ISE award winner Newton explains how its graduate onboarding programme is delivering results through the pandemic.

Newton’s graduate onboarding programme recognises the importance of ensuring graduates feel fully invested in its values and culture and first contact is an important part of the process.

For example, Newton’s hand-delivered ‘welcome packages’ have proven to be highly engaging during the pandemic as a personalised introduction to the brand and a way of helping alleviate the feeling of isolation that can come with working from home and starting a new role virtually.

Following on from this, Newton’s Review Days are integral to ensuring new recruits successfully make the transition from higher education to employment.

All offer holders are invited to attend an Offer Holder Review Day where current junior consultants speak about their journey and experiences with Newton during the first year.

Offer holders are encouraged to take part in workshops designed to equip them with the knowledge and skills to succeed in their role and make connections within the company.

Support transitioning into work

Newton’s onboarding programme acknowledges the need to empower graduates with adequate knowledge and skills to successfully transition from higher education into a client-facing, solutions-based consulting role.

To support this transition, graduates are assigned a personal development manager alongside a line manager. While line managers may change according to the projects, it is the role of the development manager to act as a constant adviser, guiding and supporting the individual’s development and performance throughout their career.

Personal development

As well as professional development, the onboarding programme is designed to assist with personal development.

Newton’s buddy programme ensures candidates receive consistent, high-quality advice from someone with recent first-hand experience of the job role.

A buddy is a previous graduate recruit with one to two years’ consulting experience at Newton, matched to new joiners with similar interests. The buddy scheme is extremely valuable in building confidence, helping new recruits feel welcomed and supported and ensuring they are well prepared to begin their career at Newton.

Success story

One of the most successful things about Newton’s onboarding programme is the speed at which new recruits can progress.

By the third week of onboarding, recruits are working hand-in-hand with clients, owning and delivering areas of a project, solving real problems and delivering tangible results.

James Hepher, a consultant coming up to his first year anniversary with Newton, says: “I would have never guessed a year ago, I would be working on the scale and size of the problems that we’re helping to solve today. The fact that I’ve made incredibly close friends, and have been trusted to help solve problems that multi-billion-pound companies are struggling with, is unprecedented among my peers – even the ones in consulting.”

Newton is continuously featured in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers list, which is a particularly important measure of success as the ranking is determined by interviews with over 19,000 recent graduates.

This demonstrates that efforts to become the consultancy of choice for graduates are paying off for Newton.

This is an excerpt from the ISE Complete Guide to Student Recruitment and Development

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