Episode 111: How to get a graduate job with Computacenter

December 9, 2020 Podcast

A big hello to the 111th episode of the UK’s number 1 career podcast, and I’ve got a special episode for you this week, a fast-growing UK tech company with 3 brilliant graduate schemes on offer, I’m pleased to welcome to the show, Computacenter. In today’s show, we explore Computacenter in detail, looking at what exactly the company does and diving into the 3 graduate schemes that they offer across sales, project management and business management. We break down each of these schemes, looking at what each entails, the attributes and characteristics they look for and what you can expect at each stage of the application process. We cover why you shouldn’t worry too much about the initial online application, but why you do need to focus on the recorded video interview. We explore the face to face video stage and why you shouldn’t be surprised if there is a current graduate there who is also interviewing you. We go through what you can expect in the assessment centre, and why Computacenter is like no other graduate scheme, in that you can look forward to meeting the Managing Director at this stage. Now it doesn’t matter if you have never heard of Computacenter before, they are a company which are going places, and in this interview, I’m sure you will be impressed by the onus which their senior leaders put on finding and keeping graduate talent. As always, you can find a full transcript and links to everything we discuss, which you can find in the show notes, which today are at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/computacenter.

Before we start today let me tell you about my brilliant step-by-step online course ‘How to Get a Graduate Job’ which is LIVE!!!!! The members who have snapped it up are all doing brilliantly, and I’m pleased to say that for some of them the graduate scheme offers have already started coming through! They are loving the private member’s webinars and the course content spread over 8 modules, 23 video tutorials, 14 hours of content, and 20+ handouts. As well as the course the private member’s Facebook is going down a storm, with members helping each other out and sharing all of the questions that they are facing for each application, from the recorded video interviews through to the assessment centres. How useful would you find that information? As one of the members said, ‘I just love having all of the information I need to get a graduate job in 1 place’. If you are serious about getting a graduate job, if you want to turbo-charge your job search for companies like Computacenter, if you want to know in advance all the pitfalls and mistakes so that you don’t make them yourself, and if you want to know exactly what you need to do at each stage of the process to get on a graduate scheme, then head to howtogetagraduatejob.com and sign up. It is an investment in yourself which will pay itself back many thousand times over when you get that graduate job of your dreams. So, go to www.howtogetagraduatejob.com and sign up now! Right, on with the show.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • Computacenter and their 3 graduate schemes across sales, project management and business management
  • What Computacenter look for from candidates and how you can stand out in the application process
  • Why you shouldn’t worry too much about the initial CV stage
  • How to make an impact in the video interview
  • Why you shouldn’t be too surprised if there is a current graduate there in the interview stage
  • Secrets for performing well in the assessment centre, and why you can expect to meet the Managing Director

SELECTED LINKS INCLUDE:

Transcript 111 – How to get a graduate job with Computacenter

Announcer: Welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, your home for weekly information and inspiration to help you get the graduate job of your dreams.

James Curran: Hello and welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each episode I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, graduate recruiters and career coaches who bring decades of experience into a byte size show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had when I graduated.

And a big hello to you today and thank you for joining me for the 111th episode of the UK’s number 1 career podcast, and I’ve got a special episode for you this week, a fast-growing UK tech company with 3 brilliant graduate schemes on offer, I’m pleased to welcome to the show, Computacenter. In today’s show, we explore Computacenter in detail, looking at what exactly the company does and diving into the 3 graduate schemes that they offer across sales, project management and business management. We break down each of these schemes, looking at what each entails, the attributes and characteristics they look for and what you can expect at each stage of the application process. We cover why you shouldn’t worry too much about the initial online application, but why you do need to focus on the recorded video interview. We explore the face to face video stage and why you shouldn’t be surprised if there is a current graduate there who is also interviewing you. We go through what you can expect in the assessment centre, and why Computacenter is like no other graduate scheme, in that you can look forward to meeting the Managing Director at this stage. Now it doesn’t matter if you have never heard of Computacenter before, they are a company which are going places, and in this interview, I’m sure you will be impressed by the onus which their senior leaders put on finding and keeping graduate talent. As always, you can find a full transcript and links to everything we discuss, which you can find in the show notes, which today are at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/computacenter.

Before we start today let me tell you about my brilliant step-by-step online course ‘How to Get a Graduate Job’ which is LIVE!!!!! The members who have snapped it up are all doing brilliantly, and I’m pleased to say that for some of them the graduate scheme offers have already started coming through! They are loving the private member’s webinars and the course content spread over 8 modules, 23 video tutorials, 14 hours of content, and 20+ handouts. As well as the course the private member’s Facebook group is going down a storm, with members helping each other out and sharing all of the questions that they are facing for each application, from the recorded video interviews through to the assessment centres. How useful would you find that knowing the questions you will face in the video interview ahead of time? As one of the members said, ‘I just love having all of the information I need to get a graduate job in 1 place’. If you are serious about getting a graduate job, if you want to turbo-charge your job search for companies like Computacenter, if you want to know in advance all the pitfalls and mistakes so that you don’t make them yourself, and if you want to know exactly what you need to do at each stage of the process to get on a graduate scheme, then head to howtogetagraduatejob.com and sign up. It is an investment in yourself which will pay itself back many thousand times over when you get that graduate job of your dreams. So, go to www.howtogetagraduatejob.com and sign up now! Right, on with the show.

James Curran: I’m very pleased to welcome to the show, Craig Cobb, UK Talent Acquisition and Future Talent Manager at Computacenter. Craig, welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast.

Craig Cobb: Thanks very much. Thanks for having me.

James: Computacenter, despite being a FTSE 250 company with revenues of over £5 billion, might not be a company that listeners know much about, but that is all going to change today. Let’s start at the beginning. Do you want to introduce yourself properly and give listeners a taste of Computacenter and what you do as a firm?

Craig: Yes, of course, and yeah you’re right. Computacenter is one of these unknown entities amongst the graduate population, but we’re in fact a really large company. As you mentioned, my role is the UK Talent Acquisition Manager and also the UK Future Talent Manager. What does that mean? From this particular podcast, it’s more relatable to I run, design, implement our early career strategy for the UK. As such, I look after the graduate programs, industrial placement programs, and apprenticeship programs, and then externally work with schools and universities to help students get the best out of themselves. I’ve been within the organization now for just coming onto six years, and the IT industry is a fantastic industry to be in.

Computacenter as an organization, we’re a leading independent provider of IT services. We work with large organizations globally. We advise them on IT strategy. We implement the most appropriate technology to their needs and to their customers’ needs. We optimize their performance, and basically we manage their infrastructures, so in doing so, we help their directors, their boards, and their IT departments in providing the best service to their particular customers. We originally originated in 1981, buying and selling computers that were much, much bigger than what we’re used to at this present time. Since 1981, we’ve grown into a global organization, as you mentioned, listen on the London Stock Exchange in the FTSE 250, and we support over 100 different customs globally from the U.S. all the way over to Malaysia.

James: Excellent, and I know there’s a lot of concern with graduates. You read the papers, and it’s all doom and gloom, and companies aren’t doing well. But, when I was doing my research for the show and looking in the FT, since lockdown, it’s been a great period for Computacenter with profits guidance raised three times since May as work-from-home measures mean customers need to increase spending on laptops, and telecommunication services, which is great news for you as a firm. So, there’s lots of good news out there, and we’ll get into the graduate opportunities that you’ve got available today.

Craig: Absolutely, and whilst I’ve seen the situation has been very hard for everybody, we have enabled our customers to enable their employees, their workforce to work remotely in a very, very quick time scale, and therefore the services that they offer to their customers have been largely uninterrupted. Yes, it has been a good period for IT. IT is helping run the world, as a phrase, and yes, we have been very, very lucky during this period.

James: Yeah, especially I was looking at the share price has been going great guns as well.

Craig: Yeah, the shareholders are very happy, yes.

James: I’ll bet they are. Today, we’re going to explore some of the graduate roles that you have available. There’s the project management program and also the international business management program. Would you like to maybe take us through those and give us a bit of flavour of what they’re like?

Craig: Yes, of course. We’ve actually got three particular graduate programs, just to kind of make clarity. We’ve actually got what we call an associate program that is within our sales functions. It’s actually one of our flagship graduate programs. It actually started back in the ’90s. It took a bit of a break in the late 2000s, and then we resurrected it again about 10 years ago. Since then, that particular program has grown exponentially. Our sales force are our frontline workforce, and they’re out there selling to not only our existing customers, but also to new customers as well. As such, we thought it was a fantastic opportunity to bring in some fresh talent and grow them into the world of IT sales. It’s a very challenging but very rewarding particular part of the business.

That particular program itself runs slightly outside of the traditional kind of graduate timelines, and the reason we do that is because our financial year runs from January to January, and so therefore, the sales program kind of launches at around June every single year with a view to hiring 10 to 15 dedicated, hungry, ambitious graduates that come from many backgrounds. I’m sure we’ll go over that a little bit more later into the world of sales. Sales is a broad topic. That particular sales program is 12 months long. We’ve actually shortened it. We’ve made it a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more kind of fast-tracked because we want to give these graduates what they’re looking for, which is getting earning potential, high earning potential quicker. We can get them out into the market, working with our customers and our employees.

It’s a really, really good program that is run by, actually, an ex-graduate himself. He originated from the original program in the ’90s, so he’s the main sponsor. If you’re looking for success, actually the main sponsor of the program used to be in the shoes of those graduates joining, so he knows exactly what it’s like. I’ve got a dedicated team behind that program. We literally just closed applications, but we’ll be opening again in June of 2021.

Our project management program has been running now for about five years, and pretty self-explanatory as to what you could do at the end of the program, but that program is even more fast-tracked. It’s a nine-month development program, quite intense, split into two main parts, really. The first three months is learning about our organization, doing some key rotations within different areas of our business, and the last six months or so of the program is actually physically doing kind of an entry-level project manager or project coordinator role, shadowing and working with experienced project managers. We’ve got about 400, 500 in our business at the moment working on real-world projects, either projects at the beginning of their life cycle or those that are coming to the end.

They get a real flavour of what it’s like to think about time, cost, and quality, the three kinds of mantras of project managers. That particular program is open now for applications from September until December every year with a July intake. We look to take on between six and 10. You probably get a flavour that we have quite small numbers compared to a lot of our competitors in the graduate market, and we do that very purposely, actually. We like to kind of give it a real role, a real sense of responsibility. Too many graduates coming through the system, you may find it might get diluted a little bit, so we keep the numbers small, and as such, six to 10 every single year, we’ve actually got a 90% retention rate of project managers, post-program in the last five years. We’re really proud of that, so that’s a really, really good program to apply to, should you be interested in an organization, and project management, and milestone management,

The third one is our business management program with an international flavour. Business management, quite a relevant topic at the moment. Internally, we call them service managers, and ultimately, they work very, very closely with the sales force on managing the contracts that we have signed with customers to make sure that we’re delivering our promises, keeping our promises in line with our contracts, in line with our commitments towards IT infrastructure, development, or delivering services, or fixing somebody’s laptop, should they be at home or a really important call. It could be anything.

That’s been going now for about eight years now, so really successful. We probably take anywhere between, again, six and 10, and align you, align graduates, per se, to particular customers anywhere in the country. Obviously, we’re working remotely, so we’ve all tuned in for that and for next year to be able to do that, but customers could be anything within financing, within the public sector, within technology and retail, and as I said, over 100 customers. We could align you based on your skills and experience and where we need you.

Three really core graduate programs. You’ll notice they’re all business-related. We don’t have a technical IT graduate program. However, there’s something coming in the years to come. I’m working on that at the moment. Really exciting business opportunities is open to anybody.

James: Excellent, and just touching on that in turn, you mentioned the sales program, and it’s always — As a graduate, it’s really good when you can look ahead and see that companies keep hold of their graduate talents, or the fact that the person can’t be running the program is a graduate himself who’s been through the program, he’s really good, and you also mentioned the retention for the project management scheme. Again, companies which are able to retain their talent, that tells you something. People will walk with their feet if they aren’t enjoying the work, if they aren’t enjoying the challenge. The fact that you’re able to hold onto these graduates is a really good sign from the outside looking in.

Craig: Absolutely, and we’re very proud of that. We do spend a lot of time and money in making sure that we’re developing people in the right way. We make sure we’ve got the mentors, the coaches, and the logistics around that as well. I think that all plays a massive part in retaining this talent. It’s ultimately the reason I’m in my job, and the reason I love it is because we are building the future workforce of Computacenter. It’s been something we’ve been working on for a long time now, and it’s only going to get better. These three programs are at the core of our strategy for that future workforce, and as such, sales, service management, and project management make up three out of probably the four largest departments within the Computacenter UK structure.

James: Three different schemes there. Do you have different entry requirements for each of them in terms of types of degrees you’re looking at, or grade requirements?

Craig: No, they’re consistent across the board. We accept graduates with any disciplined degree. Definitely, some programs lean more towards certain skill sets at some point because either they’ve picked up project management modules as part of a business degree, et cetera, but any discipline is open for any applicant. We’ve declassified our applications as well so that we are much more of an inclusive employer in that respect. We have worked with looking at offering the opportunities open to people who’ve got degree apprenticeships as well. Obviously, they’ve been recently new in the last kind of three or four years.

As the years go by, those entry requirements will allow those kind of graduates to also apply to the program. Just touching on the particular parts, for the sales program, we often find people that come from a sporting background either in a hobby or as part of the degree do really well because they’re hungry, they’re ambitious, and they want to win. That’s just a natural flavour of what a salesperson has. Project management will usually, and we have seen they have come from a more analytical degree, something around history, or business, or economics. Business management, wide range. Anything from teaching which is my background or history, business, economics, finance, you name it. We use the skills from the theory of degrees, and then build that into their personas to teach them how to be an IT service professional.

James: Excellent, and location-wise, where would the majority of graduates be? Granted, offices are unopened as we record this, but going forward, where could people expect to be based?

Craig: Good question. We’ve got hubs all around the UK, and as such, we’ve got customers all around the UK. The majority of the roles, as you could probably imagine within our sales and business management function, will be filtered, really, in kind of around the south and southeast and the London area, being the financial hub of the UK. However, our project managers can often be all over the place. They could be anywhere from Scotland down to the southwest. Because our customer sites are where our graduates would usually be based or to be traveling to, we do require a level of flexibility in a normal working world. However, with showing what Microsoft Teams, which we use within Computacenter can do to allow us to have conversations no matter where you are in the country, I think that’s more the model we’ll kind of move towards. Does it matter really where graduates are based? At some point, when we do get back to some kind of normality, and as long as they’re willing to travel down to or up to certain customers or sites as we’re needed, that’s all we ask for at the moment.

James: I think flexibility is the key, and I know, from my background in management consulting, you have to go where the client is, and sometimes that’s glamorous locations, sometimes that’s not glamorous locations.

Craig: Absolutely.

James: Take the rough with the smooth. Three different types of schemes, are there particular skills, or is there a consistent skill or type of person you’re looking for across the three are the real — you mentioned different types of backgrounds, but yeah are there consistent themes or skills that you look for from the different roles?

Craig: Do you know what? That’s a really good question. I run the assessment centres for all three of those programs, and we have seen, over the last couple of years, we’ve much more moved towards a behavioural assessment model. What kind of aptitude, what type of potential does somebody have? Not looking for the finished article now, but what could they be in a year’s time, and how does that actually transpire in what we’re seeing in the assessment centre?

From my perspective, communication skills is absolutely fundamental because everything that we do is focused on our customers and our people. The ability to talk business, to talk commercial acumen once you’ve been taught it is absolutely essential. A really pragmatic approach to problem-solving, if you think about project managers, they need to get a project from A to B as quickly as possible, but as cheap as possible sometimes. To think pragmatically in any exercises, you’re maybe kind of going through an assessment or even in your application, that’s an absolutely fundamental part of us as well.

I would say the biggest thing from my perspective is being yourself. I know it’s an old cliché, and a lot of companies will talk about that, but I really address it in the assessment centre is we want to see the real person. We don’t want to see someone who is potentially acting to be a certain person, because we won’t be able to trust putting them in front of a CIO, a massive public sector organization, and if we’re not seeing the real person at the beginning, how do we know what we’re going to get at the end. To be 100% wholesome to yourself is probably the biggest aspect that I would suggest that people go down the route of.

James: That’s really good advice there, and definitely when you’re going for the application process for Computacenter, yeah think back to the attributes that Craig just mentioned there and how you can bring those to the fore in the different stages of the application. Speaking of the application, let’s then delve into it in a bit more detail. How do people go about, then, the initial application stage? Is it hundreds of competency questions or is it a bit leaner?

Craig: This is something I’ve been toying with for quite some time is how to make it easier and more friendly for a graduate looking for a job to be able to get from the application stage to day 1 of a job. We both know, James, there’s thousands of graduates out there kind of all looking for work at the moment and will be looking for work in the future, and we’ve tried to cull a number of the different kind of points where we felt that we weren’t getting much return on that investment, and it actually wasn’t a good experience for the candidates. There’s some slight differences. The sales and the business management program have five different parts to the process, but the way I like to look at it is it gives the graduate five different chances to sell themselves.

The first bit is the CV application. That’s the standard online application via our careers portal. Secondly, they will, as of 2020 and 2021, they will be asked to do a number of online tests to measure their aptitude, and numerical and verbal reasoning, and pragmatic thinking. We then use a video platform where we like to see someone record themselves giving a few short answers to a few very simple questions, nothing too taxing. There’s no math in those questions, there’s no on-the-spot kind of surprises that it’s based on research into us and kind of why they’re applying in the first place.

Then, they go onto probably the most kind of personal one, which is they’re invited to a virtual interview or a face-to-face interview in an ideal world with, actually, a director of the business, and also a current graduate for the business. We get our current graduates involved, and then they go into the assessment centres, as I say, I host them every single year. That’s for the business management and sales program. For the project management program, it’s exactly the same, except there’s no virtual face-to-face interview. It just goes straight from video interview to assessment centre.

James: Okay, I like that. I like the fact you get the current grads involved as well. That’s a really nice way to do it.

Craig: To be fair though, James, they’re going to be the future hiring managers of graduates in the future. We’ve given them experience of being involved in the interview process and reviewing applications, reviewing videos, being involved in every part of it so that they are kind of living and breathing it because they become a hiring manager. Then, it should become second nature to them.

James: Definitely, and the fundamental question that all recruiters are asking themselves is, “Would I want to work with this person, would I want to be sat next to them for eight-plus hours a day?” There’s no one better to answer that than the graduates they’re going to be working with.

Craig: The graduates give them an insight into what life is really like as a graduate within our organization, the rough and the smooth. Anybody that says it isn’t rough would be misleading. They do talk about the travel aspects and real stressful times. The really good thing that comes out of that is you get a real-world flavour of actually what it’s like to be a graduate within Computacenter, and we really ask them to be honest and open to our applicants so that they can make the decision as to whether we are an organization they want to work for as well as we want to hire them.

James: Definitely. Let’s break down, then, each of the constituent parts there. You talked about the CV initial applications, so what is it you’re looking for at this stage?

Craig: I’ll be totally honest with you here. The CV is a bit of a tick box exercise, if I’m going to be honest. The CV needs to be uploaded into our system for us to obviously consider them. But, that CV is not actually seen by anybody within the business that is hiring until the actual face-to-face interview or assessment day. That’s where we really have a really inclusive recruitment process. The recruitment team that I manage, as part of the application process, there’s a few qualifying questions that the graduate must answer, and that’s what kind of filters out those people that are eligible to work in the program and those aren’t, for example.

The CV is something for later on. It’s something we’ve got banked, ready to go for the actual interview where they’ll then get asked about their experience, their modules, et cetera, et cetera. That’s really where the CV comes into at the beginning, but whilst it’s not looked at at the beginning, it’s really important for the graduate or an applicant to make sure that they’re providing us with the most recent and the best CV that they can do. When they do apply to us, they have access to an online portal that they have full control over, and that’s where they can update their CV, they can provide a supporting cover letter, any additional qualifications that they think may be suitable or relevant to the application. Then, by the time it comes to that face-to-face interview or the assessment centre, we then bundle that all together, and give that to the recruiters, to the hiring managers, and the assessors for them to then review. At the beginning, it’s a really simple process.

James: Excellent, and then you mentioned the online testing phase. Verbal, numerical, situational judgment? Any sort of games-based tests, or is it just more of your standard type tests?

Craig: Yeah, standard at the moment, but hopefully, fingers crossed, if I can get the budget, big plans to kind of make it much more interactive. I think that the general external market is moving towards something that’s a bit more interesting for graduates. They see how technology is working. The gamification subject is a big one in the market, and has been now for a good five to 10 years. We don’t use situational judgment tests as a standard approach. I do like them, but we find, because of the roles are very much business-reliant, we do require graduates to have that sense of being able to kind of doing some general kind of numeracy skills, and a real — that pragmatic approach, and so we usually find the SHL testing route is a good one for now, but things may change. Everything is changing these days, so hopefully we can more gamify or make a bit more interactive to test later on.

James: Excellent, and listeners who were facing any games-based tests, check out my episode with Arctic Shores a few episodes back where we talked about games-based assessments in depth. Any word of advice for people with the online testing stage, other than practice?

Craig: I was going to say, “Practice, practice, practice.” I’ve done them. I needed to kind of put myself in the shoes of a graduate before implementing them five years ago. I panicked. I’m not great at maths, and from my perspective, it’s to try and relax. The biggest thing you’ll find with these tests is not actually the questions that stump you. It’s the time that you’re given to answer them. I hear the same thing: I run out of time, I was more worried about how much time I had left, and I panicked, I clicked the wrong button, and then I realized I had too much time at the end. Practice answering questions within an allotted time period before you go and do the tests.

It’s a bit like going back to school where you’ve got an hour to write an essay, and you’re frantically writing, and you’re burning the lead on the paper. Do the same with your SHL tests. Try to get some practice tests and give yourself a time scale that’s shorter than, actually, you’re given online. If you can do it within a shorter time scale and you can cope with that pressure, when it comes to doing the actual test for us or for another organization, you’ll breeze it.

Maths is — numeracy or mathematical skills, being able to look at data, and analyse words, and read things quickly, and make decisions is part and parcel of being in business, no matter what type of role you do. Therefore, the more you get used to it, and the less, I suppose, you are reliant on just being able to blag it, putting it in a better way, the better you will be. I tried to do an SHL test off the back between meetings and failed miserably. The next one I did, I took a half-day off to be able to kind of practice, put myself into the shoes of the graduate using the environment, and I did so much better. Would I have hired me? Probably not, but that’s the nature of the SHL tests.

James: Definitely, and it’s practicing, and start practicing now because you don’t want to be submitting your application and then thinking, “Oh, I’ll start practicing once I’ve submitted my application,” because you’re not going to have enough time then to get up to speed. Start practicing now so you’re going to be ready when the time comes to do it.

Craig: James, I totally agree with you. In fact, when I’m talking to university students at either kind of virtual road shows or fairs, the one advice I give to first years is to start practicing now, because I do see them coming into the industrial placement market. You talked about gamification, online gaming for testing. Great fun whilst you’re doing it, but they’re testing something. They’re testing some kind of skill. The more you can get used to going to see these websites and doing some practice tests, they might not mean anything right now, but when it comes to going for the job, the dream job within whatever company, whether it be Computacenter or another, you’ll be in the best place to be able to secure it.

James: People have passed the online tests, and are then through to the recorded video interview. What advice would you give there for people to perform? You mentioned earlier about knowing the company and having motivations for why they want to work for Computacenter. Any other advice?

Craig: Yeah, so I’m going to go back slightly on that because before the situation we’re in globally, I think everybody was used to using phones for FaceTime and didn’t mind doing video, FaceTiming calls, et cetera. But, when it came to recording themselves in front of a laptop and seeing themselves in the bottom right-hand corner of whatever platform they were using, it really startled them, and we were seeing huge dropout rates back in 2018, ’19 for that particular program. What I will expect now is the more university lectures are based online, the more interviews with employers are based online, and the use of video chat for me was a big no-go. Now, I do it daily for eight hours a day. I’ve got used to it, so I do think we will start to see, for 2020, 2021, graduates being generally better in conducting video interviews, looking at eye contact.

That’s very difficult to not look at yourself in the corner, so what I actually do is I actually put a Post-It note over my face so I’m not looking at myself, and the movements I’m making, and cringing at every kind of facial expression I’m making. I actually then look at the camera, so I’m actually giving the person at the other end some type of eye contact. Whilst the video interviews are not in a real-time situation, to give an eye contact as a recording is even more powerful, I think, because that would impress me if somebody could look directly in the camera and give me a straightforward answer that was the answer that I wanted to hear, or I believe what they said, the rapport automatically builds an extra 10% with that particular person.

That would be my biggest thing: cover your face up on the video if you have one that you can see, look directly at the camera, and my biggest piece of advice is smile. A smile goes a huge, huge way in no matter what organization. The answers may be brilliant, but if you don’t show your personality within Computacenter, it’s really difficult to know whether we could put you in front of a customer because customers like to smile, funnily enough, and they like to be interested in the person. Smile, look at the camera, and try and relax.

James: Yeah, that’s great advice, and I love the point about the Post-It note. It’s just instinctive, isn’t it? You sort of see yourself in the corner, and your eyes just naturally gravitate to looking at yourself, and it’s such great advice. With the clients that I’m coaching at the moment, we’ve been doing mock recorded video interviews, and when they look at the camera, as you said, you really build the rapport. It’s as if they’re talking directly to you, but you notice so much when they do it, but also when they don’t do it when they’re looking, when their eyes are going around, they’re looking at themselves, or looking at notes, you just don’t have that — you don’t feel the rapport. It’s such a skill to do just to keep looking at the webcam.

Craig: Agree, and just showing your personality. I think, over the years, we’ve kind of all got used to reviewing videos within the graduate recruitment world, and the ones we remember are the ones that, yes, they’ve done their research, yes they’ve practiced their technology, and they are looking at the camera, they are dressed smartly, but also they show a little bit about their personality. We’re not saying, “Jump around if you’re not that kind of person,” but just show us something that’s not robotic to show us that your — within Computacenter, very specific to us, show us that you could engage with the customer, show us that you have the ability to be a human being. We know we can teach you what you need to do the job. We just can’t teach you to necessarily be that human being that we may need.

Showing your personality, even if it is with the hand gestures, as long as you’re keeping the eye contact and you are getting some kind of rapport with the video that you’re recording, you’ve got to remember, this is a pre-recorded video. That will go a long, long way to getting you through to the next stage.

James: Do you allow retakes, or is it one shot only?

Craig: There’s at least one retake you’re allowed. We’re using a platform at the moment, and we are looking at additional ones, but on this occasion, we do allow one retake, a complete retake of each question. If you get the first question wrong and you want to retake it, that’s absolutely fine, but then you move on automatically to question 2, but if you want to retake question 2. It’s per question, one retake rather than one retake to do all three.

James: Okay, so the pressure’s off to a certain extent.

Craig: A little bit, but there’s definitely that preparation time that’s needed before each question, which the platform does allow you to do.

James: Excellent, and in terms, then, of the questions overall, is there are a focus with Computacenter on competency questions, or strengths-based questions, or is it a mix?

Craig: There’s no competency-based question or strengths-based questions at all actually. They’re really simple ones that if you’ve done your research as an organization, and also into the graduate programs and why a graduate might want to work in that particular sector. It’s all about them and a little bit about what they know about us. There’s nothing in there by the time we’ve done this because we’ve saved those for either the kind of face-to-face interview or the assessment centre. I think everybody knows, and a competency-based question will come up at some point, but the video interview’s more about us getting to know the person, and what’s their motivation, why do they want to work for us, and what can we see in their video that really interests us that we can see that potential?

James: As a rule of thumb, from the percentage of people that apply or from the people that apply, what percentage would make it past the recorded video interview?

Craig: Rule of thumb? I think it’s different for each program because each program is looking for slightly different behaviours. If you think sales, for example, looking for that kind of winning mentality, and so anybody that can talk about their sporting background as a metaphor for why they could be good in sales, et cetera, then that’s what they would look for. But, overall we would see, based on the quality and the personality, probably about 60% get through the video stage for the majority of our graduate programs, which is quite high, but we’ve trained our business to really think about potential rather than what they’re seeing in the now.

About 60%, but I think, in previous years, when the technology hasn’t necessarily been their strongest point in terms of the practice or the using it, this year I think will be different. There has been about a third that have gone through in the past, but we’re hopeful for 2021 it’s going to be about 60%.

James: Excellent. That’s really promising. Moving onto the next stage, then, for a couple of the schemes, which is the face-to-face. Virtual, but face-to-face interview. What advice would you give people for this stage? How can they stand out?

Craig: Yeah, this is a strange year, isn’t it, and ideally we would love to be running 60 to 100 face-to-face interviews on-site or headquarters in Hertfordshire, but alas, we will be moving to the virtual world. I think a lot of the advice I’ve given for their pre-recorded videos still stands: eye contact, dressing smart, showing personality, but they’ve got to remember there’s somebody at the other end of the phone now, the other end of the screen, and there’s no retakes. They’ve got to really put in the effort. We find a lot of the people that have got through to that video, they’re often the hardest parts of any process, and including for us because you haven’t actually had much interaction with a Computacenter employee up until that point, then you kind of come to try to impress — I say impress. That’s the wrong word, but try to kind of influence somebody, a director within our organization.

These are senior people that have been a graduate, majority of them, in the past. Whether it be with us or with other organizations, they know exactly what it’s like to be filled with nerves in that interview. I give a lot of advice, and I think this podcast is probably not long enough to go into complete interview advice, but video interviews are very different. You’ve got to be prepared, you’ve got to be dressed smartly. One of the biggest things I think that people may mistake is your background, your environment you’re working in. Please don’t do it in a really small bedroom, if at all possible, because after an hour, it becomes very claustrophobic, and you could find it really overwhelming. Try and think about the environment you’re going to be doing your interview in. If you possibly can, acquire an environment. Everybody’s got dogs and animals, everyone’s used to that now, but if you want to get the best out of yourself, try and think about it in advance: prepare, prepare, prepare.

I think Computacenter is such an unknown quantity, James, that a lot of people would then go directly to the website and do their little bit of research on the front one or two pages of it. We hear that a lot. We hear it all the time. When we do hear something that’s a bit more granular, a bit more interesting about what they’ve seen either in the news, or the stock market, or the FT, or even what they’ve heard on a virtual career fair with someone like myself, an ambassador of CC, that really hammers home their interests. The amount of effort that they’ve gone in to do that, why is that important? Because we want them to do research into our customers, and the people that they’re going to meet, and the type of products they already use, and the type of customers they already have, and what’s going on in the big wide world of our customers to really understand what we need to sell to our customers.

The research piece is a fundamental, massive part of the interview. It’s the first 10 minutes, 15 minutes is about what they know, and if they don’t know very much, the rest of the interview’s quite a difficult one to get through.

James: Completely.

Craig: That would be the biggest one from my perspective.

James: That’s really good advice, and when I was interviewing, it’s such a key differentiator just to see the people who’ve put the effort in to know about the role in the company than people who don’t. Like you said, when people don’t, the interview’s only going one way, really.

Craig: Absolutely. The majority, they’re going to get an opportunity to meet a really senior person within our business, and also a graduate who’s been in their shoes probably a year prior. The opportunity to ask questions to these people will not only give the answers to questions that they want to know to decide whether Computacenter is the company they want to start their career in sales, or project management, or business management in, but also shows the interviewer and the graduate. This person wants to know about us. This person is really interested in what we do, or the customers we work with, or the development plans they may go through. If we invest time and money into developing them, we’re going to get something out of it as well.

The questions they ask is so fundamentally important at the end, so come into the interview with plenty of questions in mind, bearing in mind probably five or half of the questions that you may prepare might get answered as part of the conversation. Too many times do we have maybe, “I prepared a question, but you’ve already answered it,” kind of scenario. It’s quite an awkward situation, so go in there with plenty of questions and really left field questions that might give you those answers that you want to know about Computacenter, the people. We’re human beings. We are really open people and anybody can ask anything, really.

James: It’s great advice, and you’re going to be sat in front of a graduate and a senior director of the business, so this is an opportunity to find out about their experiences, what they enjoy about working at Computacenter, what are the biggest challenges that the graduate might have faced over the first year. You don’t ask those sort of questions, you don’t want to be asking, “So, how many days of holiday do I get?”

Craig: No, no, definitely not, no.

James: Let’s move onto, then, to the assessment centre, which I guess is virtual at the moment, and back to face-to-face as soon as the COVID situation will allow.

Craig: I hope so.

James: Have you tried to sort of directly replicate what was face-to-face into a virtual or had there been some, maybe, aspects of it that just didn’t work that you’ve had to sort of knock on the head?

Craig: You know what? I’m going to touch wood virtually here, I think we’ve been able to replicate everything that we wanted that we’re used to doing in a face-to-face environment into a virtual world, which is testament to the team behind those designs. When we go into an assessment centre, whether it’s for business management, or project management, or sales, we do zero IT testing. Just want to put it out there straight away, I’m a PE and geography teacher by trade, if I had to know any IT, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here now talking to you. There’s no IT fundamentals within any of the assessment centres.

I’ll go back to one of my points originally that we want to kind of see that pragmatic approach to problem-solving, and so we have designed the assessment centre without giving too much away. Can’t do that. We’ve designed the assessment centre to be really inclusive, really personal. I’ll come back to that point in just a moment, but pragmatic from our perspective as well. What kind of behaviours are we looking for, and the competencies you mentioned there earlier on. Competencies are massive with any type of organization, and even more so with us.

If you look at traditional competencies of teamwork and adapting, communication skills, the list goes on. We have designed an assessment centre that allows us to see those behaviours in action within different facets of the assessment centre. Whether it be within group exercises, or individual exercises, or an interview, there’s no testing. That’s a really good thing to note. The only testing that they actually do for us is actually at the SHL stage earlier on in the process. Assessment centre, there’s no tests, but you are assessed, which you could argue is a bit of a test.

One thing that we really like to do for both the sales and the business management graduate program, because they were both at the same cloth at the same time is you actually get to have an evening. What we used to have is an evening with our MD where we would host actually graduates and put them up in a hotel. This is the old world, but hopefully we can replicate it soon. Put them up in a hotel and you get about an hour with the MD, you get to meet all of his senior directors, his leadership team, have dinner, drinks, et cetera, to show that we are a company about people.

This year, whilst we can’t do dinner for our sales program, we’re actually going to still do an evening with the MD. We’re actually sending some treats out to those candidates that are successful to come along to the assessment day so they can still have that type of feeling, but more in a virtual environment, something that was probably done during the actual serious lockdown time: Zoom calls and having drinks, et cetera. We actually do that as part of an assessment centre because we want them to feel relaxed, and open, and honest from the minute that they join us, rather than feeling the nerves first thing in the morning. We’re doing that for both the sales and the business management. I’m hoping that we can replicate that for project management as well next spring.

That’s a really nice touch, and we think it just opens up conversations, and ultimately, whilst we’re doing some exercises to see some behaviours, it’s about conversation, it’s about the person, it’s about the practical way that they may approach something, yes, but how can they communicate that afterwards? Openness and honesty in those types of social environments can often give us a real flavour as to what they are like and who we are as well as organization.

James: It says a lot about the company that senior leadership like the MD invest their time in the graduate and the graduate intake, which is not something that a lot of companies do.

Craig: They say it’s their favourite part of the year. For the directors that I work with and all our MD, it often — he tells them in the assessment day that it’s the one time of year they really, really look forward to is the assessment day in the evening, meeting and greeting the new fresh talent that’s potentially going to come into our organization. It kind of gets them hungry to see what the markets are throwing up that year. They love it. It’s really hard sometimes to trap them down for a meeting, but the moment you say it’s the assessment centre for the graduate program, I’ve got millions of volunteers, so it’s good.

James: Thinking then about the different constituent parts for the assessment centre, do you do a virtual group exercise?

Craig: Yes, we do do a virtual group exercise. There’s a group exercise and a group presentation.

James: Any tips for the group exercise, which is difficult enough in person, but I guess there’s a whole new level of complexity when you’re all just seven faces around a Zoom call?

Craig: We haven’t done one yet, so this might be a bit early, but this is what I can foresee. I’ve been on loads of group meetings since March, and it’s often very difficult to get your point across when you’re in a group of maybe six or seven people. Our assessment centres are typically anywhere between 12 and 16 people per day. If you can do the math, groups of four to six people, it can be often hard to get heard, and I think there’s a fine balance. I’ve done assessment centres in my early careers when I was looking for jobs, and I crashed and burned in some, I’m not going to lie to you, and in others, I learnt from my mistakes.

One of the mistakes I used to do was I used to sit too much on the side-line, listen, which I’m very good at listening, but then I was never able to come back with almost a rebuttal of the particular opinion of another person, or I was never able to really find a nook or cranny to be able to get my idea in. Other people were heard and I wasn’t seen, really, so how could someone give me the job? My advice would be to kind of balance out the talking a lot versus the listening.

Listening is very, very important, but to be able to get your opinions across, but make sure they’re worthwhile opinions, in any group exercise, our assessors and assessors in other companies, they’re very well-trained. They can see when somebody’s trying to do something. If you’ve got something to say, make sure it’s worthwhile, make sure it’s something that’s relevant to the question or the conversation that you’re talking about the other thing is about collaboration, not competition, and I think, too often, we see it in the graduate world where people want to try and maybe climb over people to get the job. In fact, the opposite happens. It’s all about collaboration. I often challenge the businesses. If I give you 12 awesome candidates in an assessment centre and they’re all as good as each other, would you hire all 12? The answer is always yes. Ultimately, if someone wants to compete, then that’s absolutely fine, but just be wary that if you don’t collaborate at the same time, you may find yourself at the bottom of the pack.

James: That’s great advice. I think it’s a difficult mind-set for candidates to get their head around because, up until then, it is survival of the fittest. You are in competition against other people.

Craig: Agreed, yeah absolutely.

James: But then, when you get to the assessment centre, it flips around, as you said, and it’s about collaboration. It’s about, in the group exercise, how can you bring in the quieter people, how can you, “Oh, that was a really good point,” maybe build on it a bit, and how can you look to collaborate and not compete just to bring out the best in the people, and by that, bringing out the best in yourself?

Craig: We’re really proud. I run the assessment centres, and I’m really proud of the team and the way we design it to allow those people that are more introverted to be just as good or have just as much ability or opportunity to get a job as someone that’s more extroverted. I think it’s not being the loudest in the room or the virtual room, it’s not about the person who comes up with all of the ideas. It’s not even about the person that presents all of the ideas. It’s about the collaboration, the communication, the teamwork, how they adapt as a team, and the most successful graduates in any assessment centre that we’ve run have been those that want to work with others in their team to fulfil or to provide the solution that we’ve asked them to do.

If they come out of that and say, “We answer that question to the best of our ability and we all work together, 100% in a group exercise particularly,” then they’ve got every chance, then, to move onto the next stage or to be up at the top of the podium, so to speak.

James: Excellent. So much valuable content, Craig, today, but time is running away with us, so maybe one final question before we move onto the weekly staple questions. The interview, then, at the assessment centre stage, what advice would you give for this interview? Would it be with someone senior from the business or would it be someone from the recruitment team or a mix of both?

Craig: That’s a good point. The face-to-face interview they do prior to the assessment centre is, as I said, one of our directing staff. The majority of the interviews that are done at the assessment centre are often a bit shorter, funnily enough. They’re actually a little bit shorter because whilst we understand an interview is important, we put an equal weighting on all of the exercises throughout the day. It’s not all about the interview, just wanted to kind of let you know there, but the interview for the majority of the assessment centres, they’re done by the leadership team or the big cheesers, as they say, the big people within their departments.

They haven’t met these candidates before, they haven’t done the original interviews prior to the assessment centres, so they’re a new bunch of people. We sometimes do get graduates coming into those interviews as well, and we probably will try and do that for the upcoming ones in the spring, but they are very much building on the first interview prior to the assessment centre, looking at the exercises throughout the day that they’ve done, and finding out a bit more about — this is when the CV really, really becomes apparent, the modules that they’ve studied, what they’re interested in. We are interested in your hobbies. We do want to know what you do, we do want to know what you’re interested in because they’re conversation-starters with our customers, potentially. That’s really, really important.

We are looking for someone to open up, and every company’s got trained assessors, trained interviewers. We want people to open up, be honest, and talk about their strengths, talk about what they’re not so good at, which is really, really difficult for graduates to talk about. “I’m not very good at this,” is a really, really hard sentence to start with, but our interviews do not hold it against them. It’s almost like that’s a bonus because if they admit something, that they’re not good at something, then we know what we can start to work on if they have to join the program straight away. That would be probably about a 40-minute interview, I think. The first one before the assessment centre is up to an hour. This one’s only 40 minutes. It’s quite a nice relaxed atmosphere, but there will be a lot more drilling down into some of the competency questions and behavioural skills that we are looking for. Questions differ every single year, but nothing to be worried about.

James: It sounds like a really lean process compared to some people, and again, I like the previous graduates getting involved just to be able to share their opinion is a really nice touch. Excellent, so listeners, you need to check out the show notes at graduatejobpodcast.com/computacenter, and there’ll be a full transcript there and links to everything we discussed so you can download the transcript so you can take it away and digest all of Craig’s insights offline. Craig, let’s move onto the weekly staple questions, then. Question number 1, what one book would you point listeners towards?

Craig: We’ve discussed I’m not an avid reader, and I’d prefer to watch documentaries than read books. When I was, a couple of years ago, moved into a more senior management role, I got recommended to read “Who Moved my Cheese?” by Dr. Spencer Johnson, and I first heard the title, and I was, “Really, do I have to read a book about cheese?” I didn’t really understand. It’s a really short book, and I thought, “This is just going to be a bit of night-time reading, something to send me to sleep,” but I came out from reading. I’m not going to spoil the story, but it’s a metaphor story. I’m sure you’ve realized from the title, something to make you really think, and it definitely made me change. Thinking about change, the way I worked, the way I work with people, the way I interact with people, and I think Dr. Spencer Johnson was brilliant in writing this really short book. “Who Moved my Cheese” by Dr. Spencer Johnson.

James: A really good recommendation there, and like you said, a nice easy read, and if you’re going through times of change — I mean, we’re always going through times of change, but maybe just finishing university is a really good time to read this book, and you can have a think whether you in station A, B, or C. I won’t ruin the ending, like you said, but it’s one you can read in a one-hour sitting, but it’s one that really stays with you. I read it 15 years ago, and it’s still one I can think about. It’s one —

Craig: You can dip into it at different times as well when things are a bit stagnant. Maybe you’re not having the greatest time in your graduate applications, maybe there’s something in there that you’re just nailing into and go, “Okay, if I think about this in this way, then I may be successful in the next one,” so definitely something you can pick up every now and then, yeah.

James: Super, and good recommendation there, so off to a great start. Question number 2, what one website or internet resource would you point listeners towards?

Craig: Over lockdown, it was Amazon, but I can’t say that, so I’m going to keep it on topic, if that’s okay, James. I did a lecture in front of quite a number of students with a big Russell Group University a couple of years ago, and they asked me exactly the same question. At the time, we talked about video interviews. The general graduate population wasn’t doing great at video interviewing, so I actually put them onto themuse.com that I often pick up some interesting tips, and they’ve recently updated their sites to talk about video interviewing, and using the video platforms, and how to, they’ve put it, dazzle the hiring manager. I’m not necessarily saying that’s the best way to put it, but how to address the video platform interview because that is going to be the crux of many, many graduates out there that’s making an application. themuse.com is something that I actually go to to look at DNI, career path, job searching, video interview tips. It’s full of information that I often use when I go out to universities to give advice.

James: Excellent, and video interviews are not going anywhere.

Craig: No, they’re not.

James: They were growing in popularity, and then COVID has just meant that they’re only game in town for not only the different interview stages, but also probably for the assessment centre as well in the short-term. Make sure that you’ve got a good webcam, make sure that you’re comfortable in front of the webcam, and you’re aware of why you shouldn’t be on a laptop looking down at your screen sat behind an open window, why that’s not going to end well for you.

Craig: Totally.

James: Final question then today, what one tip would you give listeners that they can implement today to help them on their job search?

Craig: What one tip could I give that they could implement today? Be confident in your applications. Don’t necessarily think about that scattergun approach. Know where you want to go and what you want to do. I really hope that what we showcase within Computacenter is something that really interests you. Think outside of the box. Think outside that kind of blinkered approach. If you’re studying any degree, whether it be drama or PE — I never thought I’d work for an IT company. I thought I’d be teaching PE in Australia. That’s the way life has gone. Think about the opportunities any company could offer you, rather than necessarily the names that you know. Really be confident in who you’re applying to, know what they actually need from you, know what stages you need to go through to get to that particular job, know what values are within an organization so that you can really hone in on those, should you get to an interview. I suppose I will finish this by saying from our perspective, be yourself. Just be who you are, don’t try and fit any mould. Be who you are, and that way, you know you’re being true to yourself. That’s what we are as a business. We know we are true to ourselves, we know what we are, we know what we can do, we know what we can’t do. That’s what we look for in graduates and entry-level people. Good luck, just be yourself.

James: I think confidence is a really important point because if you can’t convince yourself that you deserve the job, it’s going to be really difficult to convince Craig that you deserve the job. Have that confidence that you can do it, that you’re the right candidate, and as Craig mentioned earlier, they’re not looking for the finished product. This is a graduate scheme. They’re looking for graduates, so they know that you aren’t the finished product. You might not have the work experience in the IT industry, but they’re looking for people who can show the skills, show that they’ve done different things, have the confidence in their abilities, and you can, as we talked about earlier, go great places, and look at the people who’ve joined the graduate scheme and have gone on to be in senior positions. That’s always a good sign. Craig, thank you so much for appearing on the Graduate Job Podcast today.

Craig: My pleasure.

James: What is the best way that people can find out more about Computacenter?

Craig: Probably learning how to spell “Computacenter”. It’s spelled a slightly different way. It’s C-O-M-P-U-T-A-C-E-N-T-E-R. We’re not an American company; we are British-born, but our two founders met at Harvard Business School, and they thought it’d be a bit unique. Computacenter.com for the general website, but if you’ve go to jobs.careers.com, that’s where you will find our job vacancies for graduate programs and information around our future talent schemes. Hopefully, we’ll get to meet some of you that are listening very, very soon.

James: Thank you for coming on the show, Craig.

Craig: My pleasure. Thanks, James.

James: Many thanks again to Craig for all of his insight today.A fast-growing company and some brilliant graduate schemes with real leadership buy in from the top of the organisation, what is not to like. You are going to be hard pushed to find where the MD of a large company gives up his time to come to an assessment centre, so that is a great sign that they really value the graduates, so check out the show notes at graduatejobpodcast.com/Computacenter. Remember its got a funny spelling of Computacenter. As Craig mentioned the numbers they take is intentionally small, and as a result its going to be competitive, so make sure that you are giving yourself the best possible chance of success and let me help you with coaching through the application process. My coaching is entirely flexible so we will work on whatever you need, it to be, be it a 1 off session to get you ready for the recorded video interview, or a block of sessions to help throughout the whole application process from the interview stage through to the assessment centre so that you can walk in confident that you will perform at your best. You only get one shot each year to apply, so if Computacenter is the scheme for you, invest in yourself, take action, and get expert coaching so you can be one of their new graduates. I offer a completely free 30-minute coaching session with me where we can go over your applications, or do mock interview practice, or whatever you want to focus on. It’s completely free, so take advantage of it, again, find the details in the show notes at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/computacenter. Join me next week where I have John Lees back on the show and we discuss how to find a graduate job you love. It’s a goodie. I hope you enjoyed the episode today, but more importantly; I hope you use it and apply it. See you next week.