Can Your Graduates Boost Their Job Prospects? Blog by Localized

Written by Katherine Stiff, Director of Business Development, Localized

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago, university students have had numerous issues to contend with; from the complexities of learning online and reduced time on campus, to navigating a labour market experiencing rapidly-evolving disruptive technology, real wage stagnation and geopolitical tensions.

One debate that has continued to rage persistently, however, is that of where companies want their employees to work - namely in-office, remotely, or in a hybrid setup.

Many experts and media commentators have been critical of global companies like Amazon, J.P. Morgan and Nike pushing their employees to return to offices full-time, while others insist that there’s a boost in productivity when teams gather around a table to work together in-person.

Despite this push from global companies to get their staff back into the office, it looks like remote and hybrid models aren’t going anywhere - and there’s data to back up the trends.

According to Global analytics platform Gallup, the number of fully in-office employees across the U.S. only made up 20% of the workforce in 2023, compared to 60% in 2019. The tech industry saw the highest share of employees working primarily remotely, with 67% of employees reporting so. As the world’s fastest-growing and arguably most important industry, this data tells a story.

Indeed, the World Economic Forum goes so far as to suggest that the creation of “global digital jobs” will grow 25% in the next five years, meaning that students graduating now could be perfectly positioned to take advantage of these opportunities all over the world - regardless of the country they’re currently located in.

But what does this all mean for universities, who just want to make sure they’re boosting their students’ prospects of a good job after graduation?

It means that they need to prepare their students and graduates for a rapidly evolving global job market - a working world in which how you work digitally, matters.

As the employer liaison at Localized, a career tech platform connecting talent with employers across every sector, my colleagues and I have had enough conversations with recruiters in recent years to know that there’s an urgent need for specific core skills that, together, can be referred to as Virtual Intelligence (‘VI’).

Some of our employer partners have described junior colleagues taking meetings whilst reclining and wearing PJs, holding pets in their lap or sitting in front of piles of laundry during virtual interviews; others cite graduate recruits in EMEA offices feeling pressured to respond to emails from U.S. colleagues very late at night, when they aren’t expected to.

All of them agree that a virtually intelligent person demonstrates the ability to communicate, collaborate and engage professionally when not everyone is in the same place at the same time.

We’ve developed essential training to cultivate this in the form of a multiple-choice, badged assessment that’s been co-created with the testing giant that created TEFL/TOEFL, in order to ensure that today’s workforces are operating from a codified set of behaviours.

Our ‘Anywherepro’ assessment boosts graduates’ VI skills, whether they’re interviewing for in-office jobs that involve coordinating with colleagues and stakeholders in different cities, or they’re going to be fully remote employees working across different continents.

The multifaceted nature of workplaces today present graduate employees with varied challenges, such as:

●      What’s considered best practice in terms of interjecting to raise an issue in a meeting, using AI notetakers, and accommodating those with disabilities?

●      How do you go about seeking proactive feedback on a project, if you’re working from home the week your line manager’s in the office?

●      How do you manage project deadlines across multiple departments in a global company, when you’re in different time zones and some of you are observing religious holidays?

 Any student or graduate beginning the job search process could immediately boost their chances of success by cultivating these skills, both in the job search process and after joining a company’s team - making the 30-minutes that it takes to sit the Anywherepro assessment a great investment.

Your graduates can strengthen their job prospects with Virtual Intelligence for just US$29.99 - click here to find out more!