This time of year sees an incredible amount of change and excitement in the early careers space, from graduate and apprenticeship programme offers rolling out, to preparation for the programmes ahead.

Neave Taylor, Amberjack’s Learning and Delivery Development Manager, takes you through the importance of keeping your candidates warm and engaged.

The Importance of Keep Warm

But have you considered the period after offers have been made, before the programme commences? This is known as the ‘Keep Warm period’ and is crucial for organisations and graduates alike; ensuring they are building connections with their future cohort, creating emotional attachments and engagement before programme commencement.

It has been shown that poor keep warm strategies can result in renege rates as high as 14% for some industries. This is a disappointing statistic when organisations spend on average £4320 hiring each graduate!

Combine this with the knowledge that organisations are finding a considerable lack of work readiness, business etiquette understanding and communicative skills amongst their newest recruits, and it is evident that an effective Keep Warm strategy is crucial. Not only does engaging your hires before they join reduce renege rates, but it also prepares graduates for the world of work, setting them up for success before their programme commences.

Where to Start

With a large proportion of resources being used for on-programme planning and preparation, time is not always on the side of early careers and L&D teams. Keep Warm strategies sometimes fall to wayside and end up comprising of email updates and invites to social events.

This offering is no mean feat and a good place to start, but when Gen Z candidates seek meaningful interactions and sincere investment in their development. Keep Warm strategies are more effective when cohort connections are made, graduates feel invested in your organisation and at the same time, are being prepared for the world of work.

Learning and Development plays a key part in all aspects of graduate and apprenticeship programmes, not only supporting soft skills development on-programme, but transforming a Keep Warm strategy by offering development workshops to complement internal events, creating connections between organisation and candidate, and setting your incoming cohorts up for success by supporting a positive transition to the workplace.

An Established Learning and Development Proposition

At Amberjack, our Learning and Development offering is built on 10+ years of learning and development experience, with Gen Z at the heart of our offering.

Our workshops are engaging and develop cohort connections through short, sharp development touchpoints that can be used to build the perfect Keep Warm strategy for any cohort size, from rolling offer periods, to internationally dispersed cohorts.

If you are struggling to create an engaging and effective Keep Warm offering, please do speak to us – we’d love to understand your difficulties and support with creating a Keep Warm offering that sets your graduates up for success.