If you’re based here in the UK, you’ll be bracing yourself for pictures in the papers tomorrow of young people embracing each other happily, or jumping in the air, waving bits of paper. They’re already on schools’ websites, and online…
Yes, it’s Results Day today, and I’ve been to school twice (A-levels and AS-level results). I did spot a genuine embracing scene (though no jumping).
Of course, things move faster these days than they used to: almost immediately, Daughter 1 received a congratulatory email from the Vice-Chancellor of her chosen university welcoming her, and providing a link to a dedicated set of web pages to help ease her through the onboarding process.
It’s been interesting, over the last year or so, to observe the touch-points that universities are using to target their potential recruits, and to entice them to choose a course at that university – ideas that might be useful to corporate recruiters. (More on this another day).
Obviously I haven’t seen as wide a range of university onboarding techniques as we have of their recruitment techniques, but I thought this approach to it was impressive, and a similar approach would work well for new recruits.
As well as the countdown clock, the onboarding pages provide:
- a checklist of things to do before arriving (fees, accommodation and pre-registration) with links to travel help and an app
- things to do on arrival day (dates, finding your room, getting IT/wifi to work, room inventories, how to find a timetable) with links to help services and a list of essential documents
- things to do in the first week (timetables and events, social media links, transport…)
- what happens after the first week (studying, events, societies, the surrounding area)
- and how to find help.
Many of these are things that a new recruit also needs to know – though no doubt there are a few others to be added for the workplace. Providing advice, checklists and documentation online would be reasonably easy to set up, and very helpful to new recruits.
Lucy is Editor at Corporate Eye
