Case Study - Melissa
March 8, 2010 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
My work experience prior to applying to ProGrad was Manager at KFC for about 6 years. I studied Business Management and graduated one year ago.
I didnt know what to expect throughout the ProGrad Assessment Day, I wasn’t sure what would be considered well-preformed or not. The presentation was nerve racking but the activities were quite enjoyable.
During the Interview process, I had to do a 5 minute presentation on what I know about the company and why I should be selected. The interview was very informative with about 5 people interviewing me!
I now work in a Customer Service role dealing with clients on a dialy basis and ensuring jobs are effectively planned, organised and monitored.
In terms of the ProGrad training courses, I really liked the wide variety of content, the trainer and the appropriate time of the courses, I was not out of the office for long periods of time.
My advice to other graduates who are thinking of applying to ProGrad is to apply and take the time to prepare. Be yoursef and be proactive.
Job Hunting over Christmas
December 18, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
Hints for graduate job seekers
For any recent graduates looking for employment opportunities, why not take advantage of the holiday season to refine your job hunting skills.
Here are some tips from ProGrad to help you over the festive season!
1) Start off with re-writing your resume. It shouldn’t be more than 2 pages long and should be filled with RELEVANT and concise information. Ensure your career objective highlights specifically what you’re looking to achieve with your graduate career. Ensure that your language is not too generic. Your work experience needs to discuss the skills you have generated, not just the tasks that you completed.
2) Don’t take a machine-gun approach to job applications. Take your time to really research the type of job you want. Get some knowledge about the type of role that would satisfy your personality. Don’t limit yourself in the industry, but do be specific about the role (job) you would want.
3) Then start to apply, slowly and carefully to roles that appeal to you. Keep a note of the roles you have applied for and which companies they’re with. It is also worth tracking the company phone numbers too, as this will ensure you can make follow-up calls in January about your application.
4) Start to research information about job interviews and types of questions you can expect. Ensure that in the New Year, you are well researched, well prepared and well rehearsed for interviews. This will all help in your job applications in January 2010.
More than anything, don’t be lazy. Don’t expect that your degree is enough to land you your dream job. Be proactive, and contact people directly. Speak to humans on the telephone, not through the internet. This is such a simple skill, and yet massively under-utilised by graduate job seekers.
ProGrad in 2009, the year that was
December 18, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
2009 was an interesting year for many. Whether you were a job seeker, looking for a job opportunity over the last 12 months, or an organisation facing the constraints of a “tight market” and even tighter budgets from prospects. We all felt it.
In January 2009, ProGrad started to analyse the roles available for graduates and started to analyse our sales history in more detail. ProGrad are a sales led business and we are heavily focused in sales activities such as lead generation, cold calling, booking business meetings and proactively selling our unique concept. Whilst this has always been the most effective way to sell our model, it started to come with some challenges.
Companies were not quick to make decisions any more when it came to recruiting graduates. Every business had to start justifying the expense in recruiting. As more and more businesses were cutting costs, and making some difficult decisions around redundancies, ProGrad had to ensure we had a clear sales strategy to ensure our placements could continue.
When we were analysing our previous sales conversions, we noticed that they had started to dip. In order to maintain the same level of placements, we would have to up the activity enormously. This meant increased activity from the sales team, an increase in targets and a greater sales push than ever before to ensure that we could complete placements.
In May 2009, we started our new agressive sales campaign and started to see results in August and September. The campaign has not dipped off since, which has ensured a huge spike in graduate placements in November and December 2009. The prospects for January 2010 are looking fantastic for graduates. Whilst it is clear that “confidence is returning” in the market, it is without a doubt down to the tenacity and perseverance of our team of sales people that has ensured our strength in this competitive arena.
It’s also important that we acknowledge the support of our candidates and clients over 2009. A large majority of our business this year came from our established account base which remained loyal to us. We are hugely grateful for those relationships and hope they will continue in the forthcoming years.
On behalf of everyone in the team, thank you!
Davinia
How do we find graduate roles?
November 27, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
It may come as a surprise to many, but ProGrad have to HUNT down graduate positons! We’re a proactive, sales driven company and we have a team of Business Development Executives who are contacting companies on a daily basis to sell our model.
It’s an effective sales process. Our Business Developers are mostly graduates who have come through the assessment process and have demonstrated their prowess in a sales role. It is highly compelling for organisations to engage with ProGrad, once they have met with one of our own graduates who have been effectively assessed and trained.
The activity levels are high with ProGrad and our team are regularly attending new business meetings to sell our unique model. Once we have engaged with an organisation, we then aim to provide them with a steady stream of graduate talent to ensure their business growth.
ProGrad recruit using our own methods and we’re currently looking to fill more roles internally. If you’re a recent graduate and you’d like to apply, please contact us now on 02 8235 8300.
We can also be emailed info@prograd.com.au
ProGrad have a sales team….we sell too!
September 9, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
ProGrad are like any business, we’re focused on generating sales in order to drive revenue. We’re also proactive, we take a strong proactive approach to DRIVING new business by selling our concept.
At ProGrad, we have a team of Business Development Managers who specialise in generating new requirements for graduates at all times. How do they do this? Well, primarily in demonstrating their own sales ability and great training. Our BDMs are primarily graduates of the process themselves, and create a powerful sales call by demonstrating their effectiveness.
We speak to key decision makers on the phone and book business meetings with them. We then understand their business objectives and discuss the ProGrad concept, identifying where this model can add value.
We are a sales led business, and more than ever over the last 12 months we have had a real focus on attracting and developing new business opportunities. It makes us effective recruiters for our clients, and ultimately ensures that we “practice what we peach”!
If you would like to know more about the ProGrad model, please contact the ProGrad office on 02 8235 8300.
Staying Safe with Social Media
August 24, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
http://www.crn.com.au/News/153507,opinion-protect-your-cyber-self.aspx
The CRN website has published a good article about the inportance of “staying safe” when utilising online social media. This is an important discussion, not simply relevant to “younger” generations, but also business professionals.
The article gives a great example of how corporate information of a sensitive nature can be so easily leaked through vehicles like Twitter or Facebook.
It also highlights the damage that can be done in “banning” access to these sites, and the limit it would put on marketing visibility. These are all fair points, and perhaps its going to take us a bit of time to adjust…but we’ll get there, eventually.
ProGrad are quite new users to this type of technology and are new to experiencing the positive/ negative side effects that run in parallel to these online tools. No doubt, something is just around the corner…good, bad or indifferent.
We’ll keep you posted…watch this space!
ProGrad is a graduate assessment, placement and training company and we specialise in placing recent Graduates into proactive sales careers across a variety of indsutries. To be considered for any roles through ProGrad, please contact us now on 02 8235 8300.
Be proactive!!!!
July 29, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
More than ever, the message is “BE PROACTIVE”.
If you’re job hunting, GET PROACTIVE! With everyone!!!
Don’t simply sit around waiting for the phone to ring…get proactive and call people. With such a competitive job market currently, its more important than ever to keep a competitive advantage. Sitting around taking a lazy approach to job hunting will not encourage a recruiter to work for you.
At ProGrad we will always prioritise our most proactive candidates. The more they call and email, the longer they stay at the front of our mind. As soon as an opportunity becomes available, we’ll remember them and give them priority. Any candidate that displays commitment and tenacity to their job hunt, will provide the same in an interview process, making them a more attractive candidate to any recruitment company.
Recruitment companies want to help - but in the current market there are more candidates than ever before and fewer requirements. The relationship with your recruiter needs to be a two-way relationship. Show them your commitment and you can guarantee they’ll be working even harder in your favour!
So get proactive…call/ email/ fax/ anything to get their attention….don’t take a lazy approach. Lazy people are never going to get priority in such a tight market.
Davinia
ProGrad are always keen to hear from recent graduates looking to kick start their corporate career in a business to business sales environment. To discuss our opporutnities, please contact the ProGrad team on 02 8235 8300.
Giving Constructive Feedback
July 29, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
At a graduate level, with limited interview experience, feedback is absolutely crucial to better understand what employers are looking for. Not enough candidates ask for it, for fear of hearing something they might not like. Take out of feedback what YOU feel is relevant. Regardless, its all worth hearing and might help to improve your techniques for future interviews.
ProGrad offer feedback at several points to our candidates:
1) Following a ProGrad Assessment Day: Whilst it can be very detailed feedback, it is always worth asking for. We will be happy to discuss the exercises completed, and make recommendations for future assessment sessions which might be of value to you.
2) Following interviews: This will be slightly more difficult as it is dependant on the feedback we’re given from employers. That said, we always encourage total honesty from our clients. Whether the interview was good, bad or ugly - we like to know about it. We are happy to provide this feedback also on request
3) Once employment/ training as commenced: ProGrad are happy to provide this feedback also upon request, and we recommend getting proactive with it. Ask your boss directly for feedback about your first week and month. How did you perform? What else would they like to see from you? How else can you improve?
Giving honest feedback will always be tricky, as it is human nature to not want to offend someone. That said, it is the only way we can learn during the interview process and we need to be ready to take some comments which we might not necessarily agree with. Regardless, the experience will have helped you grow and develop in some way, the feedback is simply the icing on the cake.
Davinia
ProGrad is a graduate assessment, placement and training company. To be considered for any of our roles, please contact our team on 02 8235 8300. Or you can visit our website on www.prograd.com.au
ProGrad prepare for more assessment days
July 21, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
Despite the doom and gloom surrounding the global economy, ProGrad are still going strong and focusing our energies on finding new graduate career opporutnities.
Whilst some may think that we have the luxury of companies calling ProGrad and asking for candidates, I must assure you all that it is not the case. We have a team of Business Developers at ProGrad who have mostly been recruited using our own process. They are responsible for contacting organisations through cold calling, and proactive selling the ProGrad model. In many cases, we are persuading companies to use this model, despite their own preconceptions about Graduates and the negatives surrounding “GenY” hires.
With the drop in opportunities available, there was only one thing we could do. Ramp up the activity and speak to even more people than before. We embarked on a huge new business campaign and saw immediate results.
Naturally, more graduate opportunities now means we require more assessment days. We’re running assessment days nearly each week in Sydney or Melbourne and are seeing strong numbers present at each day.
The calibre is strong. Candidates these days are more competitive and more driven to seek out potential employment. If you are interested in being selected for a ProGrad position, please be prepared for a competitive assessment day. Using our competency based framework, we’re looking for candidates that dispay a natural sales aptitude along with drive and determination for success.
We’re working across all industry verticals to assist candidates to find roles. Our current vacancies exist primarily within the technology arena, FMCG, Media and Telecommunications industries.
If you’d like to be considered for any of our roles, please contact one of the ProGrad team on 02 8235 8300.
Davinia
What can employers do to inspire their teams?
March 4, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
It’s a tough market and it’s having an impact on the motivation and morale of employees. With so much stress in the office, lower sales and a more restrictive budget - what can employers do to motivate staff? Redundancies are happening frequently, and team sizes are rapidly shrinking. Now is the time to rebuild the motivation of the current, leaner teams.
We’re seeing some imaginative employers take their teams to the local bowling alley, as a cost effective way of building team spirit. Its a great way to build up team spirit, particularly if redundancies have left some gaps. Other ideas include “credit-crunch-lunch” which involves a cheap and cheerful lunch for the team.
There are so many messages that really must be communicated by management in these tough times and a simple company or departmental meeting with some sort of fun element to it, will definitely help the cause no end.
And if you’re management aren’t proactive about it, then work with them to make recommendations. Now is the time for every employee to stand up and be counted. Ask your line manager whether you can run a presentation, training session or group incentive. Don’t get sucked into the negativity that might be breeding internally, now is a great opportunity to demonstrate your ability to see the “bigger picture”.
It is likely that management are watching employees closer than ever before - so use this to your advantage. Employers will favour those staff members who demonstrate a passion for the common goals of the business, regardless of their longevitiy within the business or their seniority.
Davinia