FDM Group continues to battle Catch-22 Culture

Following Nick Clegg’s criticism of unpaid internships and their impact on social mobility, a national debate on what is often the only option for graduates has ensued. 
 
According to a YouGov survey carried out on behalf of Internocracy, 17% of businesses confessed to using interns as a form of cheap labour throughout the recession, despite the fact that 95% of the UK managers who responded agreed that interns were "useful to their organisation."

But not all companies are seeking to exploit bright graduates throughout this time of economic turmoil.  
 
Award winning international IT services provider FDM Group works to overcome the Catch-22 hurdle of qualifications without experience that so many University leavers face. 
 
Sheila Flavell, Chief Operating Officer at FDM said, “Here at FDM we realise how difficult it is for graduates, especially those seeking to break into the IT sector, to land a paid role without experience. Our aim is to bridge this gap between academia and employment aiding graduates with valuable skills as well as paid experience.“ 
 
Not only does the company offer a fast track 12-16 week training programme which provides graduates with practical qualifications, FDM also works to place graduates into roles within one or more of the 200 blue chip companies it is proud to call clients.
 
Brian Pitts said, “Although I had good academic qualifications, I found it very difficult to get the kind of development job I wanted without work experience. FDM provided both the training and the experience I needed. I’ve worked in roles that I’d never be able to get without FDM’s backing.” 

But what makes FDM’s ethos stand out from the crowd is its ability to offer graduates the stability of a competitive salary for 2 years once training is complete and a placement has been achieved. 
 
The company, which has launched over 2,500 graduate careers to date, now also offers a fully funded MSc in Applied Computer Science in partnership with the University of Brighton. This latest initiative further aids passionate graduates in achieving valuable qualifications whilst working within prestigious companies and receiving a worthy salary.


Source: Gradplus.com, Friday 6th May 2011

Kenexa wins contract to recruit 500 graduates per year for Standard Chartered Bank

International bank uses Kenexa’s global recruitment expertise to appoint its next generation of leaders.

Kenexa (NASDAQ:KNXA), a global provider of business solutions for human resources, is helping Standard Chartered Bank, the emerging markets bank, to recruit 500 graduates per year in 30 countries across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

The multi-language, multi-location recruitment initiative will help the bank to select candidates for two graduate intake programmes: a two-year international management programme, for the future leaders of six business functions in the bank, and a one-year fast-track programme for relationship managers in local countries.

"To help us become the world’s best international bank, we want to recruit graduates from different backgrounds who have the potential to be great future people, product and thought leaders and who can deliver great customer service,” said Eden Britt, Head of Talent Acquisition for Consumer Banking at Standard Chartered.

Greg Barber, Head of MA and Graduate Talent Acquisition at Standard Chartered, said: "Kenexa’s global capability will help us to reduce our hiring costs, improve our recruitment process and ensure that we achieve greater consistency over the quality of the candidates we hire. Through their research and leadership work in emerging markets, they have a great understanding of which applicants are likely to be the best fit for our business. Their service will also help us to provide an improved recruitment experience for candidates.”

Kenexa will recruit around 300 candidates per year for the bank’s International Graduate programme, which aims to develop future leaders in the consumer banking, wholesale banking, finance, human resources, corporate real estate services and group internal audit functions.

"Our strategic focus is to continue our growth in Asia, Africa and the Middle East,” said Greg Barber. "Kenexa will help us to appoint top level graduates who can work in international teams in these exciting and high growth markets. This programme is a springboard to becoming a future leader of the bank.”

A further 200 graduates will be recruited for the fast-track consumer banking programme.

"Frontline leaders are critical to the success of consumer banking,” said Eden Britt. "Kenexa will help us to recruit local undergraduates who will become 'bankers’ in their own country. We’re looking for relationship builders who can empathise and engage with customers and lead teams. They will become the face of the bank in their local community.”

For each intake programme, candidates apply online through the bank’s website. They undertake online assessments including logical and numerical reasoning tests and personality profiling. Kenexa analyses the results of these assessments and conducts an initial telephone screening interview. A shortlist of qualified candidates is then passed back to the bank for the final stage of the process, which usually includes a face-to-face interview, further assessments and group exercises.

Amanda Wu, Operations Director at Kenexa, said: “The challenge of hiring graduates is that on the surface they all have great qualifications and there is little to distinguish between them. Our role is to help Standard Chartered to identify who the best candidates are and, at the same time, to save the bank time, effort and money in its recruitment.”

Source: Gradplus.com, Thursday 5th May 2011

Jobs to be created in Kent if energy centre approved

Hundreds of green jobs, possibly including graduate vacancies, could be created in Kent if plans for a green energy centre are approved.

The development, which is proposed for a site in Richborough, near Sandwich, will include a recycling centre, a 'sludge plant' and a plastic processing yard, according to the This is Kent website.

Before the centre opens, hundred of jobs will be created in the construction industry, while there will be 60 green job vacancies opening once the energy park gets up and running.

Gary Lever, the development director for BFL Management, who commissioned the plan, told the news provider that he hopes the public will support the building.

"At this stage we are very keen to ensure our plans and aspirations for the site are drawn up in conjunction with Kent County Council and the local authorities, Thanet and Dover, as well as local residents and interest groups," he said.

Last month, the Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering said it is "vital" that the government continues to show commitment to environmentally-friendly schemes such as the green investment bank.


Source: Gradplus.com, Thursday 5th May 2011

CIOB Makes Graduate Pledge

In line with the Chartered Institute of Building's continuing role in the development of educational standards and the representation of graduate members in the built environment the Institute has become supporting partners of the industry initiative The Pledge.

This campaign strives to solve the problem of unemployed graduates drifting away from the construction industry as well as addressing corporate gaps in staffing. Spearheaded by construction consultants John Rowan & Partners and launched last year by Building magazine The Pledge is aimed at supporting graduates by encouraging companies to take on internships. Graduates in Britain are facing the worst prospects for decades; with jobs and homes little more than an impossible dream for many of the country's most highly educated twentysomethings, and more than twice as many graduates now chase every available job compared with the early 1980s.

Back in 2009 about 36,000 people graduated in construction-related subjects. But when Building magazine surveyed a sample of 600 they found that 60% were unemployed, and a third were already considering working outside the industry. With no reprieve in sight for this year's graduates The Pledge is aiming to keep skilled and talented people focused on pursuing a career in construction, even if there aren't full time jobs for them just now.

Paula Annels Head of Policy & External Relations at the CIOB believes that The Pledge will offer the construction sector a structured approach to protecting talent in order to break the cyclical issue of skills shortages that recession's have been proven to create.

She said "It's about safeguarding the future talent and skills of individual businesses and the sector as a whole so that when the upturn arrives, the construction industry is ready to respond and grow. It might sound idealistic, but the concept was born out of robust research and data that clearly indicates no other option but practical and unified sector commitment to change. Its especially poignant as Government looks at Fair Access to the Professions and we believe that The Pledge will help meet a number of those aims under consideration."

The Pledge research has shown that if every firm made 2% of their staff interns, this would be enough to give each currently unemployed graduate at least one placement. Given that the 'professional and technical' element of the industry accounts for about 300,000 jobs - excluding senior executives and construction managers - then that 2% will maintain skills slightly above the forecasted level, allowing for some losses along the way.

Internships are easier to put into place than you might think. They needn't cost the employer much and can bring immediate benefits to the business. The Government has taken steps to address the problem across every sector, introducing the Graduate Talent Pool scheme. This facilitates the process of placing graduates in internships. But to date built environment-related vacancies posted on the site are few and far between.

Recruiting talent into a business in this way shouldn't be seen as a bolt on CSR issue, its business critical - an organisation or sector can only ever be as good as the people within it. Collectively we have an exciting opportunity to ensure that the UK construction sector is leading others in its approach to safeguarding and investing in its future. The CIOB is asking its members to support the campaign and gain from the benefits by signing up and playing their part in supporting our future talent.

Source: Politics.co.uk, Thursday 5th May 2011

The race for a job in McChina

Two dozen staff from the world’s largest hamburger chain are huddled in groups in an airy classroom on the 20th floor of a Shanghai tower block.

A sharp-suited ‘professor’ has them poring over thick files of data and a lively debate is under way.

The topic under discussion isn’t Ronald McDonald’s seven steps to a better burger, but self-help guru Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And the students are not waitresses and waiters, but restaurant managers and office workers from the chain’s rapidly expanding China business.

Welcome to HU, or Hamburger University, where only the cream of the McCrop are admitted for career training.

Since the university opened last year, two floors up from McDonald’s China headquarters, competition for places has been fierce. Indeed, the number of applicants from restaurant managers to senior directors, has been so high that HU is currently harder to get into than Harvard.

Just one to three employees out of every 100 who apply make the cut. At Harvard the odds are a little better with a 7 per cent acceptance rate. But there’s no memorial hall or Harvard yard at HU.

Successful applicants who pass a pre-screening interview and exam are instead greeted by a life-size statue of Ronald McDonald, rows of classrooms in corporate grey and thick folders bursting with paperwork.

A one-room library is crammed with inspirational management handbooks. There is also, ominously, a set of weighing scales. There is no cafeteria.

The highlight of a tour of the facilities is a corridor display of McDonald’s memorabilia from the 1950s and 60s, including grill scrapers, burger flippers and milk shake mixers, presumably designed to give the Chinese recruits a sense of the group’s heritage.

The university is a key plank in McDonald’s plans for rapid expansion on the mainland as it races to catch up with larger US rival in China, Yum Brands, which owns KFC and is opening new restaurants at a rate of more than one a day.

It has taken McDonald’s 20 years to get to 1,000 restaurants in China, but it expects to take only four years to get to 2,000 sites – its target for 2013.

This year alone it will open up to 200 new restaurants, half of them with drive-through windows to cater to China’s new car owners, each requiring at least six management staff and up to 45 crew (hostesses, cleaners etc).

‘We want to grow from within and we don’t want to get caught up in a salary war,’ a McDonald’s spokesman explained.

The HU training centre, one of seven around the world, was moved from Hong Kong last year after China became McDonald’s fastest-growing market in terms of new restaurant openings.

More than 1,500 McDonald’s staff out of more than 60,000 on the mainland, will undergo training courses which range from a few days for the top executives to several months for younger staff, this year. For the best candidates, the outcome will be promotion and a pay rise.

Sun Ying, 27, who started out earning 50p an hour as a hostess in a Shanghai McDonald’s in 2004, said: ‘I’ve been a store manager for a year and I’m up for another promotion. To move to the next level, I have to undergo training. My aim is to be an operations consultant [running a group of restaurants] before I am 30.’

If Sun Ying does well in the training course, which is paid for by the company, she adds that she can expect a significant boost to her pay.

‘My basic monthly salary of £470 plus bonus and incentives could double if I can lead my team at the restaurant to do well. But I want to climb the corporate ladder as well. Me and four of my classmates in Shanghai were promoted after finishing the first stage of HU training and now I have come back to do a second stage. The training has shown me how much competition I face to win a promotion but it has also given me confidence,’ she added.

McDonald’s, which in the West has long battled against the view that all its jobs are relatively low-skilled ones, popularly referred to as ‘McJobs’, has no such image problem in China.

In a country where graduate employment was running at more than 26 per cent towards the end of last year, landing a job with career prospects is a tough and highly competitive business.

‘Working in an international organisation is seen as a big opportunity. Applicants to HU say they really value the vocational training and skills they learn with us. These are things they aren’t taught at university,’ the McDonald’s spokesman said.

Ambitious recruits can also take inspiration from the top. McDonald’s chief executive, Jim Skinner, who earned USD $9.7million last year, started out as a management trainee in 1971.

As for the outlook in China, by the time Sun Ying and her peers reach the age of 30, the country’s food service industry is forecast to have grown from roughly £187billion to £280billion in 2014 – statistics which place her and her fellow students at HU firmly in the right place, at the right time, in a growing economy.

Source: Tessa Thorniley, DailyMail.co.uk, Wednesday 4th May 2011 

Five ways to get the best value out of your law degree

With average tuition fees set to hit £8,700, here's how to minimise the financial damage while maximising CV gains. 


So much for the government's estimate that average tuition fees would be £7,500. With the majority of universities set to charge the full £9,000 when the fee cap is removed next year, the actual average currently stands more than £1,000 higher than anticipated – at almost £8,700.

Such amounts may have little impact on those destined for elite City lawfirms and leading commercial barristers' chambers, which pay trainees about £40,000 a year. But law students who pursue careers in areas such as legal aid, where entry-level earnings are among the lowest of any graduate job, look set to be weighed down by their university debts for years to come.

How, then, can prospective lawyers keep the financial damage to a minimum, while at the same time gain CV-boosting experience to help them stand out in a graduate job market that's more competitive than ever?

Do a "vac scheme" – even if you have no intention of joining up full time

Corporate law firms' formal work experience programmes – which pay up to £300 a week – have traditionally been the preserve of City types. But the impressive breadth of some "vac schemes" make them worthwhile for students planning careers in other areas of law, where paid work experience is much harder to come by.

Clifford Chance and Linklaters, for example, offers interns the opportunity to do pro bono – good experience for those who want to go into publicly funded legal practice. Herbert Smith and Hill Dickinson allows placement students to spend time in their specialist advocacy units, which employ in-house barristers – an excellent opportunity for bar wannabes who miss out on one of the few paid chambers work experience gigs (the handful of chambers offering funded mini-pupillages include One Gray's Inn Square, 2 Temple Gardens, Pump Court Tax and 5 Stone Buildings).

A word of warning, though: "Commercial firms want vac scheme students who are committed to their core business," says Edward Walker, graduate recruitment manager at national law firm Pinsent Masons. "Those who aren't may get found out during interview."

Don't undervalue unglamorous part-time jobs

Walker thinks a good strategy for law students is to find regular paid part-time work – however unglamorous – to help them survive, then weave what they have learned from it into their CVs in a thoughtful way.

"A student working on the checkout at Sainsbury's is more impressive than they often realise," he says, adding that law firms have become slightly tired of CVs featuring "a long list of exciting-sounding, yet not especially substantial, jobs".

Walker continues: "Let's not forget that companies like Sainsbury's are law firms' core clients. Understanding how their business works from the bottom up is very useful."

The experience of first-year Manchester University law student Joseph Tomlinson bears this out: "To my amazement, barristers' chambers have been impressed by the fact I worked as a chef during my A-levels, because of the transferable skills it gave me. Despite this I have been repeatedly told by my careers service to leave this role off my CV because it has no relevance to law."

Find time for unpaid pro bono

While law firms and barristers' chambers value exposure to the commercial world, they are also keen on applicants with hands-on experience advising clients on legal matters. "Pro bono shows commitment to being a lawyer," says Pinsent Masons' Walker. But how do students fit in pro bono work – which often involves the time-consuming process of getting your head around new areas of law – when their evenings are spent at Sainsbury's and their holidays full of work-experience placements?

One way is to select a degree course where pro bono work is included as part of the curriculum. The law schools at the Universities of Kent (which won best law school at the annual LawWorks and Attorney General Student pro bono awards), Hull and Northumbria are all known for their "clinical" approach to legal education. Students at the former are encouraged to base their dissertations on issues arising from the real-life cases on which they have acted. "Pro bono works best when it's not an add-on," says Elaine Heslop, a lecturer and clinic solicitor at the University of Kent.

Compete

Like pro bono work, mooting (mock advocacy conducted in a courtroom setting) is time-consuming. "I won't pretend that I haven't lost a lot of sleep preparing bundles and skeleton arguments," says Karamvir Chadha, who won the 2009 English Speaking Union-Essex Court Chambers national mooting competition. Unlike pro bono work, though, mooting can offer substantial financial rewards: for his triumph Chadha picked up a cash prize of £1,000; a similar sum is awarded to the winner of the other main national mooting event, the Oxford University Press & BPP national mooting competition.

For those who prefer to make their arguments on paper – and are sufficiently motivated to spend their free time writing yet more essays – the rewards can be even greater. The annual Times and One Essex Court legal essay competition pays out £10,000 worth of prizes, out of which £3,500 goes to the writer of the winning piece.

Take a gap year and hope a law firm will do a KPMG

Earlier this year, accountants KPMG launched an initiative to sponsor students through undergraduate degrees while they work part-time for the firm, which will see it cover tuition fees, pay them a salary and give them a full-time job at the end of the course.

Law firms have been looking on with interest. James Furber, senior partner at Farrer & Co, is in favour of his firm adopting a similar initiative "to keep a route into the profession open for students from less well off backgrounds", as is Michael Shaw, head of national law firm Cobbetts. And College of Law chief executive Nigel Savage says he has "meetings lined up" with several magic circle (the five leading London-based) law firms about sponsoring students through its recently launched two-year accelerated undergraduate law degree. Those not keen on parting with £9,000 a year will hope that other firms follow KPMG's lead.

Source: Alex Aldridge, Guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3rd May 2011 

TimesJobs.com enters the Employability Testing Arena

NEW DELHI: TimesJobs.com has launched QUEST to serve as a platform to ensure that corporates hire the right people, with the right skills for the right job, ensuring a right fit. 

Corporate giants of the new economy are high on people dependence, and we are accelerating towards a scenario where - "Money's at a discount and talent's at a premium". While manpower & degrees abound, skills are still in short supply. TimesJobs.com has launched QUEST (Qualifying Employability Skills Tests) to address this challenge. 

Multiple surveys, including the recent FICCI Study on employability have indicated that there are enough Job vacancies for Freshers. There are just not enough Employable Students. Mr. Narendra Jadhav, Planning Commission member in-charge of education, agrees. "Survey after survey has shown that 33 per cent of our graduates are unemployable," he said. 

Organizations thus, in a bid, to fulfill their human capital needs, go all out to identify and lay hands on scarce employable talent. To maintain leadership, corporates are actively seeking assessment & recruitment solutions to acquire the correct skills in their HR, to remain ahead, and this is just what QUEST provides. 

Speaking at the launch of QUEST, Mr. Vivek Madhukar, Sr. VP , TimesJobs.com said, "TimesJobs.com has already established its leadership with corporate India offering some of India's finest e-recruitment solutions. QUEST is bringing in the next level of corporate empowerment, providing skill assessment solutions to organisations, ensuring the right people, with the right skills are hired for the for the right job, ensuring a right fit." 

QUEST is designed to provide a host of online assessment examinations that cover both the Core Domain Skills of the assessee, and the extremely significant attribute - the Ability to Learn. Currently, QUEST is focused on providing assessments for the immediate requirements of Fresh Engineering and MCA graduates from colleges across the country. 

QUEST is approved by a host of employers, including the reputed names of the National Stock Exchange , Allied Digital, Netcore Technologies and IndiaMart . Clients enrolled with this programme will be able to hire pre-assessed students who qualify through QUEST, and are provided with an interface that allows them to search the Pre- Assessed QUEST candidate database based on customized parameters. 

S Quotient Analyzers, an organization focusing on Competence Assessments is the online testing partner in India for QUEST. Having worked extensively in the last five years to help a lot of organizations with its Pre-Hire and Readiness Assessments, Saurabh Misra, CEO, S Quotient Analyzers said, "Quest would provide students with a great platform to differentiate themselves and thereby enable Employer to hire quality talent." 

Corporate giants of the new economy are high on people dependence, and we are accelerating towards a scenario where - "Money's at a discount and talent's at a premium"


Source: 2nd May 2011 - www.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news

Warning over forensics degree tag

Universities must be careful not to mislead students over forensics courses that may leave graduates "with no real prospect of jobs", a watchdog has warned.

Forensic science regulator Andrew Rennison told the Commons Science and Technology Committee that putting the word "forensics" in front of a course title such as chemistry led to a 10-fold surge in applications.

He told MPs that currently some 5,500 students are studying forensics at UK universities.

But some academics have branded the practice immoral as students would be left with "no real prospect of jobs", he told them.

Mr Rennison said: "I think we've got to be very guarded that we're not making false promises to graduates that can not be met, but it's a good thing to have more science graduates, the country needs them."

He told the MPs: "If you struggle to fill your chemistry degree course nowadays, put the word 'forensics' in front of it and you'll get 10-fold applications.

"So forensics is a very fashionable thing and it does bring people in.

"I've had one very experienced professor in this field actually say what we're doing is immoral, we're offering people degrees and training with no real prospect of jobs at the end of it.

"However, it is putting people through good science training, and we do need more scientists. A lot of people who finish their forensics degrees actually go off and work in other industries. It's a mixed picture."

Source: Graduate-jobs.com, Thursday 28th April 2011