- Built Environment
- Engineering, Energy and Industry (EEI)
- Financial Services (including insurance, investment & retail banking, and accountancy)
- Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG)
- Information Technology
- Legal
- Public Sector
- Retail & Trade
The formula is simple: graduate recruiters from the sector meet up to discuss matters of mutual interest. The agenda always includes a Hot Topics round table item when members are free to raise whatever issue they want, and increasingly the groups are working collaboratively to achieve a number of goals:
- Share best practice
- Improve their ability to influence
- Increase the impact and effectiveness of their events
- Look for ways to save costs through economies of scale.
There is also a regional group based in Scotland. This group is cross sector, with meetings alternating between Glasgow and Edinburgh and typically attended by a range of recruiters and universities.
Different groups have adopted different formulas for success, but the ground rules are pretty much the same:
- Meetings run quarterly, hosted by members on a rotating basis, and are restricted to recruiting companies. Meetings are chaired either by the host or an AGR officer.
- Supplier members are invited to attend at the request of the group, usually to present on a specific topic of interest
- AGR administers the groups (this includes maintaining the all important database which changes constantly)
- What goes on in the meeting is private to those attending. Some groups circulate notes of meetings to include those who were unable to attend but there is a very strong sense of containing the information within the group.
Membership of each group varies from 15 to 30 companies, and meetings are attended by anything up to 35 recruiters and developers. For the sector groups, membership relates to the sector your business operates in, not the type of graduates you recruit. So, if you are a bank that recruits IT graduates, your access is the finance sector, not the IT focus group. For the regional groups, these are open to any AGR employer members who would like to attend.
Not a member of an AGR Sector or Regional Group? Participation in these groups is restricted to AGR recruiter members. If you are an AGR member and want to join a group, email gary@agr.org.uk