and develop into professional roles fast," says Gary. "Our graduate development task group has created a series of one-day conferences on the topic as well as a new award for best practice in development at our annual conference, and we launched the new regional graduate development networks last month. All these initiatives will help companies to get more value from their AGR membership."
Looking ahead, Gary also anticipates a lot more focus on graduate selection. With the downturn, it's not uncommon to hear of employers receiving two or three times as many graduate applications as before. (Of course, the big question is whether quality increases by the same factor, and this tends to vary from one employer to another.) However, apart from finding efficient ways to process these augmented levels of response, recruiters also need to revisit the criteria that they've traditionally selected against. For example, in today's highly uncertain business environment, does flexibility become much more important? And if so, how do you begin to measure this accurately in your assessment centre?
Motivation is another interesting quality to try to define. With the problems facing the financial services sector, many graduates are currently turning to alternative career options such as they public sector. But assuming the financial services sector recovers in a couple of years or so, will they all be off like a shot, chasing bigger packages and faster progress? And even if they're likely to make the switch, is it still worth recruiting them for a couple of years anyway?
Gary points out that, despite the increased volume of applications, almost two in five recruiters (38%) remained concerned about whether they'll be able to fill all their vacancies this year. "Good candidates will still get multiple offers - probably more than ever - so it's vital for companies to build a rapport with them and keep them fully engaged," he says, promising a number of upcoming AGR events that will focus on precisely this issue.
A further agenda item is work placements, something Gary confesses to being passionate about. "They provide an ideal opportunity for both sides - student and employer - to evaluate each other," he says. "Graduates who've undergone work placements tend to fit in more quickly when they're employed, and also start to contribute more quickly. And it's a fabulous way of advertising a company as an employer when they return to university with positive experiences of your organisation! In short, there are lots of compelling reasons for running a placement scheme - though people should realise that it takes a great deal of effort to do it properly. We'll be advising on this, too - providing a briefing paper and helping to develop our members' expertise in this area."
Maintaining steady progress
Naturally the downturn is affecting just about every organisation in the UK, and the AGR is no exception to the rule. That said, membership levels and conference bookings all seem to be holding up pretty well. After the big upsurge in membership over the past year or so, the situation has remained pretty flat over the last few months. "On both the recruiter side and the supplier side, we've lost some and gained some," says Gary. "We've taken on a number of new, innovative suppliers, while several recruiters who weren't previously members have decided that now is actually a good time to start."
Bookings for this year's annual conference and exhibition in July are also looking promising - they may not equal last year's record attendance, of course, but they're not far down from these levels at present. And as an indicator of the high level of interest that persists in graduate recruitment activities, a very recent one-day conference on graduate development succeeded in attracting just as many delegates as the previous year.
The value of collaboration
When Gary was at Logica, he enjoyed making use of the AGR's IT sector focus group. These sector-specific groups have now expanded, with eight different sectors covered, one regional group in Scotland, and three new graduate developer regional networks. "These groups meet around three or four times a year, and provide a great opportunity for graduate recruiters and developers in any given sector to meet and discuss what's going on," says Gary. "They can share information on best practice, ‘hot topics', areas of frustration and so on. And increasingly we're starting to see them work more collaboratively - for example, running sector-specific events for university careers advisers.
"The AGR is really all about helping people work together more effectively. Our sector focus groups also help us to respond to members' thinking - and for me, they provide a great opportunity to keep my finger on the graduate recruitment pulse."
One area of AGR membership which Gary is keen to develop further is the universities. "We already have around fifty university members, but we'd like to get more," he says. "We're starting to see them come to more of our events and get more involved in things like AGR task groups , which is great. For heads of careers services, the more they understand about employers' selection processes, the better placed they are to advise their students. We've definitely got a bit of a push on to build closer links with our university members."
It's clear that there's no shortage of priorities to keep Gary busy for some time to come in his new role. So were there any real surprises on joining the AGR? "Not really," he says, "apart from seeing just how much is regularly achieved by such a small team. Even as a director of the organisation, I hadn't quite realised this. And after seventeen years in Logica's highly-supported world, I've had to learn how to work in a smaller environment. But that was a good surprise!"
