7 ideas to innovate your campus recruiting

Campus recruitment is one of the ideal ways for companies to discover and onboard new talent. It is a lengthy and multi-step process of identifying colleges, building a strong and receptive recruitment team to visit them, organising engaging programmes, screening suitable candidates and conducting interviews. Developing a successful and scalable campus hiring strategy to identify top talent presents many challenges. Carrying out the drive involves several campus visits, investing in the right resources and aligning with multiple stakeholders like recruiters, hiring managers, career development centres, and of course, students. The entire exercise requires the support of a wide array of functions encompassing strategy, technology, marketing and relationship building.
In the present scenario, where most recruitment is done remotely, organisations are investing extensively to augment digital processes while HR leaders are tasked with constructing an effective campus hiring strategy.

Here are some best practices to help you get optimal results from your campus recruiting drives:

Establish a strong brand

Employer branding can set an organisation on a sound path to finding top talent; companies that get their employer branding right attract the cream of available talent.. Establishing a strong brand helps students recognise your company on campus and generates enthusiasm for the roles open at your organisation. The various approaches to growing your brand on campus include hosting sessions to increase brand awareness, working with the career centre to advertise open positions, and promoting company culture. You can also bring a current employee who is an alumnus of the institute to share a new-hire perspective. Use social media to boost your presence and create engagement, and invite potential candidates to your talent pipeline.

Create an engaging career page

A well-designed, interactive careers page on your official website dedicated to digital campus hiring can help attract candidates. Through it, you can build your brand image and highlight its propositions and the high points of working in your organisation. You can showcase the benefits, rewards, unique company values, organisational culture and more in a way that strikes a chord with potential young recruits. A crisply worded job description can appeal to candidates and is very likely to influence their decisions.

Build a campus relationship

Develop and maintain a strong relationship with chosen institutes and their students. Being present at the campus a few times each year and engaging with students during their time at university will help create a lasting, positive image of the company. There are many ways to do this: mentoring students, conducting workshops and fun events like quizzes and hackathons, events, and offering a sponsorship for the college annual fest, if your budget allows for it. By building warm relationships with students, organisations can integrate their presence and brand voice with the college in an organic manner.

Start a Campus Ambassador Programme

Another strategy that companies can adopt is the Campus Ambassador Programme. This is an effective way for a company to maintain its brand presence on a college campus, even without actually being there. The programme allows organisations to enhance awareness about their products or services through a group of enthusiastic university students. In an Ambassador Programme, companies hire and appoint college students to represent and promote their brand and products or services on campus through a variety of promotional activities, including social media posts, video testimonials, partnering with student organisations, etc. These student ambassadors are coached by mentors and teachers to get a good grasp of the company’s offerings and processes. In turn, they assist other students in making career decisions by conducting workshops and seminars on behalf of the company.

Adopt a student referral program

A student referral program is an excellent way to create a talent pipeline through recent hires as word-of-mouth is still one of the most credible marketing initiatives. Recruiters can identify talent through a referral program that uses your current employees’ student networks. Students who are hired in turn refer their juniors from student clubs and other organisations to help the company select suitable candidates in a shorter time span and reduced costs.

Automate the recruitment process

Automation helps simplify the campus recruitment process. Recruiters therefore are increasingly relying on automation to streamline hiring processes and select the best suited candidates. The technology reduces administrative tasks in identifying candidates, eliminates hiring biases and even retains relevant data for future recruitment. Moreover, automation ensures precision and supports high volumes unlike lateral hiring. Automated assessments are a smart and effective recruitment approach to use minimal resources and achieve optimal success. HirePro campus hiring workflows are efficient remote college hiring platforms designed for high-volume college recruitment.

Select a hiring partner

Identifying a top-notch recruitment partner can reduce the workload substantially and also give you an edge over other organisations. A hiring partner can get you easy access to resources, innovative ideas, improved marketing and technical skills, besides frontloading the entire gamut of the hiring cycle. Using various hiring methods, a good hiring partner will help you pick out the best talent to match the available job positions.

Thanks to technological advances, campus recruitment methods are evolving at a rapid pace. Keep up with the times by staying innovative and optimising approaches that help you attract ideal candidates. Make sure to utilise the best technology available like AI-Based campus hiring tools to source and engage the best talent with a physical and virtual presence on campuses.