Georg Fischer Machining Solutions (GFMS) is a division of the international industrial corporation Georg Fischer with its headquarters based in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. To support the human resource needs of the company, GFMS introduced a graduate talent program in 2013 to ensure a continual flow of innovative talents into the company. As a decrease in participants was observed since 2016, this thesis was commissioned to examine the reasoning behind the fluctuation and to propose recommendations to successfully integrate more graduates again.

The objective of the thesis is to analyze the core processes of the graduate talent program (GTP) followed by an interpretation of the results to propose improvements. Furthermore, a benchmark is established to classify the competitiveness of the GFMS GTP in the Swiss market. A questionnaire and interviews with internal GFMS stakeholders builds the foundation for the conducted analysis. Information gathered from the interviews is supplemented with a thorough examination of existing literature in the field of human resource management and specifically in the area of graduate talent management.

Following the throrough analysis of the program, it was identified that the GFMS GTP lacks a clearly formulated overall objective that subsequently results in an ambiguous understanding of the target group. Additionally, the social media and website appearances are not yet sufficiently adjusted to this target group. These issues are connected and, therefore, not only lead to complex hiring and administrative processes, but also to a lack in internal communication. Furthermore, the inadequate internal awareness also influences the lack of continued leadership development opportunities which negatively affects the retention of graduates following completion of the program. In addition to the results of the program analysis, five feasible recommendations have been proposed to counter the identified issues. Therefore, this thesis contributes to the overall human resource functions of GFMS through the conduction of an in-depth analysis of the GTP, an identification of problem areas, and a proposal of recommendations for improvement.