ProGrad Brisbane

ProGrad have anumber of assessment days coming up in Melbourne over forthcoming months.  Our assessment days are an integral part of the ProGrad process and must be attended prior to any engagement with our clients. 

Our confirmed dates for ProGrad Assessment Days in March and April, Melbourne are as follows:

Friday 26th March, starting at 12.30pm

Friday 30th April, starting at 12.30pm

We will have limited spaces available for each session and will have a number of clients attending also. Please contact the graduate management team in order to secure your place on the day.  Our Graduate Management team can be contacted on 02 8235 8300. 

ProGrad is a graduate recruitment organisation working with over 600 companies across Australia.  Our roles are typically within the Business to Business sales divisions of our client partners.

One of the most powerful tools following an interview with a prospective employer, has to be the email.

It is such a basic principle to follow and yet can add huge amounts of value to the job seeker. Not only is it an opportunity to reinforce your enthusiasm for the role and the organisation – it is also a great opportunity to persuade an employer to see you again.

I’m currently going through the interview process with four recent graduates who are applying for roles within ProGrad.  Despite a good interview with a particular candidate, I left the interview feeling as though I could have seen more.  I still had a hesitation.  Within two hours of leaving the office, the candidate had sent through a very impressive email.  So impressive, that it did change my mind.  It left me doubting my initial impression – which is a very powerful tool to have on your side if you’re attending interviews.

More than anything, I like the courtesy it demonstrates when a follow-up email is sent out after a meeting.  This is the norm in the business arena and why should an interview be considered any differently?

So, there it is – a nice easy piece of advice to follow when attending interviews.  Do the courteous thing, and follow-up.  Be creative in your approach and ensure you are remembered.

If you’re coming to a ProGrad assessment day any time soon, you will be asked to prepare a three minute presentation in advance of the day.

Firstly, be aware that you will only present this presentation in front of a panel of assessors (not the entire room of graduates!).  You will be given three minutes to present on the topic “why should we select you for a career in business to business sales?”

Naturally, the aim of the presentation is to sell yourself!  Most importantly, you must answer the question posed, “why should we select you for a career in business to business sales?”

The easiest way to prepare this presentation is to break it into three parts, as you would usually. 

1) An introduction, setting an agenda

2) The content, providing evidence of your argument

3) Summary and conclusion

In organising the preparation so that each piece lasts approximately 1 minute you will find it easy to complete the presentation in the allocated time with a strong structure to boot.

Think about the competencies you have, and provide exmaples of where you have demonstrated these competencies.  Ensure your skill set is transferable and meets the criteria of a business to business sales person.  ProGrad are not looking for experience in this area, however we would anticipate that suitable candidates are confident, strong communicators, driven, dynamic, motivated, tenacious, persistent, methodical and persuasive.

It is all about having a raw aptitude and a lot of personal drive and ambition.  We can provide the training and development, all we ask for is that the indvidual is focused on achieving a career in this space.

We’re on hand to help with your preparation and so please don’t feel alone.  You should have been allocated a Graduate Manager who is on-hand to assist you and your preparation in this space.

If you would like any further assistance, please call the office on 02 8235 8300 and I’m sure there will be someone on hand to help.

All the best!

GenerationY are an interesting audience to target.  Regardless of the product, it seems everyone wants to sell to these consumers.  Marketers seem to have had a preconception that GenY hates advertising, which isn’t necessarily the case.  They aren’t as fickle as some Marketers would have you believe, they simply don’t like bad communication.  GenerationY are actually highly receptive to advertising and they actively want brands to know who they are.  The key is in building interests, interactions and connecting with them.

If they have a bad experience however, they are less forgiving of these brands.  Emma Bennetto was interviewed for B&T Magazine and commented, “They are a lot more decisive than other generations and aware of the other options open to them.  If you blow it with them, you bloe it with them.  If you try to act cool and mess up the transaction, they will run a mile.  They’ll call you out on any inflated promises.”

She also makes the point that the smartest companies let young people handle the product.  She explains that GenerationY want freebies and they want to trial things.

I work with a team of generationY in this office and I have every confidence they would agree.  A freebie seemingly goes a long way.  Which now begs the question, if we’re targeting GenerationY ourselves – what kind of freebies can we give away?!

ProGrad also own and manage an online jobs portal for recent graduates www.graduatejobs.com.au

This site is aimed at University job seekers and offers employers free advertising to drive more graduate placements.  A number of graduate employers are currently listed, including the RTA graduate program and JP Morgan. 

Ericsson is currently recruiting for their graduate program and applications are open until 31st March.  These roles are predominantly in Engineering and IT, based in Victoria.  If you’d like to apply for these roles, browse the Graduate Jobs website and follow the links to the Ericsson application page.

As another ProGrad assessment day approaches in Sydney, we’re noticing an increase in applications, and as a result attendees. 

Over the last 6 assessment days, we have had an average number of 38 people attend each session. This week we are forecasting to have over 45 people attending the day.

Our roles are increasing also with confidence returning in the market and new hires on the rise.  Companies in the technology space are doing particularly well and are generating strong opportunities for recent graduates, particularly in a sales and marketing space.

We have a variety of different roles available for our grads at the moment, whilst business to business sales remains our core focus, we are seeing more marketing positions on the market.  Marketing has always proved to be more popular with the graduate community however employers are ideally looking for candidates with marketing or sales experience prior to taking them on in that type of role.

If you are a recent University graduate and you’re now looking to kick start your graduate career, please contact ProGrad on 02 8235 8300 and discuss your options with one of our Graduate Management Team.  We may be able to help you, however if we cannot – we will still do our best to offer any assistance we can in the way of applying for other roles.

Visit our ProGrad website for more information.

ProGrad can be found on Twitter at www.twitter.com/progradgraduate

We’re looking to extend our social media presence as a way of listening to our candidates and understanding their needs.  This information will assist us to adapt our business model accordingly to suit our candidates. 

As ProGrad ages, our candidate base is getting younger and it’s essential that we understand the generation that we’re dealing with. 

Only this morning I have received an email explaining that Linkedin.com has over 1 million members in Australia alone.  Linkedin.com is one of my favourite social media tools and certainly one that I strongly recommend all graduate job seekers are using.

ProGrad can be found on linkedin.com here where we have a ProGrad graduates group.  Feel free to join us!

We’re on a mission at the moment to identify some of the top sales incentives which would be well received from graduates in a business-to-business sales role.  Our core activity is placing graduates at the start of their career into B2B sales roles across a variety of industries.  These roles could take the form of Territory Management, Campaign Coordination, Account Executives, Sales Representatives, Business Developers – quite literally everything. 

Most organisations will have some form of incentive or bonus plan in place which will drive new business sales activity.  For some organisations, a cash incentive is put in place to excite employees, whereas other organisations will offer prizes, vouchers, cinema tickets – the list goes on.

We’re often asked by employers to suggest ideas which will inspire the candidates we’re placing in sales roles.  And so we would like to hear from you; what types of sales incentives are appealing as graduates?  Are you always going to be attracted by prizes?  Or, is extra money the incentive for you?

ProGrad is a graduate recruitment company and our core activity is placing graduates at the start of their career.  Experience is not relevant for our roles as full training will be provided.  We would like to hear from you if you have any ideas in this area, and we can be contacted on 02 8235 8300 or emailed info@prograd.com.au

Today is “Super Tuesday” at the ProGrad offices in Sydney, which means we’re conducting a day of high sales activity. 

In order to introduce our business concept to new organisations, it is essential that we initially make contact on the telephone with a view to book a business meeting.  As a team, we aim to exceed internal KPI’s in order to attend hundreds of new business meetings each month.  Every business developer at ProGrad works hard in order to build and maintain relationships with high level decision makers and this is initially driven through out-bound calling.

And so, with Super Tuesday about to kick off, I am confident there will be many meetings booked today.  Managing Directors….stand by your phones.

Davinia

ProGrad have recently recruited another ProGrad graduate to join the team in a business development capacity.

As a business, we rely on proactive sales in order to drive graduate opportunities on behalf of our candidates.  As part of Jon’s role as a Business Development Executive, he will be driving new business opportunities with a view to placing multiple graduates across a variety of businesses.

Jon’s background is unique, and as a graduate of Aviation Management he left University with a few interesting options.  Passionate about business, Jon applied to ProGrad and shortly after he attended a ProGrad assessment day.  Having passed with flying colours, he was invited to attend an interview with ProGrad and soon after accepted a role within our business development team.

Everyone in the team wishes him the best of luck, and we look forward to following his success here.

Are you wondering where all the Brisbane vacancies for graduates are?

ProGrad are based in Sydney and service Sydney and Melbourne primarily.  We do also offer placements in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth however there is simply a limited presence for us in those areas which naturally means we don’t generate as much demand for our ProGrad service.

ProGrad are a business model which sells.  We sell our graduate concept to organisations and build relationships with companies who are looking for a new talent source.  We currently work with over 600 companies across Australia, however less than 10% of the roles available are based in QLD.

If you’re looking to move inter-state for graduate roles, then please contact our ProGrad office who can offer advice about the next steps.  We still urge you to apply, however there will be a different method if you’re looking to relocate.

ProGrad are Australia’s largest assessment, placement and training company and place over 500 graduates each year.  If you’d like to be considered for any of our roles, please contact the graduate management team on 02 8235 8300.

Today was a refreshing set of interviews which ended nicely when the candidate (a recently graduated 21 year old) explained that he felt honesty and integrity was an important quality for him.  He then followed the statement by explaining that he was planning a trip abroad in 3-4 months and he would be away for approximately 2 months travelling. 

I liked this honest approach.  We chatted about the challenges an employer would have with this and the impact it would potentially have on the business.  The end result was simple, a transparent conversation between two parties that will result in a win-win for both.  Our recommendation is simply that he focuses on temporary work placements until the travel comes around.  Once the travel has been completed, he is slightly older, well travelled and an all-round “better bet” for an employer.

And so, the tip is simply to be honest during the interview process.  There is no point in either party lying, after all.

Davinia