Graduates seeking work are being urged to develop ‘global employability skills’ to help them succeed in an increasingly competitive international marketplace. Multinational employers are looking for graduates who can bring something ‘over and above’ core graduate skills.
In a groundbreaking research project, the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), Council for Industry and Higher Education (CIHE) and research agency CFE, have explored how businesses define global graduates and what higher education institutions and policy makers can do to develop graduates capable of competing on the international stage.
Leading employers, who collectively recruit over 3,500 graduates each year, across a range of sectors, were asked to rank a list of key skills for global graduates and placed multilingualism low down. While the ability to speak a foreign language is an important skill, it was viewed as a complementary rather than an essential skill. Employers recognise that it is not only linguists who have the potential to become highly sought after global graduates.
The skills identified as the most important by some distance were ‘an ability to work collaboratively with teams of people from a range of backgrounds and countries’ and ‘excellent communication skills’; these were followed by ‘drive and resilience’ and ‘an ability to embrace different perspectives’.
The report profiles the key competencies of a global graduate:
1. A global mindset — the ability to see the world from a cosmopolitan viewpoint and have an awareness of different cultures and values and how one’s own culture and values differ.
2. Global knowledge — alongside a global mindset is the need for knowledge of global business activity and specific background knowledge of the economics, history, and culture of different countries.
3. Cultural agility — the ability to understand the perspectives of individuals from different cultures and backgrounds and to empathise with these views, and respond to them. And also the ability to cope with and adapt to living in different environments.
4. Advanced communication skills — the ability to communicate effectively (speaking, listening and presenting) with others from around the world and, where required, communicate in the native language.
5. Management of complex interpersonal relationships — the ability to manage relationships with diverse teams and clients from across the globe and deal with inherent challenges (e.g. socio-cultural, political).
6. Team-working and collaboration — the ability to work collaboratively and empathetically with diverse teams from across the globe.
7. Learning agility — the ability to rapidly assimilate knowledge and develop understanding in order to rapidly respond and adapt to new challenges, circumstances and cultures.
8. Adaptability, flexibility, resilience, drive and self-awareness — these attributes underpin the above global competencies and are essential, enabling qualities.
The report highlights that external mobility among UK students is low, lagging way behind our international competitors. There are 370,000 foreign students studying in the UK, and recent estimates suggest there are just 33,000 UK students studying abroad. This is borne out by the fact that the UK has the lowest participation rate for the Erasmus programme in the UK. There were 11,723 UK students who took up a place on the programme in 2009/10, compared with 28,854 in Germany, 30,213 in France and 31,158 in Spain.
The report goes on to look at what schools, higher education, employers, students and government should do to respond to the challenge of developing UK talent into global leaders.
Commenting on the research, David Docherty, Chief Executive, Council for Industry and Higher Education, said:
“A global graduate isn’t simply a highly educated young adult who can speak a foreign language. Employers want talented graduates who can work with people from different backgrounds and embrace different perspectives.
“Government and educational institutions need to provide the right environments and opportunities for young people to flourish and enable them to develop not only sound employability skills, but a global mindset too.”
Carl Gilleard, Chief Executive, Association of Graduate Recruiters, added:
“Globalised businesses require talent to compete at a global level, and the fact that the UK is lagging behind its competitors in developing graduates who fit the bill is a real cause of concern. We can either sit back and wait for the BRIC nations to start producing the best global graduates, or we can address this issue now.
“There needs to be a collaborative effort to facilitate opportunities for industry to introduce the idea of global business activity as early as possible; to provide viable opportunities for students to both study overseas and experience the global workplace through internships and work placements; and developing degree programmes to include more of these global employability skills to ensure we’re producing the best talent for multinational employers to recruit from, both for their operations in the UK and further afield.”
The report concludes by identifying three areas for further exploration:
• Global graduate competency frameworks — what should these look like and how would they fit with current competency and graduate development programmes?
• Shared learning — what insights can current graduate trainees and alumni who have experience global graduate programmes or international workplace experiences offer to future graduates?
• Identifying global role models — what insights can global leaders, who have taken a journey from graduate trainee to leader, offer new graduate recruits?
The full report, Global Graduates into Global Leaders, is available at www.cihe.co.uk
Ends
• For interviews with David Docherty, please contact Sam Cannicott at Champollion, 020 7550 5620 / Sam.Cannicott@champollion.co.uk
• For interviews with Carl Gilleard, please contact Scarlett Yianni at Colman Getty, 020 7631 2666 / scarlett@colmangetty.co.uk
1. Participating employers’ ranking of Global Competencies:
Global competency Mean ranking
An ability to work collaboratively with teams of people from a range of backgrounds and countries 8.2
Excellent communication skills: both speaking and listening 7.5
A high degree of drive and resilience 5.6
An ability to embrace multiple perspectives and challenge thinking 5.4
A capacity to develop new skills and behaviours according to role requirements 4.6
A high degree of self-awareness 4.4
An ability to negotiate and influence clients across the globe from different cultures 4
An ability to form professional, global networks 3.9
An openness to and respect of a range of perspectives from around the world 3.6
Multi-cultural learning agility (e.g. able to learn in any culture or environment) 2.4
Multi-lingualism 1.7
Knowledge of foreign economies and own industry area overseas 1.7
An understanding of one’s position and role within a global context or economy 1.6
A willingness to play an active role in society at a local, national and international level 0.5
2. List of employers that took part in Global Graduates research and ranked competencies
Accenture
BG Group
BP
EADS
Enterprise Rent-a-Car
Lloyd's Register
Nestle
Prudential
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Royal Bank of Scotland
Shell
Standard Bank
Employers that also took part in research:
Barclays Wealth
BNP Paribas
Centrica
Cisco Systems
HSBC
National Grid
3. Shell Graduate engagement
Shell provides a five year graduate development programme including rotation across the globe. Potential applicants are engaged at an early stage, and encouraged to develop international business and strategic leadership skills. One such example of interactive engagement is the Gourami Business Challenge - a one-week residential event, intended for students in their final year at university. Designed to offer applicants insight and experience into life at Shell, activities include strategic decision-making on the supply and marketing of products to customers, leading to the creation of a mock five-year business plan for Shell. A particular strength of the Challenge is its ability to introduce real-life team working scenarios to the individual, offering first hand work experience of an international business environment. It also provides structured feedback on performance and opens up the possibility of a full-time job offer upon graduation for successful participants. One Gourami participant found the challenge particularly valuable: “The experience gave me a very real life experience into the ways and workings of an oil company. Also it provided me with new insights into the different backgrounds and cultures of other participants. This was my biggest learning experience: to see how students from different backgrounds and cultures can work together and achieve a great result… The experiences made me see how diverse Shell really is and how important it is to take into consideration what other parts of the business are doing.”
4. Global Graduate Programmes at BNP Paribas
BNP Paribas run global graduate programmes for 12 to 18 months — the emphasis is on personal and professional development, relationship building and global networking. BNP Paribas operate a number of graduate programmes on a global basis. Graduates are recruited into a variety of internship and training programmes across the world. Graduate development forms an essential part of helping to build the business for the future. A dedicated global graduate website is provided to facilitate global connectivity among participants. The website encourages relationship building and knowledge exchange with future peers and colleagues anywhere across the globe. The programme concludes with an annual global graduate conference which provides a face to face opportunity to network. One Graduate trainee felt that the conference at the end of the programme was particularly valuable: “We went to Paris last week to finish the graduate programme and all the 2010 global graduates gathered from across the world: New York, Milan, Singapore, Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, London, Bahrain and Paris. We’d all met in September last year and we all met up again. It was amazing.”
5. Enternship placement scheme case study (www.enternships.com/)
Enternships is an organisation which provides opportunities for ambitious and forward thinking students to learn about business and enterprise through work placements in entrepreneurial and innovative environments. The placements are typically with start-ups, fledgling organisations or unique one-off opportunities to work for high profile or successful entrepreneurs and can be organised with international firms. They typically involve project work and can be set up remotely or part-time. Enterns gain experience of working in an entrepreneurial and dynamic environment and have the unique opportunity to work closely with successful businessmen and entrepreneurs. Undertaking responsibility early on is often encouraged, enabling the entern to provide significant input and see their own ideas put into practice. The experience and personal development that an enternship can provide is substantial. One entrepreneurial student, Max McQuillan, joined Playkast, a San Franciscan start-up, for a 12 week summer programme. This enabled Max to get involved in the early stages of company development while the firm was still in alpha mode. Working on the firm’s new website and business plan, Max spent the placement researching and developing the companies offer, creating a closed community of users that will enable the company to progress to beta stages. Max found the experience rewarding, particularly being part of a team which has taken a company from its birth to its beta stage and experiencing life in California:
“To sum up my experience thus far, it has been really interesting, challenging and incredibly exciting…I think that [it] is pretty unique experience to have coming out of college.”
Enternships are aimed at aspiring individuals that have the attitude, skills and mindset to grasp opportunities, wherever they are in the world. The programmes serve as a valuable way of spotting upcoming global talent for employers, and help to instil global competencies and experience in individual participants.
For interviews with Max McQuillan please contact Scarlett Yianni at Colman Getty, 020 7631 2666 / scarlett@colmangetty.co.uk