More graduates should look to SMEs for their big break

I’ve been following an interesting discussion on PM’s LinkedIn group: “Do straight-out-of-uni students have the necessary skills for the job market?”  The answer, as always, is more complex than yes or no – but the key point, missing from the discussion, is that this is a competitive market.  No one has a right to a job: getting one means beating the competition. 

The question caught my eye because as a long-time recruiter of recent graduates I’ve always carefully avoided anyone “straight out of uni”.  The way I’ve put it – glibly, I know – is that I want people to have got “the shock of working every day” out of their system before they come to work for me.

I want them to have got used to the day-by-day stuff of working life, and how different it is from university, particularly in terms of the speed at which we work.  Most important I want them to have learnt enough about themselves to make a robust judgment about whether what we offer in my small consultancy might really suit them.

No one has ever yet persuaded me that they’ve wanted to be a public policy consultant since they were five, so I want to be reassured that they’ve properly understood who we are and what we do – and a previous spell of real work gives them a good frame of reference for that. I’m at least as interested in retention as in recruitment, and as a small consultancy I want to limit my risks.

None of that has anything to do with skills – which is the question put – and everything to do with the practicalities of the labour market, in particular, competition. I have a choice, and I’m exercising it. I have no doubt at all that I have rejected many highly talented people over the years – but I’ve also recruited many highly talented people who have served us well. It’s nothing to do with their ability, and everything to do with my judgment about the best fit for my company.

So how does a talented graduate stand out in a crowded field?  Every time I’ve advertised for a recent graduate as a trainee consultant, I’ve had around 100 applications. A handful are barely worth a glance, but the great majority are worth a careful read. And one of the advantages of applying to a small firm is that the boss reads the lot. I’m selective, of course, and never read the pointless, I-can-walk-on-water, summary at the top, concentrating on the facts about what someone has done, in any sphere, and why they say they’re interested. What I’ve done, and tried quite hard to do, is to get a sense of the individual behind the CV.

Will a CV get that degree of attention from a senior recruiter in a larger firm? It’s daft to generalise, of course, but I suspect that an applicant who is not standard issue will stand a better chance of getting noticed in an SME than in a large firm.

One of the comments in the LinkedIn discussion was from a woman concerned that a talented relation with a psychology degree might struggle with her CV to get over what she has to offer. What she needs is for someone to review her CV looking for the individual behind the words. In a highly competitive market, that psychology graduate might well find she gets a better chance if she considers a smaller firm – and, if she chooses carefully, she will find some terrific opportunities for early responsibility, real autonomy and the chance to learn fast. It’s not all gloom out there.