Why SME’s Should Hire Graduates For Their Teams To Ensure Growth

If you are a growing and expanding SME, then it is essential to recognize the importance of your team. Without the right team, your business will struggle to compete in a crowded market and stand out with an exceptional level of service and new ideas. This is why you should think carefully about the candidates you hire and invest in when growing your company. There are several key reasons why graduates and even those fresh out of school should be at the top of your list as you grow your company. 

Cost Effective 

First, hiring candidates who are newly graduated or who have just left school is incredibly cost effective. Seasoned and experienced workers are always going to be more expensive. Their experience makes them more valuable to other companies and thereby pushing up asking salaries. This is particularly true in areas that require specialist skills that are high in demand such as digital marketing, social media management and IT. In contrast, new graduates can be hired for far less because they are still inexperienced, but yet can be trained and mentored faster in the roles that a business needs.

New Ideas

Another reason to hire graduates is that they can bring new ideas and concepts to your business, creating new innovation. This is often exactly what you need to ensure that you are building a company that is innovative and a market leader. New graduates are fresh and untarnished by the way things have previously been done, bringing new and exciting ideas to the table that you and the market may not have previously considered. 

Understanding Of Technology

It is true to say that technology is at the heart of every business. CMS, cloud software, AI, social networking, digital marketing - the list goes on. Seasoned employees often will not have the required experience or expertise to utilise this tech effectively, and outsourcing can be expensive and gives away control. Gen Z graduates are natural experts in these fields, having grown up in the TikTok generation. Some of the tech at the hearts of businesses today have been in the hands of Gen Z candidates for more than a decade. 

Limited Experience Can Be An Advantage

People often say that experience is more important than having the right qualifications. However, this isn’t always the case. Indeed, limited experience can be far more desirable. Gen Z graduates with little to no office experience haven’t picked up any bad habits that need to be rectified or adapted to your business and teams ways of working. In a very real sense, they are a blank slate. This means that you can shape them into the team members that you need to ensure that your business reaches the greatest levels of productivity. 

Eager To Learn and Acquire New Skills 

Part of the onboarding process for any business will be ensuring that employees have the skills they need to perform in their new position. Graduates are ready and eager to learn as much as possible. They have a deep desire to grow in their role and they understand the only way to do this is to listen, learn and acquire new skills, making themselves more valuable to you as a business and their future careers.

Understand Your Target Audience 

For your business to succeed, you need a profound understanding of your target audience and an effective ability to connect and engage with them. Hiring graduates makes sense because they are quickly becoming the main 18 to 35 demographic that almost every business in any industry is competing for. If you hire Gen Z graduates, then you will have people on your team who deeply understand this market demographic, what they are looking for, their pain points, how to get them to commit to a purchase, and changing market trends.

A Modern Mindset 

Finally, graduates and high school leavers have a modern mindset when it comes to the business world. While they may have certain requests and requirements from companies that they work for, they are eager to solve the challenges of tomorrow. Whether that’s making a business more sustainable or ensuring it reaches the right audience, they want to make a positive impact, and prove their value and potential.

Ultimately, hiring graduates for your SME will provide multiple benefits for your growing business. What they lack in experience, they make up for in terms of passion to succeed, a deep level of understanding in the core technology at the heart of your business and the growing Gen Z customer market audience.