BLOG SERIES: Recruitment advice from ARU's Employability Professionals
ARU have a dedicated Employability Service who not only add value to the student experience by providing guidance on all aspects of careers, employability and job searching, we also offer expert advice to the business community.
In a series of blogs, we will deliver essential assistance to anyone attempting to navigate the student or graduate recruitment landscape, build a talent pipeline, raise brand awareness, close skills gaps or upskill your workforce.
The fourth instalment in the series will focus on:
TALENT PIPELINES
Building a sustainable talent pipeline is key to efficient, cost effective and demand met recruitment. Future proof your talent pipelines by recruiting staff early in their education such as during their degree. This can act as a 'long interview' and gives employers ample time to assess performance and how they fit into the team/organisation before a longer-term commitment is made.
Raising brand awareness
Establishing a graduate recruitment pipeline starts with getting in front of current students during their time at university. You can attend job fairs, host an employer talk, invite them to your premises for a visit, get involved with networking events, attend employer forums on campus, become a mentor and utilise curriculum embedded opportunities. For opportunities to engage with ARU students please contact [email protected].
Student business projects - Live Briefs
A Live Brief is a short-term collaboration (typically lasting one term) where students are supported on campus by an academic, whilst a business provides guidance and feedback from a professional, industry specific perspective. The initiative provides businesses with new perspectives and innovative solutions whilst helping students to get work ready by solving real world workplace issues as part of their course.
Working with academic staff, businesses specify an activity, project, task or competition based on their needs and expectations, which forms part of compulsory learning. It results in agreed deliverables that students present to the business. Benefits include;
- Access to original thinking and extra capacity for short-term projects
- Raise awareness of your brand or company profile
- Develop a closer partnership between your business and the education community
- Connect you to future graduate talent
Learn more and contact the Live Brief team here.
Industrial Placements
Many undergraduate students can work in a role which is relevant to their degree subject, between the penultimate and final years of their course. Industrial placements are one of the best ways to build a talent pipeline, add capacity on a temporary basis for particular projects or fill fixed-term roles with motivated workers. Below are some of the ways a placement student can add significant value to your organisation;
- Offer an enthusiastic and fresh approach to your business needs
- Bring specific skills and current academic knowledge into your workplace
- Provide an excellent solution to resourcing short term projects
- Give you the opportunity to get a head start recruiting the best graduates for your company
- Provide your staff with the opportunity to gain experience by supervising or mentoring a student
- Create effective links with ARU that can benefit your business, both now and in the future
Placements typically start in the summer months (up to mid-September), and can run for between 9 and 15 months, depending on start-date. Some students can also undertake a 12-month placement starting in January. There is flexibility around hours, with undergraduates needing a minimum of 30 hours per week, and postgraduates 15 hours per week. Both types of placements can be full time.
When is the best time to advertise for student placements? For a September start placement cycle many organisations advertise in November the previous year, occasionally they start even earlier. This will allow the most engaged students to apply and employers to have plenty of time for any vetting or security checks that may be needed. Another popular time to advertise is February-March. A key deadline facing placement students for a September start is 1st August, that is when details must be confirmed. For a January start the deadline is 1st December.
ARU believe in equipping our students with the skills, knowledge and experience that makes them highly desirable to employers. Our dedicated Placements Team are on hand to act as a comprehensive and free recruitment service, with the aim of reducing the cost and effort of your selection process. We can tailor our approach to your recruitment needs for example, offer support by marketing your vacancy, identifying suitable candidates, shortlisting, arranging interviews and providing ongoing support for you and the student, both before and during the placement. The successful student will also be assigned a dedicated Academic Supervisor, who will be in contact with the student to offer support with their academic needs and assessment.
Internships
If your vacancy is project based, suitable for a student and related to the courses run by your chosen university, you could recruit a student or graduate intern. Internships are a fancy word for relevant work experience - it's a term that's become synonymous with higher education and provides many benefits both to the business and the student.
Internships are aimed at candidates with little to no professional experience and 1-3 years of degree level study. They tend to be well structured, project specific with defined learning outcomes and for a specific term (usually between 8-12 weeks). A competitive internship pay rate should be pitched at Real Living Wage - currently £12p/h (2024). They can be part or full time (20-37hrs p/week) and based in any of the courses offered by your chosen provider - see ARU's online course prospective here.
Recruiting an intern is an opportunity to build your pipeline of graduate talent, using the internship as a long interview for your future hires, whilst 'giving something back' to the student community. Employers can gain access to fresh talent, ideas and innovative solutions to a business problem which might not otherwise have been afforded the time.
Since 2020 ARU have provided funding to assist businesses with the recruitment of student interns. The scheme features a fully managed recruitment service including vacancy promotion, CV shortlisting, interview arrangement, employment compliance and payroll processing. Although interns can be recruited at any time of the year, the part funded ARU Internship Scheme runs in Spring and Summer with intern start dates in March/April and May/June. For more information on ARU Internships please get in touch with [email protected].
We look forward to presenting more recruitment advice in the final instalment of this blog series which will focus on different recruitment solutions you can access - which one is right for you and your business?
Laura Kendrick, Business Development Manager