Rogers Cantel AT&T didn’t have time to “baby-sit” new grads, and so had decided to avoid hiring them, but those fresh minds proved too hard to resist, according to Laurie Seto.
Seto, vice-president of desktop and network applications at Rogers, said grads seemed to have very high salary expectations, which was another negative in hiring them. However, they had amazing skills and new ideas. Rogers took the first step by finding out exactly what grads wanted.
“We brought the best of our employees to sit through work fairs,” Seto said, adding at the end of it all, they decided to hire 30 grads as IT analysts.
They assigned each new hire a mentor and gave them three-to-six month jobs focused on high tech or hot project areas and told them that after two years they would have a full-time job with Rogers.
Seto noted they had to ensure the new employees had access to core skills training, so Rogers set up an Internet caf