Craig's name in lights!

Craig sent a letter to ModernSelling.com last week and they were so impressed they made it letter of the week! You can register with the site to read it but for those who just want a quick hit of Sweeney knowledge the transcript is below. Enjoy!


GRADUATES' SOFT SKILLS
As a well-established recruitment outsourcer, Omni has worked with clients to recruit at all levels across a multitude of industry sectors and I strongly believe that some of the comments in the article ‘TOO SOFT ON SOFT SKILLS’ looked only at one aspect of why companies don’t find the right skills in graduates.
I agree there are more graduates out there today with poor communication skills and this is largely the result of there being more graduates (ie the percentages haven’t changed over time but the numbers have grown). What your article didn’t acknowledge was how organisations approach their graduate recruitment and what processes and tools they have in place to assess candidates’ soft skills effectively.
Bottom rung of the ladder
In our experience, graduate recruitment is often the bottom rung of the recruitment ladder (this is the reality rather than the rhetoric) and, as such, does not receive the level of attention and importance it should. With the exception of a few very good graduate recruiters the whole process of sourcing, assessment and selection is where organisations lose out to those who fail to find the right people for their business. Ask PWC, Ernst & Young and McDonalds if they can find good graduates and suspect the answer would be yes.
Acting to change the situation
The research sited in your article that 50% of chief execs don’t believe their graduate intake can not interact favourably with potential clients and in-house teams, was also very interesting. I’m sure they are right, but what I question is what are they doing to change this other than waiting for the world to change around them? I would be intrigued to ask those chief execs if they know how their organisation currently sources and assesses their graduates. If you ask that question to the chief execs in the aforementioned organisation I suspect they would know the answer.
From: Craig Sweeney, Operations Director, Omni Resource Management Solutions.