3 Takeaways from NACE26

We just got back from a few great days connecting with the early talent community in Denver at NACE26. Yello attended as a platinum sponsor, with speaking sessions, a rooftop happy hour, and plenty of conversations at our booth. It was also a big week for Yell as we debuted the AI Campus Recruiting Agent and announced a new partnership with Symplicity. More on both below — but first, here are three things I took away from our time in Denver.

1. AI is changing recruiting. But how you use it matters.

Most campus teams are using AI somewhere in their process, but according to our State of Campus Recruiting report, 26% of current AI usage is concentrated in sourcing and 25% in candidate communications, top-of-funnel activity. The area where AI could have the biggest impact, data analysis and proving ROI, is where it’s largely absent. That gap came up repeatedly in Denver. Recruiters aren’t looking for AI that makes decisions for them. They want it to handle the admin work and recurring tasks that eat into time they’d rather spend with candidates. Our session Can Campus Recruiting Be Autonomous? The Answer Is Complicated addressed this topic head on. Tamara Welch from LPL Financial, NACE’s Matthew Brink, and Yello’s Dan Bartfield explored whether the real goal is autonomous recruiting or simply freeing recruiters to focus on higher-value work. The audience firmly favored the latter. For AI to be effective, it has to be purpose-built for the unique needs and challenges of campus recruiting. By using AI to automate manual work, recruiters get more time to focus on the most important aspects of their hiring process, like engaging with candidates. Candidates have opinions here, too. Matthew noted that students are wary of employers who lean too heavily on AI in their hiring process, especially those who don’t disclose it. A process that feels impersonal can drive away qualified candidates and quietly damage your employer brand.

2. Employers are changing their approach to events.

The panelists in our second session Purpose Over Presence: Rethinking Your Event Strategy for Better ROI put a finer point on something a lot of campus teams are feeling. Vincent Bond from Synchrony, Kristin Leek from Boeing, and Christopher Cantu from Marathon Petroleum all described the same dynamic: application volumes keep climbing, but qualified candidates are harder to surface. AI-assisted resume tools are part of the reason. As Vince put it, every resume looks the same now. AI is fighting AI. Candidates are using AI generated resumes, and employers are using AI tools to evaluate those resumes. The response from these leaders was to invest earlier and more intentionally in relationships, largely through in-person events. The reality is that the purpose of the in-person event has changed. Instead of going to tons of career fairs, meeting with a high volume of candidates, and hoping you find the few candidates who are a good fit (while also measuring success by activity), employers are taking an outcomes based approach. They’re looking at which events drive the best return on investment and result in quality hires. Chris described career fairs as the “end zone” — the place where you close, not where you start. The groundwork happens months, sometimes even years before, through targeted events and consistent touchpoints. Relationship equity is the competitive edge in campus recruiting today and helps teams fight rising application volume and candidate fraud.

3. Reneges continue to be a challenge.

To piggyback off of the relationship building aspect of events, reneges were another hot topic at NACE26. Offer acceptance no longer means a done deal, and the teams handling it best are the ones who treat the post-offer period as an active recruiting phase. Consistent, personalized communication between offer and start date is a must-have to retain top talent. Panelists also noted their relationship building efforts at events keeps their renege rates low. In our virtual session Designing the Complete Journey: From Pre-Boarding to Off-Boarding, Yello’s Ahva Sadeghi shared the KEEP framework to help employers keep talent engaged throughout the entire candidate journey. KEEP stands for Kick Off, Engage, Enable, and Perform. Four pillars that take a candidate from offer acceptance to Day One. Ahva also shared insights around why candidates renege, the true cost for employers, and how Symba customers are reducing their renege rates by more than 55%.

Yello’s big announcements.

NACE26 was also where we introduced two big developments. We launched the Yello Campus Recruiting Agent (and showed it off). The new AI-powered agent automates manual work and simplifies building events, sourcing candidates, campaigning, and scheduling interviews, so recruiting teams can focus on engaging with candidates instead of managing software. Campus recruiting has been built around showing up to events and hoping the right candidates visit your booth. We’re flipping that model. Yello’s Campus Recruiting Agent identifies your best-fit candidates and pre-schedules interviews before the event even starts, handling the heavy lifting of building and managing your events, candidate matching and prioritizing, outreach, and interview scheduling so your recruiters don’t have to. Instead of going to an event and hoping the right candidates walk into their booth, you show up with an interview schedule full of candidates who actually fit their roles. We also announced a new partnership with Symplicity that gives Yello customers access to Symplicity’s network of more than 600,000 early talent candidates. Employers using the Yello Campus Recruiting Agent can now match against active candidates from the Symplicity database in addition to candidates from their own ATS, their Yello database, WayUp, and 35+ other sources across the web.

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