Assessment of Management Potential in Graduate Recruitment
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055369 |
| Pages | 56-61 |
| Date | 01 March 1978 |
| Published date | 01 March 1978 |
| Author | R.W.T. Gill,J.D.H. Banks |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
new
personnel
practice
Assessment of Management Potential
in Graduate Recruitment
R. W. T. Gill
Lecturer
in
Occupational
Psychology,
Management
Centre,
University
of Bradford
J. D. H. Banks
Rockware
Glass Limited
Introduction
'Demand for "good graduates" will remain highly competi-
tive.
The most successful recruiters will be those from
financially strong organizations with stable recruitment
records and a good training and development policy.' Such
is one informed forecast [1] of the likely trend in graduate
recruitment between 1976 and 1980. Much research has
been carried out and written up on the topic of graduate
recruits' attitudes both towards choosing an employer and
towards their first years of employment. The conclusions
reached consistently focus on the importance of the em-
ployer's reputation and economic strength, its utilisation of
their knowledge and skills and its training and development
policies. The success with which an employer recruits grad-
uates will, therefore, depend a good deal on these factors.
But what, or who, is a 'good graduate'? And how can a
'good graduate' be identified? It is to these two questions
that this article is directed, with a description of one com-
pany's experiences in attempting to answer them by develo-
ping techniques which have not been widely used in the
area of graduate selection.
One of the most difficult parts of any selection process is
the drawing up of a job description and a person (or recruit-
ment) specification in order to obtain a clear picture of the
work to be done and the sort of person to be sought. This
task is probably more difficult in the case of graduate re-
cruitment because successful candidates often join a train-
ing or extended induction programme which does not
immediately give them specific jobs with defined tasks and
responsibilities. Unfortunately, some employers have only a
vague idea of what the graduate will be doing and what sort
of person is required to do it and some employers are often
unprepared to give responsibility and authority to newly
recruited graduates for a variety of reasons. In such cases
recruitment can become very difficult as company reputa-
tion spreads and employers can become disillusioned with
graduates as they leave for greener pastures. [2] Progressive
organisations have therefore adopted a variety of approa-
ches to this difficult, early part of the selection process.
The approach used by Rockware Glass is described below,
together with a discussion of how it may be effiectively
developed further.
Assuming for a moment that one has successfully tackled
the question of what is a 'good graduate', how then can one
recognise him or her
—
and be able to rely on an acceptable
probability of success? The normal approach to this ques-
tion is, of course, the 'milk round' interview programme,
followed by longer interviews and, sometimes, in-company
psychometric tests to select successful candidates from the
shortlist. As Prentice says, [3] the employer has to com-
pare members of a narrow cross-section of the population
in regard to intellectual ability and, moreover, they have
usually no 'track record'. In this context, in addition to
experiencing all the known shortcomings of the interview
as a selection tool, many organisations have used psycho-
metric tests, sometimes with a lack of success and some-
times even to the marked detriment of the selection process
as a whole. It was a careful consideration of this issue which
led the company to investigate and experiment with
alternative and relatively sophisticated assessment methods
described below.
What to look for in graduate recruits
The objective of graduate recruitment is to select those
graduates with the highest probability of success. One of
the best predictors of future job performance in general is
past job performance in a similar situation. Such informa-
tion, however, is rarely available for graduate recruits. One
must therefore resort to other information. This may use-
fully be gained from a systematic study of the jobs for
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