I was a speaker at the Cambridge University Careers Advertising and Marketing Communications event last week. It was a nice format of three talks with a concurrent exhibition by agencies with graduate recruitment schemes.
I was asked to speak about the ‘family tree’ of the sector and what the job titles really mean. Thanks to all of you who contributed to my research panic post. I got more than enough material!
While hanging around the exhibition it was interesting to see who was present and how they were projecting their brand identities onto prospective graduate hirees.
Companies present
- Engine Group
- DLKW
- DAS
- Fishburn Hedges
- JWT
- The Value Engineers (Cello)
- WPP
As a cross-section of the industry this was a fair spread… but of course disproportionately represents the listed groups against the independents. But you’ve got to be a business of a certain size before you decide to run a graduate training programme. Fair enough.
I thought that FH had the best attack as the only pureplay PR firm – they got first bite from any student interested in PR. Good for them.
The others had such a different way of selling their wares that I found it hard to assess what a grad might get from choosing to apply to one over another.
JWT was the least appealing with a table full of brand samples and a poorly displayed laptop who kept going to screen saver mode.
Engine had a nice booklet detailing each of the group companies and what they do, DLKW came armed with branded pencils, pads and button badgets and DAS were rather hard-selling but knowledgable about their organisation (as each person was on the graduate scheme and got rotated around different departments).
I decided to ask the trainees one question each.
“What was different about the job they are doing now compared to what they thought it’d be like when they were a student applying for the job?”
And here are the answers
Engine – it’s all about money and I really didn’t udnerstand that before.
DLKW – there’s a greater sense of responsibility, within 2 weeks I met a client which was quicker than I’d thought. Creatively you can contribute to the concepts being developed which surprised me.
DAS – I have much more business development confidence in talking about what we do. I understand the business concept of clients and the biggest thing is commercial awareness like ROI and utilisation rates. I was completely unaware of the commercial imperative before.
Fishburn Hedges – I really didn’t know what PR activity was in its broadest sense – it isn’t just sending out press releases, it’s about influencing messages.
A good recruitment opportunity?
I thought that the marketing services groups are probably the right people to be attending the event. They have the greatest number of grad jobs to fill and the largest range of operating companies in which to place the student applicants.
Cello and JWT missed the boat in promoting fellow group companies, DLKW head to head with JWT failed the ‘razzle dazzle’ test which is so appealing to student applicants to the industry (I know, I was one).
The Value Engineers had shoddy home-made literature that compared poorly to Engine and Fishburn Hedges.
What would I have done differently?
I didn’t see the details of any internships or job specifications being offered, but I did feel that if I’d been running one of the stands, I would have put together a self-test sheet for the students to help them work out whether a career in this sector was for them.
The main purpose of career events is to assist students in finding a sector that will suit their skills and aptitude. Some form of literature that helped ‘weed out’ the unsuitable ones from applying to you will make you friends both in the HR department as well as the applicants themselve who won’t waste time chasing a dream when they aren’t suited to the lifestyle.
A simple psych and skills profile multiple choice quiz would be easy to put together and would help you find people more suited to creative versus planning and client handling skill areas.
There was little attempt to find creative team members – most seemed to be looking for classic ’suits’ or planners. Why the presumption that a university degree sets you up for that type of job?
For the record, in my talk, I advised the applicants to find agencies who have a strong digital arm because ‘traditional’ agencies that are not yet fully digital will be dinosaurs in the next 5 years and you don’t want to get trained in a businesss and for a skill that won’t be used within that timeframe.
What do you think? Can you remember your graduate careers fair experiences?
