We are Thames Water
We're the UK's largest water provider, with over 15 million customers to serve every day. Water is essential to daily life, and that means our business is always open. We make a difference daily to millions of customers by supplying 2.7 billion litres of water to around 10 million homes. Our main role is to ensure customers can turn on the tap and get world class drinking water 24/7. We also safely transport and treat waste, returning it back to the environment.
About the role
Our newly formed Skills and Emerging Talent Team is seeking a Graduates Engagement Partner to join our growing team.
The Graduates Engagement Partner is a trusted and knowledgeable person within the business who promotes and supports all graduate delivery across the business. You will work in partnership with internal colleagues across the business the role holder is a key contact for graduates and line managers throughout their graduate programme.
This role will be covering London and the Thames Valley region.
What you’ll be doing:
- Use data to understand graduate requirements to meet the needs of the business and ensure that individual and team starts targets are met
- Work with Internal stakeholders to ensure graduate placement offers are secured and communicated effectively to all key stakeholders.
- Work with our resourcing team to ensure graduate intake applications align to roles and annual requirements are monitored throughout and to support the delivery of group assessments/interviews and on-boarding for new graduate intakes both internally & externally.
- Work closely with the employment & skills and education teams to encourage and promote external applications to Thames Water.
- Lead along with line managers and the Graduates manager detailed placement programmes in all areas of the business.
- Organise and deliver the Graduate Induction programme.
- Carry out and document outcomes of regular (face to face and virtual) graduate engagement reviews and activities progressing any actions required
- Tailoring support to ensure additional pastoral support for those graduates who may have come from a disadvantaged background or facing additional barriers. Work closely with the Employment & Skills teams and/or any specialist referral organisations to maximise support packages and opportunities available
- Deliver on-site tutorials and small group workshops to encourage graduate development ensuring outcomes and impact of the sessions are captured
- Plan and manage graduate rotations throughout programmes.
- Ensure all graduates have an assigned line manager throughout and to build good working relationships with graduates and line managers in relevant business areas.
- Ensure relevant systems, documents and files are maintained and up to date.
- Co-ordinate Lunch and Learn sessions for internal colleagues for new graduate programmes.
- Support and lead the off-boarding of graduates into their roles.
- Engage where appropriate with colleagues from other water companies to share best practice on the graduate engagement journey.
- Promote and lead on graduate networking & development opportunities both internally and externally.
- Lead on organising additional learning and development opportunities for graduates
- Attend internal/external graduate career events when required to drive our diversity & inclusion pipeline and to support our graduate recruitment.
What we’re looking for:
- Ideally experience in leading early career programmes in particular graduate programmes
- Understand Management Information Systems to be able to demonstrate and monitor progression towards achievement targets
- Experience in being responsible for own workload, diary management and working independently to tight schedules
- Ideally knowledge and experience in learner safeguarding and wellbeing
- Experience of working with external stakeholders and managing day to day relationships
- Experience of the recruitment process
- Training knowledge with the ability to design and deliver training at all levels
- Strong communication and interpersonal skills with ability to influence
- Great at working with, understanding and motivating people
- Presentation skills and experience in delivering briefing sessions
Here’s why you should join us!
We’re proud of the positive ways of working we have adopted during the pandemic. We want to create a more flexible and dynamic environment so all our colleagues can thrive. For our office-based roles we are moving to a hybrid approach where we will provide options around working from our offices, our operational sites and home dependent on role/team/individual. This will be discussed during the assessment process.
Thames Water is a rewarding and diverse place to work. If you join us, you’ll enjoy our flexible working arrangements and be supported with progression and development opportunities. We’re proud to be a Stonewall Diversity Champion, Disability Confident Leader, Times Top 50 Employer for Women, Race at work charter signatory and Carer Confident great place to work. We also support local events and charities.
Our competitive salary package includes an excellent contributory pension, 26 days holiday per year, increasing with length of service, access to money saving and benefits schemes and much more!
You can find our more in our working for us section of our website.