The Question of Graduate Intake

by Warren Madlin, Director MadlinHanna Consulting

News of the development of effective covid vaccines has enabled a cautious optimism that by next Spring, we might get life back to some sort of normal without the fear of further lockdowns. Over the last 9 months, we have explored the various impacts that the uncertainty has had on the corporate affairs market and one of the elements we spoke to businesses about was graduate schemes. Many agencies had a decision to make on their approach to their graduate schemes against an uncertain backdrop and here we share some of our findings.

Going Ahead or Not

There was a 50/50 split in the agencies we spoke to on whether they started and went ahead with their graduate intake or decided to cancel/postpone. Some felt that it would be short-sighted to not get the junior support in the door and others had genuine concerns that they weren’t going to be able to embed new team members who were coming into the industry for the first time. There didn’t seem to be much of a pattern when it came to agency size or expertise. It was purely down to the management and how they were feeling about onboarding remotely. It was less about the financial implications and more about the practical.

Delaying

Some agencies made a decision not to cancel their schemes but defer the start date to the Spring-time in the hope that access to the office would be improved by then. The potential downside was whether or not the graduates that had been picked would still be available by then or if they would have secured something else in the meantime. Related to this discussion was the question about hiring more than one person at a time. We always see the real benefits to having graduates and interns start in groups to buddy up and help one another out and so there was a feeling that if you couldn’t get everyone started at the same time, it was better to postpone.

Pipeline

One agency we spoke to said that 30% of their public affairs team started in the agency as interns who went on to secure permanent roles. The question is what does it mean for the industry that the 2020 intake of fresh talent hasn’t been as high as it normally is? There is a chance that in 3 years time when we start looking for Account Managers we may, as an industry, suffer from having a small market to pick from. It is likely there will be regrets as a result of that.

We would love to hear about your experiences. Have you managed to get new joiners at the graduate level started and embedded successfully?

MadlinHanna Consulting is a recruitment consultancy specialising in corporate affairs, covering public affairs, corporate communications and financial PR. Contact us on 020 8088 4102 for more information or a confidential conversation.