How to keep high fliers from flying away

Companies that aim to attract the best undergraduates - and, more important, to keep them - must take care not to clip their wings,

reports Rachelle Thackray.

The milk round is back with a vengeance. Just when finalists thought it safe to venture back into career services centres, comforted by the prospect of scarce job opportunities and a licence to doss for at least a couple more years, the Big Six - or 10, or 15, for that matter - have reappeared to pay suit with renewed gusto.

But the bad news for employers is that graduates no longer desire the plum jobs that once looked so tempting. Nor, if they succumb to initial overtures and join the company, can they be counted on to stay loyal.

While today's graduates appear more than happy to soak up prestigious training and amend their CVs accordingly, they will have no scruples about scarpering just months after joining, should something more appealing come up. And unpalatable working hours, awkward locations and difficult managers will drive them away all the faster.

The shift in graduates' attitude from one of resigned acceptance to choosy stand-offishness simply reflects supply and demand, says Linda Holbeche, a director at Roffey Park Management Institute. In March, she will publish research into the aspirations of high fliers and the enticement tactics of employers, based on work with 400 organisations.

"One retailer had stopped recruiting graduates for four years because it was looking to become leaner, and didn't want to make people redundant," she says. "But a lot of big employers have gone back to the milk round and are aggressively competing for a certain type of graduate."

Some employers, she says, even make a virtue of guaranteeing to deliver promises which graduates see as being commonly reneged upon, such as opportunities for international travel.

In one group of eight graduates Holbeche interviewed recently, five revealed they had been offered eight jobs each.

Meanwhile, a survey of 12,000 graduates at 24 universities, conducted by High Fliers Research, highlighted the disparity more starkly; graduate job vacancies went up 18 per cent this year, but only a quarter of finalists interviewed were seeking employment on leaving college in 1997. A quarter were pursuing postgraduate courses; one in six planned to travel.

Of those who decide to "go corporate", who will employers wish to snap up? Highly personable, confident and focused graduates will always receive multiple offers, says Holbeche.

"They know what they want without having a driving goal. They sound as if they can make things happen, and they're tuned in to speaking like business people. They read business papers, and they're in touch."

But Russell Harper, business manager at Oxford Psychologists Press and one of several experts to speak this week at High Quality Graduates, a conference sponsored by The Independent, claims employers may end up disgruntled with their choice because of skewed selection procedures.

Employers who use traditional psychometric tests, he says, may be inadvertently biased against categories of people such as ethnic minorities or the dyslexic, because they rate verbal and numerical reasoning above other potential skills.

New OPP tests are instead geared to careers in law, finance and sales, using job-oriented written role-playing to identify promising candidates.

Once over the selection hurdles, late-Nineties graduates are leaving their older brothers and sisters "po-po" - passed over and pissed off - says Holbeche, who claims that today's graduates expect to climb the corporate ladder twice as quickly.

Martin Birchall, of High Fliers Research, confirms this: "The survey results reveal high expectations and strong ambition. The highest expectations were from students at Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London, where students hoped for average starting salaries of pounds 18,200."

When asked how long they would stay with a first employer, a fifth said just a year or two; another third expected to leave within four years. "Today's finalists have only a very short horizon," says Birchall, who also spoke at this week's conference. (Ironically, it's often only when high fliers leave that loyal employees gain recognition.)

A company's prestigious reputation doesn't necessarily attract graduates either, the survey found. The BBC, rated the employer with the best reputation, dropped to 29th place when graduates were asked which companies offered the best graduate opportunities.

ICI, conversely, came sixth in terms of prestige and fifth as to opportunities.

Jit Jethwa, graduate recruitment manager at Marks & Spencer, believes that companies that can offer an international dimension will always be at an advantage.

British graduates differ from their European counterparts, however:

"On the Continent, candidates are older, and there is a more mature attitude. They say `It's interesting that you are not focusing on our academic achievement', whereas in the UK, candidates are fairly attuned to the fact that their personal skills matter."

If employers cannot count on their reputations to attract high fliers, how else can they catch and retain such a breed?

Individual attention, particularly in terms of career development, could be the key, says Linda Holbeche. "High fliers are saying that what they need is recognition of the ways in which they have achieved personally.

"If you put them working with a dull manager, who sees the high flier as a threat, the situation then becomes so frustrating that the high flier ... flies. It's not just a good pay scale, or moving round every 18 months. It's thinking about who you've got. Some organisations are becoming much more sensible about letting people come back, or even poaching them back."

Employers who take umbrage, and warn high fliers never to darken their doorstep again, are being short-sighted, comments Holbeche.

"You need to be a bit more imaginative. Ask: who are the high fliers? Where are they going to fly to? Do you need to find ways of enabling people to fly at different heights and different speeds?"

For details of the report, `Careers of High Fliers in Changing Organisations', telephone Roffey Park on 01293 851644. For details of the High Fliers Research report, telephone 0171 428 9000.