By Jum Lamont, Managing Director, Amberjack Global
This week, I spent time with a room full of early talent leaders discussing a question that I think sits at the heart of many graduate programs today.
If you couldn’t invest equally across everything, what would you choose to prioritise?
It sounds simple.
But the moment people are forced to make trade-offs, the conversation gets interesting.
Because for most organisations, the challenge isn’t a lack of ideas. It isn’t a lack of commitment. And it certainly isn’t a lack of effort.
In fact, I’d argue the opposite.
Most early talent teams are working harder than ever.
They’re running attraction campaigns, managing increasingly complex recruitment processes, improving candidate experience, supporting graduates, engaging managers, delivering development programs, reporting on outcomes and responding to stakeholder demands.
The list keeps growing.
The resources often don’t.
And that’s where I think many programs are starting to feel the strain.
The Industry Has Become Very Good at Adding Things
Over the last decade, early talent has become significantly more sophisticated.
We’ve invested in better assessment.
Better technology.
Better attraction strategies.
Better candidate communication.
Better development.
Better data.
All of those things are positive.
But I often find myself asking a different question…
Are we adding things because they genuinely improve outcomes, or because we’ve become uncomfortable making choices?
Too many programs are trying to be exceptional at everything.
And when everything is a priority, nothing really is.
That’s often when investment gets spread thinly across a program and the areas that create the greatest long-term value don’t receive the attention they deserve.
Activity Doesn’t Automatically Create Impact
One of the biggest shifts I’ve noticed is in the questions organisations are asking.
For years, success was largely measured by whether roles were filled.
Today, leaders want more.
They’re asking:
- Are graduates becoming productive faster?
- Are they staying?
- Are we building capability for the future?
- Are managers equipped to support them?
- Can we clearly demonstrate value from the investment we’re making?
These are the right questions.
But they force us to think differently.
Because a recruitment process can be efficient without improving quality.
A development program can be popular without changing behaviour.
A great candidate experience can exist alongside poor retention.
A program can be incredibly busy without being particularly effective.
That’s the tension many organisations are now navigating.
The Biggest Leaks Often Happen After Hire
One observation I shared during the discussion generated a lot of debate.
Many organisations invest heavily at the front end of the journey.
Attraction.
Recruitment.
Assessment.
Candidate engagement.
And understandably so.
These things are visible.
They’re measurable.
They’re often easier to justify.
But some of the biggest value leaks occur after a candidate accepts the offer.
That’s where manager quality starts to matter.
That’s where capability is built, or isn’t.
That’s where graduates test whether the reality matches the expectations they were sold.
That’s where confidence grows.
Or disappears.
And that’s where organisations either realise the return on their investment or watch it slowly erode.
Moving beyond one-off touchpoints
One of the common challenges with Keep Warm is that organisations rely on isolated activities. A welcome email. A branded pack. A networking event. A message from the team.
All of these can be useful, but they are more powerful when they are part of a designed journey.
Across graduate employers, we consistently see stronger approaches where organisations combine several touchpoints rather than relying on a single communication.
The value is not just in each activity itself. It is in the cumulative effect that multiple touchpoints create.
A graduate who hears from a leader, meets their buddy, connects with peers, receives useful development content, sees real stories from current graduates and gets a clearer sense of what to expect is likely to feel very differently from someone who receives a few generic emails and then waits.
Managers Are Still The Most Underrated Lever experience
If there was one theme I kept coming back to throughout the workshop, it was managers.
Almost everybody agrees managers are critical to the success of a graduate program.
Yet many organisations continue to invest significantly more in processes than they do in manager capability.
That creates an interesting contradiction.
Because a graduate’s day-to-day experience is shaped far more by their manager than by any centralised program design.
In many ways, managers act as amplifiers of the investment organisations make in early talent. A great development experience, a strong onboarding process or a well-designed capability program only creates value if it translates into the day-to-day experience of graduates. Managers are often the connection point between what is designed centrally and what is actually experienced by the cohort.
You can build an exceptional attraction strategy.
You can invest in sophisticated assessment.
You can create brilliant development content.
But if managers aren’t equipped, engaged or clear on their role, the experience quickly becomes inconsistent.
In my experience, managers remain the biggest multiplier of graduate success.
They’re also one of the most overlooked investments.
I also think this creates an important challenge for early talent teams. Expectations continue to increase, but internal capacity doesn’t always grow at the same pace.
As a result, teams are increasingly having to make deliberate decisions about where they add the most value themselves and where they bring in external expertise, support or capability. That’s not a sign of failure. It’s often a sign of focus. The best teams I’ve worked with are very clear about what they own, what they need support with and where external partners can help accelerate outcomes.
What Organisations Protect Reveals What They Truly Value
he most revealing moment wasn’t when people were allocating investment.
It was when pressure was introduced.
Budget cuts.
Changing business priorities.
Competing stakeholder expectations.
The same challenges organisations face every day.
Suddenly teams had to decide what stayed and what went.
That’s when priorities became visible.
Because what organisations protect under pressure tells you far more than what’s written in a strategy document.
It reveals what they genuinely believe drives outcomes.
And that’s a useful challenge for all of us.
Not just asking where we’re investing.
But asking what we’d fight to keep if we couldn’t keep everything.
The Best Programs Aren’t Necessarily Bigger
Having worked across hundreds of graduate and early talent programs, I’m not convinced bigger budgets create better outcomes.
More often, it’s the organisations that are crystal clear on what they’re trying to achieve, where value is created, and where it leaks, that get the best results.
The strongest programs I’ve seen have one thing in common.
They know what they’re trying to achieve.
They know where value is created.
They know where value leaks.
And they’re willing to make deliberate choices about where to focus.
Not because everything else is unimportant.
But because they understand that every investment decision is also a decision not to invest somewhere else. That’s leadership.
And increasingly, I think it’s what early talent teams are being asked to do.
Final Thoughts
For me, the question coming out of the discussion wasn’t whether organisations need to do more.
Most are already doing plenty.
The better question is:
What are we designing for?
Because if we’re unclear about the outcome, it’s very easy to keep adding activity and convince ourselves we’re making progress.
The organisations creating the greatest impact aren’t necessarily doing more than everyone else.
They’re simply clearer about what matters most.
And then they’re disciplined enough to invest accordingly.
At Amberjack, we are experts in supporting organisations to build professional skills, confidence and capability to develop future-ready talent and emerging leaders.
