Developing Your New Graduate Recruit
Induction Courses
It is usual for large companies to provide a formal induction course for new graduate recruits. These are designed to help graduate recruits understand the organisation they have joined, and sometimes include formal skills-training sessions that the graduates have been identified as requiring (usually interpersonal skills training). Induction courses are generally arranged fairly soon after the graduate joins the organisation, and probably within the first four weeks. They may take place on the organisation’s premises, at a hotel, or at an outside training facility. Apart from formal training sessions, there are two important aspects that need to be covered during induction.
The first concerns the nature of the organisation. This includes seeing the product or service range, learning about the organisation's sites and what each does, being shown the management structure, understanding its competitors, meeting senior managers, going on site visits, being shown the organisation’s financial position and perhaps in addition its strategy. The intention is to provide the new recruit with a broad view of the organisation and its economic activity.
The second aspect relates to the organisation’s culture. There are many issues with which all new recruits are unfamiliar, such as unwritten rules and codes of behaviour. If, for example, your organisation is strict about the times that people should arrive for work or the way people dress, the induction stage may be a good time to make this clear. There will probably be issues worth addressing that concern personal development and the manner in which it is achieved; for example, do recruits have to manage their own development, or does someone arrange it for them? Induction courses can be intense and demanding. By making them interactive they can also be stimulating and provide a good foundation for a long-term relationship with the graduate recruits.
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