I am working in an office which has just taken on two apprentices.  They appear bright, capable and charming.  Not the stereotypical mono syllabic non communicators with no work ethic that you hear about.

The problem is what do they do?  They have done the first set of tasks, that little set of not important non urgent nice to have tasks that every office has.  Now what?  What are they actually going to do?

This sparks for me the really big issue of where are the entry level jobs in a service based, white collar economy?  And it makes me think that this is maybe what is really at the heart of the current malaise of youth unemployment

Following on from the article on how to tell if a graduate is on track,  this is a second checklist of what needs to be in place from the organisation's side.  What are the structures and processes needed for managers to ensure a graduate can succeed.  The items are broken into three sections.  Interstingly, all 16 items are in the must have not nice to have category  

I have been  inspired by a blog from Tim Ferriss on why David Lee Roth always insisted on the contract clause of "A big bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones taken out" (link to blog here) to write checklists.

This is a checklist to see if a graduate is on track.

Recently I read an article saying that the War for Talent for was an out of date concept Part of the critque was that "war" is not a useful metaphor for which I have some sympathy.  The major argument though, was that it is more important to take a holistic view and that everyone is talent, and to discriminate is a bad idea The three thoughts I had were 

A follow on from the Top 10 strategies for learning at work this article looks at the challenges that we find people have

All people want to grow. From the recently promoted CEO who needs to change their style and learn new ways of getting things done to the new grad who wants to succeed fast. And to grow involves learning. It is in the context of work that most of our learning as adults takes place. So it is worth looking at the 10 key aspects we know about how to make learning work Tie your learning to real results that you can impact and measure the value of. It adds motivation Learn through the context of real problems and real situations.

A recent induction presentation focusing on

• Transtions
• New skills
• Importance of learning and openess to change
• Networking

Enjoy

Whilst designing an induction for some new grads it got me thinking about two of the great business stories of the last decade - the rise of Apple to be the most valuable company in the world and the fall of the Banks. And the challenge of getting a group of bright new grads, just starting work to understand that there are no short cuts to Sustainable success.

Designing and running effective graduate schemes is hard to do. We know this because so many of them do not work well with high drop our rates and poor progression into critical roles. This is particularly true for schemes which are targeted at attracting and developing leaders.

Our experience shows that the most important aspect of developing a graduate is to have an engaged and capable line manager.

To run a great grad scheme you have to work with more than one management level.