At Applied Materials Corporations in California, new college graduates find themselves entering a rich program designed to help them become productive, networked, and knowledgeable about the products and services Applied offers. They are placed in a special program, work for several different “bosses, and rotate through a number of jobs during the year they participate. National Semiconductor has a similar program. The result is that college-hire turnover is very low. As companies trip over themselves to entice the about-to-graduate college student to come work for them, most neglect the ongoing effort it takes to keep good students. The result is that many of these graduates will only stay with their first employer for a couple of years before moving on. In some firms, 30% of the college hires leave within the first 2 years. While there are many reasons that college hires give for leaving, there are really only two that stand out. The first is that they are not happy with their manager or assignment. And the second is that they don’t see any opportunity to advance to greater responsibilities. These are really two sides of the same coin, and either reason may cause the other one to become reality. This generation of college students is very different from those of past years. As I have pointed out in previous articles on the generations at work, the things that motivate those workers from the ages of 26 on down are quite different from the things that motivated those who are older. And the older you are, the more difficult it is for you to understand the degrees of difference. A well-designed assimilation program can help to avoid the situations that lead to turnover by equipping new graduates with career and organizational skills to help them manage their careers within your organization. The best programs are collaboratively designed with a team of recent graduates, line managers, internal employee communications staff and people representing both recruiting and development. This team should focus on the things that connect directly to helping the new college hire do a better job. This means that new employees should understand the products and services that your organization offers; they should appreciate the history and roots of the company so that they can evaluate customer and product issues in light of this history; and they should know who the key contributors are in the organization. Here are a few tips on constructing a world-class program to assimilate or orient your new college hires.
None of these tips are particularly difficult to execute, but they can pay off handsomely. Good assimilation programs pay for themselves in short order and breed a kind of loyalty that cannot be bought. <*SPONSORMESSAGE*>