Graduates given initiative to drive exports for Irish host companies

Enterprise Ireland’s new graduate programme is placing 50 graduates abroad this month

YOU WON’T face a grouchy Sir Alan Sugar or have to nominate your colleagues for the sack, but Enterprise Ireland’s new apprentice-style graduate recruitment programme might just get you hired.

With the Union of Students in Ireland bemoaning a “lost generation”, with 1,000 people forced to leave Ireland every week, and a glut of recent TV programmes tracking their tearful exodus at the departure gates, it’s enough to give emigration a bad name.

Enterprise Ireland’s new Graduates 4 International Growth programme, however, is doing its best to make the leap for graduates to employment overseas a positive one – and with the first 50 participants trotting off around the globe this month, could this be Ireland’s first good news story about emigration?

“Graduates are being sent to market to support the current and long-term export development strategies of their Irish host companies,” explains John McGarr of Enterprise Ireland initiative. “They will be gaining tremendous international business experience while providing a vital service.”

But is this a zany government-sponsored grooming of graduates for export or a nifty idea that has linked the twin goals of export growth and graduate employment for gain?

Running in partnership with UCD’s Smurfit Graduate Business School, the scheme matches graduates to Irish firms looking to expand into overseas markets. Spending the first six months in Ireland learning the company’s business and attending UCD-run business lectures, the next 12 months has graduates posted overseas, implementing the sales strategies plotted in class.

If the 18-month pairing goes to plan, the host company grows its export sales and the graduate gets a job. If not, well, it could be a case of “you’re fired”. But with 18-months’ international experience and a postgraduate diploma in international growth from the Smurfit Business School under their belts, it’s the companies who may struggle to hang on to their proteges.

McGarr says the idea for the programme came from Enterprise Ireland’s client companies. “The programme was really designed with companies in mind. We talked about what might assist them with market development . . . You might be surprised to know that SMEs are not very good at thinking about their overseas marketing strategies,” he says.

The graduate recruits are essentially an extra pair of hands to help Irish companies to tap into overseas markets – and with even the dogs on Merrion Street barking about export-led recovery, the graduate programme seems to be a breathtakingly simple tool for making it happen.

But hopeful graduates must first go through some hoops. Aptitude tests, an assessment centre, rigorous interviews with Enterprise Ireland and with the company to which they are matched are all par for the course.

Damien McLoughlin, professor of marketing at the Smurfit school, says applicants are typically mid-20s, have at least a 2.2 degree in any discipline and less than two years’ business experience. The academic element of the programme, he says, is all about drilling graduates in driving growth for their host company.

“We focus on how to develop a customer value proposition for your firm in international markets – how do you work in an international environment and how do you build a sales plan for the company so that it’s not just a one-off sale,” he says. “We want the students to take absolute responsibility for the strategy of their firm in that market.”

John McGarr says Enterprise Ireland’s client companies are delighted with their young Smurfit-schooled foot soldiers. “Companies would say, ‘you are sending us graduates that have been 90 per cent pre-screened’,” says McGarr, “or, ‘we’re an engineering company in Cavan, we would not have been able to attract the talent you sent to us’.

McGarr says graduates, often bedazzled by the blue chips, forget there are other career options. “Some graduates don’t see the SME as a real opportunity. It’s only when they go into it they see how good it is.”

Of course, a very concrete boon for companies is that Enterprise Ireland subsidises the graduate’s salary for the 18 months. “These are entry-level jobs so we support a salary of up to €20,000 a year,” says McGarr. Larger companies are supported to the tune of 50 per cent of this salary and SMEs 70 per cent with overseas subsistence and accommodation payments to the graduate also made by Enterprise Ireland.

For Elizabeth Colon (29), placed in Edinburgh with Irish management consulting firm Vision, going abroad is a no-brainer.

“For our generation, it’s just so important to get international experience. The Irish market is quite small so most companies need to be thinking of an export strategy,” says the former primary teacher who completed a masters in international marketing before getting a place on the scheme.

Is she gaining good experience? “Obviously with an SME you are doing a bit of everything but certainly it’s not answering phones and it’s not standing at a photocopier – I haven’t done a bit of that.”

Fellow graduate Stephen Conway (24) is about to head off to Japan. An engineer with a masters in business management, he says: “I was applying to places and not really getting noticed.”

Matched to Glen Dimplex, he has spent six months learning the ropes at the company’s Ireland operations and is now limbering up to extend his Japanese language skills.

Fellow engineer Jer Galvin (32) is in Silicon Valley with the PM Group where the work will be a mix of “creating marketing materials, setting up exhibitions and market analysis”.

“It’s definitely given me an opportunity I wouldn’t have had for another few years,” he says.

However, is there an element of us investing in our brightest and best for export?

“I don’t think there’s any negative to this,” says Damien McLoughlin. “Ireland is a small open economy, we need to globalise our people. During the Celtic Tiger years, people forgot you had to get on your bike and go sell overseas. This is a great opportunity for the best young people in Ireland – they are not being exported, they are not emigrating, they are working on behalf of Irish firms to build our economy back to where it should be.”

The closing date for companies and graduates wanting to participate in the Graduates 4 International Growth programme is next Friday, August 12th.

enterprise-ireland.com