Title: The Graduate Recruitment Manual
Authors: Rajvinder Kandola, Robert Wood, Bindi Dholakia and Carol Keane
Publisher: Gower Publishing
Pages: 160 (hardback)
Price: £45
ISBN: 0-566-080-230
Perhaps I misunderstood the title of this book, which had coloured my expectations. A ‘manual’ is defined as an instruction booklet, handbook or guidebook, and as such I was expecting a commercial, hard-hitting summary of key practical pointers for all graduate recruiters. What you actually get is an academic synopsis of graduate recruitment in large companies in the early 21st century.
For experienced recruiters, the most informative parts are the checklists at the end of each chapter and the appendix on best practice standards to provide an aide memoire. For those new to graduate recruitment, go to your nearest university careers office and speak directly to a careers adviser who can give you up-to-date, personalised information for your own recruitment programme.
Graduate recruitment is similar to sales – it is a numbers game. But instead of prospective clients that you want to sell to or retain, graduate recruitment is about finding the right candidates from a defined talent pool. You work through a percentage formula of: X number of applicants reducing down to X number of interviews, down to X number of acceptances who will stay for X amount of time.
It would have been useful to find out how these typical percentage numbers relate to different types of organisation and then have clear, practical tips to better these odds and reduce the amount of time and money spent to get the target number.
This book also failed to convey that graduate recruitment is an organic, creative process, open to new ideas that change quickly according to external pressures. With the advent of the internet, there are now better sources of information for the graduate recruiter.
Useful? 2 stars
Well-written? 2 stars
Practical? 1 star
Inspirational? 1 star
Value for money? 2 stars
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All ratings out of five stars
Reviewed by Janet Jarvis, HR manager, Caplin
