Top graduate hiring trends emerging in the post-pandemic world

In this post-pandemic era, employers across industries and business sectors are looking toward new graduates to meet increasing labour demand in a tight candidate market. As a result, many organizations are expanding their graduate hiring programs in 2022. Our team at impress.ai conducted a trend analysis to understand what is driving the graduate hiring programme in a post-pandemic world. Here are our top findings that will shape graduate hiring in 2022:

• A clear preference for a short and smooth recruitment process

Today, recruiters and candidates favour a streamlined recruitment process that reduces the time to hire and delivers improved recruitment efficiency. Talent acquisition professionals prefer recruitment platforms that automate routine recruitment activities and help them focus on strategic activities. A good end-to-end recruitment platform simplifies & streamlines the recruitment process, improves hiring efficiency, and enhances the candidate experience.  

• Greater demand for video-based screening processes

Working from home has become a common practice in the post-pandemic period. Organizations have embraced platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams to streamline their work. Today, candidates prefer a hybrid work schedule, while recruiters no longer have location constraints for conducting interviews and assessments. Hence, recruiters must explore the possibility of extending video-based screening opportunities to candidates and ensure that these platforms are integrated with their recruitment systems to maximize the candidate experience. 

• Resilience, adaptability, self-motivation, and confidence are more focused skills

Businesses have been affected by the pandemic and are embracing remote/hybrid working modes. Therefore, new graduate hires may not have a peer group they can easily reach out to when facing difficulties. In order to address this situation, recruiters are looking for candidates who possess resilience, adaptability, self-motivation, and the confidence to tackle the challenges they may encounter. To onboard candidates with the required skill set, recruiters must ensure that they leverage recruitment platforms that offer the means to assess candidate personalities and skills. 

• A decisive shift towards one-on-one learning and mentorship programmes

Employers are aware of the skills gap in the workforce and are keen to bridge it. Organizations are looking to implement learning programs to familiarise graduates with their job roles and leverage the expertise of their supervisors. Fresh graduates who receive comprehensive training and assistance feel valued and enable organizations to instil values into their new hires and enhance their growth.

• Graduate employers are prioritizing technical and skill training for recruits

Organizations are prioritizing training to ensure that their employees remain agile and more engaged. Graduates tend to accept organizations that offer detailed training programs more favorably as they look for meaningful experiences and learning opportunities. Organizations are investing in training programs that deliver a significant return on their investment by attracting and retaining top talent. 

• Employer branding is becoming a competitive differentiator

Employer branding is a crucial factor that candidates consider when choosing between organizations. In today’s competitive hiring environment, candidates are less likely to opt for a company that does not have proper brand visibility or cannot offer sufficient insights into its work environment and culture. Therefore, recruiters must communicate their employer brand throughout the recruitment process to effectively engage with candidates and leave their mark. This provides candidates with the opportunity to understand an organization and its culture, values, benefits, and expectations. 

• Increased focus on humanizing candidate touchpoints

Talent acquisition professionals are focusing on making the candidate experience humanized and intelligent. Personalized communications keep candidates connected and engaged throughout the recruitment process and help to establish a meaningful relationship between recruiters and candidates. Today, recruiters are leveraging hiring platforms that employ technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning to make candidate engagement more intelligent and human. 

These trends clearly show that recruiters who maintain a superior employer brand offers an impeccable candidate experience, provide suitable upskilling opportunities, and ensure meaningful and intelligent candidate engagement will win the graduate talent war in the coming years.