Falcorp has refined and reinvented its approach to graduate training to integrate structured mentorship, experiential learning and a focus on organisational culture and personal development, to help young professionals truly thrive.
The new model addresses common challenges of graduates taking years to become fully work-ready and productive, fast-tracking their progress and delivering a win-win for the company and its graduates. Falcorp believes this approach could help shape a more future-ready workforce across South Africa.
Komana Rakoma, Falcorp CME Chief Delivery Officer, and Vishal Phlad, Head of Falcorp’s CME business unit, explain that Falcorp has had graduate programmes and internships in place for several years. However, the company invested its resources and redesigned the programme some three years ago, aiming to achieve better outcomes for the organisation and the graduates.
The programme has grown year on year, with four graduates coming aboard in the first year, seven in year two, and nine this year. The new approach has been a resounding success, with all the graduates progressing to customer-facing roles in under a year, and all of them now either employed by Falcorp or on track to become permanent employees.
Rakoma says: “With our graduate programme, we set out to address challenges such as the need to attract a steady pipeline of talent and continuously build skills internally.”
The programme works with tertiary institutions and IT-focused organisations to recruit graduates with the right qualifications and attitude.
“Their qualifications have to match the services we offer, but equally importantly – we want people who are adaptable to change and who are aligned to our values and culture,” he says. “We also looked at what graduates want from a graduate programme and designed our programme to meet their needs. Typically, they don’t want to be involved in ‘pseudo projects’ – they want exposure and experience in real world projects. They also want opportunities to grow professionally, they want their voices to be heard and they want to be aligned with someone who understands them and their background.”
Falcorp’s structured programme begins with an orientation phase, then moves graduates into areas where they gain real world experience, later having opportunities to specialise and progress. Mentors and senior management monitor and support their progress.
Rakoma elaborates: “From the beginning, we work to instil a sense of accountability instead of just responsibility. We emphasise how their actions impact their team members and the brand as a whole, and train them to see themselves as entrepreneurs. We also have an organisational career path framework which we expose to them, showing how they can progress. We even go as far as advising them on how to build their personal brands and curate their social media to support their professional development. I always tell them: ‘Protect your brand as if your life depends on it.’ This helps them adopt a certain mindset and merge personal brand building with their professional life.”
Phlad says Falcorp’s previous graduate programmes, like many in the IT sector, tended to focus on technical skills only. “Integrating those technical skills with soft skills and problem-solving skills sometimes proved challenging. We took a step back and realised that as you progress through your career, you need a broad set of skills. So we designed our programme to deliver hard skills, soft skills and integrated skills. This has accelerated our graduates’ ability to take on customer-facing roles and progress faster. Traditionally, developers only start engaging heavily with customers later in their careers, but it can be difficult for them to develop that skill later in life. We try to help graduates develop those skills and that confidence early.”
Afralead Founding Partner, Dr Norah Clarke, an academic, researcher and entrepreneurship development expert who serves as an advisor to Falcorp, says graduates often have fears and uncertainties that make it difficult for them to transition successfully to the corporate world. “At a time when employment opportunities are such a privilege and so hard to come by, graduates have a lot of uncertainty and fear of failure. If there's a culture of fear within an organisation, young graduates don’t thrive,” she says.
“We can’t use the approaches we used a generation ago. Employers today need to be able to build a bridge between personal backgrounds and Gen Z culture to help graduates transition to the culture of the company. There are so many aspects to Falcorp’s programme that seem to be getting it right. The Falcorp culture creates both accountability and a form of safety that enables the graduates to thrive.”
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