Strategize Your 2024 Campus Recruitment: A Foolproof Guide

On-campus recruiting is about finding, attracting, engaging and hiring entry-level professionals, interns and freshmen on campus. This often involves collaborating and building close relationships with the university's Career Center and participating in career fairs at universities in order to get to know young talents and university graduates personally.

In addition, the recruitment of university graduates is of great importance for companies, as the labor market is currently very tight and companies need help finding suitable applicants. Therefore, the nearly 20 million college students in the U.S. represent an invaluable talent pool that meets immediate workforce needs and serves as a future talent pipeline, according to the NCES Fast Facts report.

The key players driving the campus recruiting process are employers, campus recruiters, university career development centers, human resources managers, hiring managers, recruiting firms, and recruiting software.

To hire better employees faster, companies are maximizing their on-campus recruiting efforts and looking for ways to improve the on-campus recruiting workflow.

This blog explores the most effective campus recruiting strategies and innovative ideas for attracting the best talent to college campuses. So, let's get started!

Effective strategies for your next campus recruiting

1.Pre-plan activities for effective on-campus recruiting

The recruiting team must establish a strategic plan before conducting campus recruitment and propose future obstacles that may arise and likely solutions to mitigate them.

Define goals for the job fair

Setting clear goals for the job fair allows the recruiting team to identify the best potential talent and build a concrete pipeline of young talent. It also helps the team communicate hiring goals and company culture to candidates at events such as co-op programs, summer jobs, and internships. Therefore, the campus recruiters must work with all departments of the company to understand the hiring requirements and subsequent hiring goals.

Assess relationships on campus

Employers, hiring managers, and recruiters must select career centers and on-campus organizations very carefully. It would be foolish to pursue ineffective university partnerships or career centers that do not provide quality hires because their resources and time are limited.

The team can use references from previous years to identify the best programs, schools and universities that offer suitable talent. Once you have found the best ones, you should not hesitate to contact the respective career centers.

Find and choose a company representative

The company representative is the face of the company. He/she will be the first person to greet applicants and introduce the company. Therefore, it is extremely important for companies to choose the right representatives as they do not get a second chance to make a positive first impression.

When selecting a representative, the company should ensure that he/she has thorough knowledge of the open position and the company culture and is enthusiastic about the company.

Presence at the job fair

The use of online campus recruiting software to promote career fairs or company exposure and increase pre-registration. The recruitment marketing team can be creative and share information on social media platforms with the sign-up link and offer them a section on your careers page where interested candidates can apply and upload their CV.

Also, run email campaigns to reach out to the potential talent you've met over the last year and send them an engaging email with a sign-up link.

Create engaging promotional content

Students can easily access information about the company and potential employers online by visiting the company's website, social media platforms and third-party review portals. Therefore, it is important to design helpful content that is aimed at college graduates and effectively conveys your messages to the target audience.

For example, if your company is hiring marketing and sales people, you should explain the career path for entry-level professionals at your company. On the other hand, for sales roles, the company can showcase the sales department's greatest accomplishment or the challenging sales campaign the team successfully executed.

Plan the logistics for the job fair

In addition to creating compelling content, the team also has to take care of the logistics of the job fair. This includes sourcing materials such as business cards, name tags, booth attractions, promotional gifts, tablets, etc.

Early planning allows the team to brainstorm what, when, where, and how to acquire resources for the job fair. In addition, the HR manager should develop the plan with a schedule for material pickup and drop-off, booth setup, and each team member's key tasks for attendees.

Training the hiring team

To avoid hiring chaos, training the team is a good idea. Employers need to clearly communicate their hiring needs and the metrics they want to achieve at the end of the hiring process. Additionally, the hiring manager can assign specific hiring tasks to team members. This way the hiring process becomes more structured.

Create a plan for post-job fair communication

Job fairs offer applicants wonderful opportunities to get to know the company culture, get in touch with them and make personal contacts. On the other hand, it allows HR managers on campus to build positive relationships with potential talent. Therefore, the recruiting team must have a plan for effective communication and interaction with potential candidates after the career fair.

The saying is true: “A simple gesture of consideration can lead to unexpected results”. So the hiring team needs to make small efforts to interact and can use hiring software that allows them to personalize emails to candidates, confirm visiting their booth and encourage them to schedule an interview .

2.Advertise and communicate on-campus recruiting

The Glassdoor survey found that 79% of active global candidates are likely to use social media to search for jobs. This allows the recruiting team to take advantage of social media by engaging with active candidates and building strong relationships with them. Make sure your social media marketing strategy portrays the company as the best place to work for young professionals to learn new things and grow professionally.

In addition to effectively communicating company culture, HR managers can immediately respond to applicants' questions via social media platforms. One thing that recruiters need to keep in mind is that the content they create should be discoverable and mobile-friendly as young talents use this platform to explore career opportunities. Additionally, recruiters actively interact and stay in touch with their previous top candidates and former interns found through social media. The team must support their professional development and offer them the opportunity to join the company.

3.Opt for tech solutions for efficient on-campus hiring

On-campus recruiting tools can speed up the process, save time, and most importantly, be cost-effective. Therefore, campus recruiters need to stay abreast of the rapidly changing work landscape and determine the recruiting tools that make them efficient.

When choosing the right recruiting tool for on-campus recruiting, recruiters need to remember the recruiting goals they want to achieve and the stages and tasks of the hiring workflow after deciding that they need different recruiting solutions for an effective recruiting process on the campus Explore campus.

First, the team needed top-notch virtual event software to conduct job fairs remotely and engage with freshers virtually. Online tools like Brazen can be of great help to recruiters and HR managers to conduct virtual job fairs and networking sessions with ease. The tool also allows recruiters and applicants to have personal conversations via web chat.

Second, campus recruiters can use AI-powered recruiting software such as Applicant Tracking System and Candidate Relationship Management Software to smoothly manage campus recruiting. By using such software, recruiters can efficiently and easily perform tasks such as recruitment marketing, applicant screening, automatic resume screening, scheduling interviews, conducting video interviews or one-on-one interviews, sending offer letters, managing offer letters, and smooth onboarding. This all-in-one hiring software makes recruiting entry-level professionals more efficient.

4.Partnership and collaboration with the university's career service

Universities offer career service centers to support their students and help them connect with potential employers. Companies can use this opportunity to improve their image in the eyes of students by inviting their younger peers who have a fresh perspective on the transition from college to work and delve deeper into the topics that interest them. The Career Service Center offers companies the opportunity to advertise their positive corporate culture, opportunities for advancement, diversity and the compatibility of work and family.

By working with the university's careers service, companies can host and sponsor student-focused events and contact potential applicants to join them.

5.Efficient resume and interview screening

Resume screening can be done easily and effortlessly with AI-powered features of hiring software like Resume Parser. The tools import resumes from various job boards and scan thousands of graduate resumes, detect relevant keywords and find suitable candidates for the interview round.

The interview is of utmost importance for recruiters and hiring managers. To make them efficient, an interview management tool is very useful to control the workflow.

Both tools are designed to automate the hiring process and reduce the time and cost of hiring, which is the company's main goal.

6.Effective onboarding

Onboarding is an incredibly important phase as it increases the company's employee retention rate. Therefore, using the right tools to create positive experiences for newcomers and early career employees can build healthy and long-term relationships with employees.

Hiring software offers features for smooth onboarding. Once the student accepts the offer, the applicant's status will be set to "hired." It automatically sends a welcome email and requests the documents for the verification process. The onboarding function also provides new employees with information about the company, employees and tasks via email.

7.Key metrics to improve on-campus recruiting

It is incredibly important for campus recruiters to measure the success of the recruiting process. Tracking recruiting metrics is therefore the way to calculate workflow efficiency. Additionally, the recruiting KPIs enable the campus recruiting team to drive a data-driven process and improve and adapt recruiting. The metrics must be aligned with the organization’s recruiting goal.

The following image is the best representation of the company goal and recruiting metrics that HR managers and recruiters need to keep in mind to measure the ROI of the talent acquisition process.

Benefits of Campus Recruitment

A survey conducted by NACE found that 56% of respondents said they would increase their hiring of students and 41% would maintain this number because of the many benefits it offers. On-campus recruiting allows the company to hire young, talented minds to meet the demands of working in new technologies.

Additionally, in today's fast-paced world, HR managers want to save time, money and effort in the hiring process. On-campus recruiting allows them to directly engage and coordinate with students. This advantage simplifies the hiring process.

New entrants are more loyal to their employers, and making them feel valued as part of the on-campus recruiting process increases employee retention rates and productivity. Clear communication also plays an important role in increasing employee loyalty to the company.

The main benefit for employers who recruit on campus is that they offer high levels of confidence, passion and commitment to candidates who have a fresh perspective on the real world.

Along with experience with new technologies, freshmen learn quickly and are good at multitasking. They are also excited about learning new skills early in their careers and want to learn a lot in their early stages.

Final thoughts on campus recruiting strategy

In conclusion, there are many unique opportunities to attract and hire college graduates online or offline. Organizing virtual job fairs, employer webinars, hackathons, micro-events, internships and internship programs are such ideas that open the doors for companies to build a strong recruitment pipeline.

In addition to hosting talent acquisition events, on-campus talent acquisition can be accomplished through strategic planning, collaboration with the recruiting team and hiring managers, networking with target institutions and building strong relationships with them, promoting employer branding, and reaching out to candidates via social media platforms.

Invest in campus recruiting to tap into a pool of talented fresh graduates. Enhance your strategy with IceHrm's advanced HR solutions for seamless onboarding and recruitment.