Top Techniques for Finding the Best Candidates Before They Graduate from College

Posted on by Buyer Advertising

image_017The thought of college recruiting conjures up visions of career fairs with booth after booth of local companies trying to snag the best candidates. If participation in career fairs is your entire college recruitment plan, you’re doing it wrong.

There are a number of steps to be taken prior to a career fair that will identify the best candidates before graduation day:

  • Work with the right schools – the ones with a focus on majors and skill sets that fit your hiring needs, whether you’re looking to hire accountants, engineers, or computer programmers.
  • Build a relationship with the school’s career center.
  • Identify career-related student clubs that target your ideal candidate pool and get involved with them. Offer to have one of your managers give a presentation to the club. Without revealing proprietary information, your representative could present a current issue looking for a resolution and ask the group how they would handle it.
  • Ask employees who are alumni of your target schools to get involved with the career center and student clubs. They’ll have automatic street cred because they’ll be able to identify with the students’ experiences firsthand. Offer to make a presentation to a class.
  • Make use of social media networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and make sure your website is engaging for those that want to learn more about your company. Today’s millennials want to work for tech-savvy companies. Consider making videos of employees talking about what they do, what they like about working there, and what the culture of your organization is like.
  • Create an internship program. A survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers showed an overall conversion rate for turning interns into full-time employers hit an all-time high of 58.6% [1]. First, you’ll have a hard-working intern who wants to prove their value. If the intern is successful and demonstrates that they’re a good fit with the culture of your company, you have first dibs at offering them a position. However, the story doesn’t end there – you can send that individual back to their alma mater as your recruiting representative where they’ll be able to tell their own success story to hopeful applicants in the current internship program.

[1] http://webs.purduecal.edu/business/internships/facts-about-internships/