Why employers need to embrace true transparency in their graduate advertising

According to a recent survey by the Australian Association of Graduate Employers, the most common attribute found to be lacking in graduate candidates is ‘an understanding of our organisation'. 

Skills most commonly lacking in graduate candidates
Source: AAGE Employer Survey

At some level, this is to be expected. Students do not have the benefit of prior work experience to guide their job expectations. This makes them more likely to apply for roles they do not understand and that are ultimately not a fit.

But what can employers do to help address this? 

Embracing ‘true transparency’

Most job advertisements will tend towards embellishing the good parts of a role and glossing over the bad parts. But when a student reads this job advertisement, they don’t have the years of previous experience that would help them distinguish between what’s reality and what’s embellished. Because of this, employers can make an enormous difference to a student’s understanding of a role simply by embracing true transparency in their graduate job and internship advertising. 

But what do we mean by ‘true transparency’?

We’re talking about job ads that tell it like it is, warts and all. Job ads that include all the relevant information, including the less-than-inspiring stats (whether that be salary, number of openings, screening steps, or specific eligibility requirements like grade cutoffs and visa requirements). Transparent job ads will reject marketing jargon and industry buzzwords, and explain the role and organisation in clear, simple, and accessible language. And critically, transparent job ads will be upfront about the ‘why’ behind the role. What exactly is the higher mission you’re asking graduates to spend the bulk of their waking hours working towards? If your organisation’s mission is to ‘create value for shareholders’, then a transparent job ad will say this - it won’t hide behind vague statements like ‘we’re looking for students… to reinvent tomorrow’. While the latter may sound grand, statements like this are at best meaningless, and at worst misleading for students who are struggling to make an informed decision about whether they’re a fit for a role.  

It’s important to acknowledge - a mission like ‘creating value for shareholders’ clearly won’t appeal to all students, but this is the point! True transparency means writing a job advertisement with the explicit aim of helping many potential candidates self-screen themselves out before they submit an application!

So what are the benefits of embracing true transparency when advertising your graduate jobs?

Attracting the best fit candidates

It’s well known that Gen-Z are searching for careers that offer a sense of meaning and purpose. Prosple student surveys indicate a whopping ¾ of candidates agree with the statement “It's more important for me to feel fulfilled at work than to earn lots of money”. Clearly it’s not enough to just post a job with a big pay packet and expect this to attract the best Gen-Z candidates. They want to know the true ‘what’ and the ‘why’ behind the role. They need transparent job ads to help them decide which roles are a fit for them.

While it can be tempting to selectively gloss over less appealing aspects of the role, this can often backfire. Remember - the candidates reading your position description are internet natives with hyper-sensitive ‘bullshit detectors’. If key information about a role is not disclosed, they will either assume the worst, or revert to other sources where you no longer have the opportunity to correct misinformation (think forums and online reviews from disgruntled ex-employees). It may feel counter-intuitive, but complete transparency, including around less favourable aspects of the role, will ultimately help you in earning the trust and respect of the best fit graduates for your organisation.

Reducing wasted resources

Nobody wins when candidates are submitting applications without a true understanding of your organization! It’s a waste of your time and the candidate’s time.

Screening out large numbers of unsuitable candidates can become a significant resource sink. Whether the costs are in the form of software fees for automated screening or man-hours required for manual screening, the costs are very real and stack up quickly. Software & advertising service providers are increasingly charging on a per applicant or per candidate basis, meaning volume recruitment cost issues can’t necessarily be addressed just through the clever adoption of technology.

There are no prizes for the employer who gets the most the most number of poor fit applications! Embracing transparency and equipping candidates with the information they need to self-screen themselves out is a win for all involved.

Minimising employer brand damage

Receiving an extra application from a poor-fit candidate is not something to be celebrated.

Candidates will enter the recruitment process as an advocate, having taken the time to learn about your organisation and apply. Unfortunately, between one quarter and two thirds will leave a detractor, having experienced the inevitable sense of frustration and disappointment that comes with rejection. 

While there are steps that recruiters can take to mitigate this, it’s particularly difficult in the context of volume graduate recruitment where you’re likely dealing with hundreds or thousands of rejections. A thoughtful rejection accompanied with personalised feedback is often simply impractical, and no matter how ‘nicely’ the rejection is otherwise managed, some amount of brand damage is inevitable.

It’s difficult to put a cost on this, but it’s not unrealistic for the damage to run into the millions when you consider we’re talking about thousands of educated young people at the beginning of their careers who may be lost as potential customers, clients, partners or investors.

Minimizing the number of rejections you have to make in the first place clearly makes sense, and being transparent in your job ad is one of the best ways you can achieve this.

Reducing staff turnover

Graduate staff turnover remains an ongoing issue for many employers. We all know graduates who have left a job disheartened after the reality of a role has not lived up to the dream they’ve been sold. This is fortunately not the norm, but it goes without saying that even one student feeling ‘tricked’ into taking a graduate job based on misleading advertising is one too many, and any rational employer should want to avoid this at all costs. Well-informed career decisions based on upfront and honest information means no surprises for the candidate and fewer cases of regrettable staff turnover for the employer.

Why isn’t transparency embraced more?

If transparency is so important to a successful graduate campaign, why isn’t it embraced more?

The answer often lies in incentives and KPI’s. And as the saying goes, nobody is better than their incentives.  

Unlike campaigns to hire for experienced roles, where success is judged based on hiring just the right person, graduate recruiters are often judged based on the volume of applications. Not only is this a poor measure of success, the misalignment of incentives often sees transparency as its first victim. All of a sudden, recruiters are motivated to attract as many applications as possible, regardless of the candidate’s suitability. And how better to attract more candidates than a few white lies to encourage some extra applications across the line?

This is compounded by large organisations typically having their own in-house PR & marketing machines, where not so much as a social media post will go out without the uttermost scrutiny and polish. A ‘warts and all’ job advertisement that even hints at a role being anything less than perfect is anathema to this marketing mindset.

Being honest and transparent in graduate advertising is clearly the rational thing to do and the right thing to do, but it still takes a bold graduate recruiter to buck this marketing mindset and embrace true transparency.

How you can embrace transparency in your job advertising

A graduate campaign with fewer applications but a higher % of candidates who are a good fit is unambiguously the optimal outcome.

Embracing transparency in your graduate advertising can help ensure you’re hiring the right grads whilst reducing workload, brand damage and staff turnover.

So how can you embrace transparency in your graduate recruitment? Here’s some easy-to-implement tips to get the ball rolling:

• Fill out all the available fields when publishing a job ad, and be upfront about all screening criteria and job requirements 
• Embrace honest graduate job reviews as a tool to highlight the pros and cons of your organization
• Publish a virtual experience (a.k.a a ‘job preview’) to give students a taste of real-world tasks they can expect to be working on
• When attending a career fair or other student careers event, invite recent graduates to speak, and encourage them to do so candidly and honestly 
• Publish a range of ‘Day in the Life’ and ‘Graduate Story’ profiles alongside your other employer content

The ‘dream scenario’ for every Prosple Account Manager is to help you run a campaign where you reduce the number of applications received relative to previous campaigns, but the applications you do receive are so good that you have more trouble deciding which candidates to hire!

If you’re interested in exploring strategies to embrace transparency in your graduate recruitment, please get in touch with your Prosple Account Manager. Happy recruiting!