Recruiting University of Liverpool Graduates

Posted on: 17 December 2024 by Richard Finch in Employer Connections Blog

Paul Gratrick, Head of Operations, Student Experience and Enhancement at The University of Liverpool talks about the benefits of employing a recent graduate in his team.

Why did you decide to hire a recent graduate? What were your hopes and expectations?

Myself and a colleague (Andy Williams) were setting up a new Data Insights Team within Student Experience and Enhancement, and in order to cope with the significant volume of requests that we were getting, we needed some Data Officer support.

Following the recruitment process, Emily Beardmore has now joined the team as Data Officer. We didn’t set out to hire a recent graduate at the outset, but in Emily’s interview she demonstrated how her recent time as a student would be a benefit in this role.

This role contributes to institution wide projects such as the Transforming Student Support and Curriculum Framework projects. Emily demonstrated in her interview that she could relate her recent student experience to the problems we were trying to tackle, and that added a new perspective to how we approach solving key challenges. We hoped that Emily would continue to bring these insights into the role and the various projects she works on, and she has done so to great success.

Being a recent graduate, Emily intuitively knows what the big data she is looking at is saying, and understands it in context. This enables her to not only conduct extensive analysis, but to add new ways of thinking about and understanding the data. 

What training opportunities did your graduate employee undertake with you?

Alongside University provided training on key systems such as Business Intelligence and Banner, Emily has undertaken a lot of training on the go in order to develop her data analysis skills. This has been in collaboration with Andy Williams but often under her own supervision and search for answers. Emily analyses huge datasets and employs a variety of formulas in, for example, Excel in order to complete her work. Emily is very good and working through a problem and finding her own solution, be that using internet guides, YouTube tutorials or LinkedIn Learning.

What impacts or achievements did having a graduate on your team have on your area of work?

Without Emily, we wouldn’t have a developed a model for predicting students at risk of academic failure, which is being piloted by the Learner Analytics Working Group which is part of the broader Transforming Student Support project. Emily has also enabled the Programme Optimisation Project to flourish by creating files that colleagues across the University can review in order to understand their module numbers and structures. Emily’s first class Maths degree and exceptional Excel skills have enabled her to significant impact these two projects, and in being a recent graduate she brings a student perspective to the complex issues that these institution-wide projects are working through.

How helpful was the support the Careers and Employability team?

The Careers Team were very helpful in allowing us to adapt their Data Officer job description for the purposes of hiring to this role. It saved a lot of time re-inventing the wheel when a precedent was already out there.

Where there any challenges, if so how did you overcome these?

Potentially exacerbated by working in a hybrid way, one challenge is to make sure that Emily (and any recent graduate) is getting the support they need and that they aren’t overburdened with work. To combat this we ensure that regular meetings are diarised, both in persona and online, as well as allowing time to discuss complex problems when together in the office.

What advice would you give to other managers thinking of taking part in the Graduate Trainee Scheme?

With a recent graduate you get a fresh perspective on problems you may have been working through for some time, and that perspective brings with it a recent student angle that is vital to ensuring any work is relevant to its intended audience.

Interested in hiring a University of Liverpool graduate?

If you would like to find out more about hiring a University of Liverpool graduate and the support available from the Careers and Employability team please email us at gradtalent@liverpool.ac.uk.