As this year’s graduates move into the job market, many employers are realising they have to change the way they recruit and retain a new generation of workers, with different priorities. In my work at the Oxford university careers service, and when talking to other careers services worldwide, we are seeing that the old rules of recruiting no longer apply. Leaders who don’t adapt may not be able to attract — and keep — talented graduates in a still-tight labour market.

Recent graduates and current students are digital natives, part of Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012. Robert Neuhauser, Siemens’ global head of talent and leadership, says: “This generation is different as they have grown up in the digital space?.?.?. and want to be found [by recruiters] in the digital space.” Siemens has changed its recruitment processes to follow the digital footprints left by Gen Z, for example on Facebook — and approach candidates who seem to match its requirements.

This sort of “digital fishing” only works when candidates are active online. Other recruiters have focused on changing their processes to seek a more diverse pool of applicants. Koreo, a consultancy working with purpose-driven and community focused organisations, has adopted a “radical inclusivity” approach to recruitment in the Charityworks training and development scheme it runs, according to Craig Pemblington, Koreo’s head of projects. “We took many actions to, for example, raise Bame [black, Asian and minority ethnic] participation on the programme from 8 per cent to 38 per cent over four years,” he says. Changes included “anonymised applications and assessing answers for the same question across the cohort rather than all the answers for each individual.”