The Graduate Recruitment Manual

Citation

McDowall, A. (2003), "The Graduate Recruitment Manual", Personnel Review, Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 798-800. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480310498738

The Graduate Recruitment Manual was published in 2001, and is primarily aimed at practitioners who work in graduate recruitment. The objectives of the manual are twofold: first, to provide the reader with a brief succinct overview of how graduate recruitment is changing by considering the perspective of both the recruiter and the graduate and, second, to give succinct guidelines for best practice.

In order to achieve this aim, the authors have reviewed relevant literature in the field, commissioned original research and included practical case studies. The book is divided into ten chapters, which are briefly summarised here.

Chapter one explores the changing context of graduate recruitment, by considering aspects such as the influence of more widely available tertiary education, an increasingly diverse population, mounting recruitment costs and the necessity to look beyond recruitment at staff retention. Chapter two focuses on the importance of sending the right recruitment message and relevant theoretical concepts such as competency‐based and value‐based recruitment are summarised briefly.

Chapter three provides a general overview of current graduate recruitment practice and how this is viewed by graduates who are being recruited. Chapter four gives further insight into the recipients’ perspective as the needs of ethnic minority graduates are outlined. Clearly, this is a topic that has not received the attention it deserves elsewhere in the literature and, given our increasingly diverse and global environment, and the inclusion of guidelines for best practice is laudable.

Chapter five puts forward further practical guidelines, this time for the effective screening of an applicant pool. A variety of available tools, such as structured application forms or appropriate discard criteria, are detailed. Following on from these guidelines for pre‐selection, chapter six takes a theoretical perspective by reviewing appropriate selection methods by contrasting the advantages and disadvantages of prevalent selection tools, such as CVs, assessment centres and interviews.

The topic for chapter seven is the impact of increasing globalisation on recruitment practice. The necessity to consider possible cultural differences within the recruitment process in multi‐national organizations is stressed and the chapter concludes with rather brief but nevertheless sound advice for the global adaptation of selection procedures. Chapter eight discusses the development of potential in graduate high flyers and important issues such as a clear definition of the term “potential” itself are raised.

Chapter nine highlights the necessity to think beyond graduate recruitment by implementing proper induction processes in order to realistically manage graduate expectations. Proper induction, it is argued, should go beyond a brief introduction to the organisation and help to manage initial changes in commitment and satisfaction. The final chapter offers guidelines for the retention and development of graduates, by outlining various topics such as the crucial role of the line manager or the use of feedback and mentoring. In the appendix, best practice standards are offered to the reader. These effectively condense the preceding chapters into a series of checklists for best practice that should prove a useful benchmark for practitioners in the field.

In summary, The Graduate Recruitment Manual is an easily digested guide for graduate recruitment practitioners. A useful feature is that the chapter concludes with the key points in summary, as this clearly flags up salient points for the reader. The book generally offers a good mix of practice and theory. In particular, the chapters on equal opportunities and on the impact of globalisation offer sound and specialist advice, and the practical guidelines offered in the appendix are succinct and workable.

There are two caveats which need to be briefly considered at this point. First, the Graduate Recruitment Manual was published in 2001. As the field of assessment and selection continues to evolve rapidly, not least due to the recent downturn in the economy, some of the claims made in the book have already been overtaken by events. For instance, a much larger percentage of employers now make use of web‐based recruitment tools, and the relevant chapter has relatively little to say about the possible advantages and disadvantages of implementing various selection tools via the internet. Second, the book is rather brief at just under 150 pages. Thus, there has not been enough space to outline psychometric concepts underlying best selection practice, such as reliability and validity, in more detail. Given the brevity of the manual, the cover price might act as a deterrent to the interested reader, in particular to students who might otherwise benefit from the practical guidelines that supplement the vast body of literature in more academic texts.

However, overall, the recruitment manual is well and succinctly written, is pleasantly jargon‐free and offers a clear overview of graduate recruitment.