As a business owner, chances are you receive lots of applications from recent graduates, but you might be hesitant employing them due to a number of reasons: from lack of experience to their perceived unreliability and not having enough resources to train.
Start-ups need talented, enthusiastic individuals to help drive the business to the forefront of their market. Often passion projects and personal labours of love, start-ups most of all need someone who can buy into the vision.
As much as this could be a seasoned professional with dreams of shaking up the industry, this could also be a fresh face looking for a challenge.
Here are the pros and cons of hiring graduates for your start-up.
1. Cost
One of the key considerations for start-ups is keeping costs sleek and streamlined. So, from a pragmatic perspective, it’s much cheaper to hire fresh graduates than experienced staff with high expectations. So, if you need people with specific skill sets who can learn on the job, graduates are a great option..
…But, they expect more than you think.
Maybe not from salary alone, but graduates on the cusp of Gen Z have clear expectations of their workplace. This includes training, opportunities for growth, flexible working etc. All of these things come at a cost.
To graduates looking for work, a lack of workplace perks and opportunities can tip the scales against you. A recent study from the Bright Network revealed that a company’s people and culture was the most important factor when choosing a graduate role.
Cultivating a workplace that is attractive to graduates may end up costing you more than what you save in reduced salaries.
2. Knowledge
Graduates are free from the mental baggage of corporate life, working in silos and having to navigate office politics. As such, they are feel much more comfortable with voicing ideas, opinions and points of view.
This makes graduates potentially key resources of ideas that your company can tap into. Sure, not every idea is going to be solid gold, but you can certainty get some unique perspectives from the graduate point of view.
…However, with fresh faces comes a lack of experience.
Most fresh graduates typically don’t have experience in the working world. As such, it takes time to train them. Beyond the usual training of getting them used to the company culture and protocol, you need to teach them about working life and work habits generally. You’d be amazed at how many things you take for granted about work that some people just don’t know.
That having been said, not all graduates are so green. Some will have experience having worked summer jobs and internships, while others will be mature graduates will a career of work experience behind them.
3. Motivation
If your start-up is a graduate’s first job, they are going to want to make a splash! Unlike people further in their careers that just want to come to work and do the job, graduates are energetic, with the drive and capacity to do more. Free from the family commitments of dependents, they’ll be more committed to work instead. This is particularly important for many start-ups where the driving attitude is to work to the job and not the clock.
…You need to keep them keen though, because that drive will push them to job-hop.
More fresh graduates are choosing freelance or part-time work instead of working full-time and keeping their options open. In fact, one in four graduates leave their job within the first 12 months. So, if you can’t maintain the momentum, you can expect to find an empty desk where a graduate once was.
The idea of a job for life has fallen out of favour. Rather than a ten year career, the average career is considered to be 6 years, and sometimes less. So when you hire a fresh graduate, it’s safe to assume that they might be using your company as a stepping stone.
But, if you can cultivate an attractive environment for graduates and help them achieve their personal career goals, while getting them to buy into your start-up vision, they could easily make your company their company.
Ultimately, it all boils down to the individual. Not all fresh graduates change their jobs in a matter of months, and not all experienced hires are uncreative, jaded people. The important thing to do is to ask the right questions during the interview and make sure that you hire the right people for your business.