We’re thrilled to win Target Jobs’ Graduate Employer of the Year award! It’s a great honour, and recognition of the effort we’re putting in to ensure graduates who bring their skills and passion are equipped with the tools to succeed.
The graduate experience here begins with our management training programme. This is where thousands of successful careers are launched – including that of our CEO, Pam Nicholson. But what makes our scheme so great? Why does it make us the best graduate employer in the country? Well, it’s all about showing you just how much influence you can have – on our future and your own.
We start a bond for life
Whenever we meet a graduate for the first time, we start as we mean to go on. Whether we’re giving helpful and inspiring careers advice through this very news channel or when meeting people face-to-face at universities around the country, we always try to start a bond for life.
Over 80 Campus Brand Managers (CBMs) represent Enterprise at careers fairs and skills drop-in sessions, facilitating peer-to-peer recommendations and advice-sharing amongst students. Equipped with awesome training, they are creative, chatty and driven to help students make the right choice about their soon-to-blossom career.
Unlike many other companies, our CBMs have all previously been employed with us, either as an intern or placement student. Working in collaboration with careers services, academics and our recruitment teams, they are able to tell potential applications exactly what working at Enterprise is like. And that’s just the beginning.
We care
We want our candidates to be delighted with every aspect of their application process. It’s important to us that everyone who has taken it upon themselves to apply for our roles feels valued. So we respond to every applicant within 48 hours of receiving their application – and provide bespoke, detailed feedback to every individual.
Many graduate recruiters don’t bother with this – but how can they expect candidates to improve if they don’t provide constructive feedback?
In our feedback, we demonstrate exactly what may have been missing in an application and give candidates specific detail of how, next time, they can display the attributes we’re looking for. We always encourage applicants to come back to us in a few months, when they’ve had a chance to take our feedback on board and gain the extra experience and skills they needed.
We do what we say on the tin
At Enterprise, we say we’re an open and inclusive business, we say that having diverse talent supports a successful business – and we prove it in our day-to-day actions too. One of the most crucial aspects of why we’re graduate employer of the year is that we do what we say on the tin. Our values are more than pieces of paper on the wall – we live them every day.
We find out what’s most important to every individual who makes it onto one of our teams – maybe they’re passionate about women in leadership, a social life, sport, getting involved in the local community, putting back into their uni – and we give them the chance to carry on living it at work. So by the time an applicant is through their first three months with us, they could have already indulged their entrepreneurial side with Enactus, or taken part in one of our Enterpride events, or jumped in to discover the next stage of their career at one of our internal jobs fairs.
All in all, we’re replicating the student experience, allowing graduates to bring their social life to work, continue the passions they discovered at uni and meet like-minded individuals who love the same things they do.
We live to progress
Enterprise is the place where leaders learn to lead: we promote 99% from within, priding ourselves on providing fantastic career opportunities for all employees.
That commitment to progressing everyone who joins us means our coaching and mentoring has to be on point. All senior leaders in the business started at entry level, at the same place you will, as a management trainee. Because of that, we all understand what it takes for an employee to be successful and we’re all able to talk about and pass on the knowledge of the mentors, coaches and role models who have helped influence our own careers.
Coaching happens every day, with every employee. This can be coaching on leadership, diversity, internal interviewing, networking… pretty much everything you could think of. World-class training is engrained into the culture here, so it’s no surprise we’ve been consistently commended for our work preparing graduates for their management careers.
It’s about looking beyond candidates’ UCAS points, beyond the university they attended. Unlike most companies, we know we can teach everyone the skills that will empower them to go on and have an amazing career. A career of progression – and a career of impact.
These are just a few of the reasons why we’re the Graduate Employer of the Year… I’d like to name more – but if you want to hear them all you’ll have to come and see for yourself! Find out more by checking out our great graduate opportunities, work placements and internships today.
