GradStart for graduate recruits—programme overview

Business and soft skills development

Attract recent graduates with a practical development programme.
Integrate your new graduate employees rapidly.
Boost business performance. 

Why?

How often have you recruited a young college or university graduate and just wished that they understood a little bit more about the business world in which you operate, and therefore what you require of them? The gap between what your recruit understands and what you need can be frustrating on both sides. This experience is borne out by the majority of UK businesses.

Employability and employability skills have become key issues for UK businesses. They impact on competitiveness, economic growth and Britain’s place in the global economy. They are critically important to our future.

That is why we have developed the GradStart Business and soft skills development programme. It provides graduates with the practical knowledge and skills they need to make a productive and valuable contribution to businesses, and to your business in particular. With our programme you will be able to integrate graduates into your business rapidly and see their performance take off.

Training is highly prized by employees and jobseekers according to numerous surveys by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and other organisations. It is frequently ranked as important as salary when making career decisions. And training tends to engender more flexible and committed employees.

We passionately believe that the better start you give your young college and university graduate recruits, then the more successful your company will be.

How?

We realise that you may not have the luxury of dedicated resources to deliver comprehensive business skills training every step-of-the-way during a graduate employee’s early years. Yet your new employees don’t have your practical business experience, nor your grasp of what is important and why. This is where we can help.

Our trainers are very experienced business people cum trainers.  This means that each can bring an average of some 25 years business experience into the classroom, and provide a wealth of anecdotal material from their business careers with which to illuminate the topics being taught and the issues your new young employees may have with them.

Every trainer has recruited and/or managed first-time employees, and really understands the challenges these employees face when entering the world of work.

Our managed service, cost-effective training programme enables you to join forces with other local and national employers, and utilise our classroom-based, as well as online courses, to build the business skills your graduate employees need in a competitive business environment.

We make it easy for you by taking care of when, where and what they need to learn. You’ll be able to track their performance and progress, and utilise this insight for developing their career path and promotion prospects.

With GradStart you’ll improve your prospects of attracting, recruiting and retaining graduates, the majority of whom want to work for an employer that offers them job role training and professional career development.

What?

Research shows that the most important employability (business and soft) skills that as an employer you want them to have, are:

Industry intelligence
Personal management
Financial awareness
Interpersonal behaviour
Problem solving
Communication skills
Customer awareness
Team working
Managing people
Leadership

We’ve designed our ​ten day GradStart programme—consisting of ten one day modules covered over a one year period—specifically for the needs of young inexperienced employees as they progress in their early years of employment.

Each month they’ll join with employees from other local and national employers on the programme.  This expands and extends their business knowledge and skills in a stimulating, thought-provoking, pro-active environment that aids retention of knowledge and fosters new understanding, behaviour and performance.

In between the monthly classroom-based sessions, they’ll be monitored and encouraged to apply and practise these skills, so that they quickly become even more competent and confident with these skills for the benefit of your business.

GradStart is an Akonia programme

by Gary Weinstein . last updated 4 january 2016 . image:  Free images

Related material:
>  GradStart:  programme introduction
>  GradStart:  programme definition
>  GradStart calendar
>  Blog:  Employability: why are students not engaged?
>  Blog:  Employability:  what stops it?
>  Akonia GradStart programme [external site]

Download a complimentary best practice guide now and discover…
The 22 essential steps for successfully recruiting and retaining young employees
The guide covers the four stages : attraction, recruitment, development and retention.

Contact Jeremy Marchant, jeremy.marchant@akonia.com, 01 453 764 615