Key insights include:

According to Aptitude Research Partners, approximately 70% of employers will be hiring college graduates this year. To keep up with the competition and find qualified candidates, employers need to meet students and graduates where they are — on college and university campuses.

Let’s dig into the whys and hows of campus recruiting.

What is Campus Recruitment?

Campus recruitment is a strategy for sourcing, engaging and hiring young talent for internship and entry-level positions. College recruiting is typically a tactic for medium- to large-sized companies with high-volume recruiting needs, but can range from small efforts (like working with university career centers to source potential candidates) to large-scale operations (like visiting a wide array of colleges and attending recruiting events throughout the spring and fall semester). Campus recruitment often involves working with university career services centers and attending career fairs to meet in-person with college students and recent graduates. Some industries participate in campus recruiting more than others; finance, technology, business consulting, manufacturing and engineering are a few of the most popular.

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Why Should You Recruit on Campus?

Recruiting on campus also offers easy access to the youngest generation of talent. Generation Z is expected to make up 30% of the workforce by 2030, and this digital-native generation is likely to have a significant impact on your organization. With a thriving understanding of technology, Gen Z is motivated by meaningful work and the opportunity to develop their professional skills. Campus recruitment is the best way to tap into this new generation of talent.

Learn more about why you should recruit on campus

What Does a Campus Recruiter Do?

Campus recruiters search for talent at college campuses, traveling to schools across the country to meet young, energetic talent. Sounds fun, huh?  Beyond traveling and connecting with students, campus recruiters’ primary purpose is to source, attract, and ultimately hire top talent.

A campus recruiter’s job responsibilities are wide-ranging and can vary depending on the season. To source potential candidates, campus recruiters are responsible for forming relationships with university career services centers to connect with students and plan on-campus information sessions and career fair appearances.

Like any position, a campus recruiter salary can vary. However, the average campus recruiter salary is about $65,000 annually or $20.02 hourly. These average compensation numbers include base salary, bonus, commission, and profit-sharing. Of course, the compensation package, including benefits offered, will vary from employer to employer.

Learn more about what campus recruiters do

How Do You Build a Campus Recruiting Team?

There’s no doubt that campus recruiting is crucial to your hiring practices. But how do you build a campus recruiting team?

Like any project, you need to have a plan in place before running to college campuses. Determine your organization’s goals for hiring.  Do you need undergraduate students? Are you searching for specific skills, such as computer programming or financial analysis? Look at your company’s geography as well.  Are you recruiting for your Chicago office, or for offices across the Midwest? By answering a few questions, you can then determine who needs to be on your campus recruiting team.

Once you nail down some basics, decide which employees and leaders need to be on the team. Do you need a small team of people in Chicago or do you also need people in St. Louis and Kansas City? Which employees will serve key roles, such as a director of campus recruiting, and which will serve in support roles?  How are those roles defined?

Once you align on your team and their responsibilities, create a plan to address how your multi-employee team will be managed. Which employees travel to universities and colleges? Which employees stay behind to manage the fort? At which schools will you recruit, either in person, through technology, or both? How will you gather the students’ information, such as resumes and applications, in a place where your team can have access?

By empowering your employees with recruitment software, you can more seamlessly organize not only your team but also your hiring process.

Learn more about building a campus recruiting team

College Recruitment Strategies

Most students attend college classes during fall and spring semesters, with some knocking out courses during summer sessions. However, for campus recruiting, there is no semester break. To broaden your talent pool while attracting high-caliber candidates, college recruitment strategies must focus on student engagement year-round.

Here are the basic components of any college recruitment strategy:

Know your audience

With Gen Z entering the workforce for the first time, you may need to adjust your recruiting strategy. Simply put, tactics that attracted millennial college students may not work with Gen Z. According to the 2019 Yello Recruiting Study, Gen Z has a unique set of expectations for their relationship with their recruiter, level of engagement throughout the hiring process, and job tenure once they’ve started with your company.

Build a talent community

A great campus recruitment strategy starts with candidate sourcing. Build a talent pipeline before you step foot on campus by reaching out to the career center. Ask for a list of students that might be interested in your company and invite them to join your talent community. Engage soon-to-be college graduates by sending regular communications about open entry-level positions, share key insights on your organization’s internship program, or let them know when you’ll be on campus for their university’s career fair.

Another great way to source young talent is through referrals from other recent college grads. Tap current interns or entry-level employees at your company to fill open roles, and ask them to invite their friends to join your talent community for future hiring updates.

Connect on campus

While technology has made it easier to stay in touch with students throughout the year, having a physical presence on campus is still important, especially because Gen Z candidates rank face-to-face interactions high on their list of preferred communication channels.

Make sure students show up when you’re on campus by developing a communication plan for before, during and after career fairs, and use the messaging channels that are most popular for Gen Z. Maximize your hiring event success by making sure your team is prepared with the tools and talking points they need. Reinvent your employer information sessions to build more engaging relationships with students.

Stay in touch throughout the year

It’s tempting to assume campus recruitment has two seasons: fall, when students arrive back on campus, and spring, when they’re getting ready to graduate. But just because it may seem like there’s a lull in college students‘ schedules doesn’t mean your recruiting strategy should screech to a halt. Keep recruiting throughout the year by touching base often, sharing compelling content, and investing in a digital campus recruitment strategy.

Make your hiring process more efficient

Use recruitment events software to attract young talent. Target potential candidates through email marketing campaigns, evaluate candidates using objective assessment criteria and metrics based on what your company needs as well as the position itself, and automate your interview scheduling.

Measure your efforts

Measure the success of your recruiting strategies through your software as well. Recruiting software provides valuable feedback to hiring managers, whether it measures the number of hires from a specific recruiting event or the number of emails opened during an email marketing campaign. Through these analytics, employers can determine where they need to improve or continue knocking it out of the park when it comes to recruitment and retention.

Meet your campus recruiting goals with these strategies

Budgeting for Campus Recruitment

When building your campus recruiting team, it’s important to mind your dollars and cents. With employees spending most of their time recruiting on campus, the cost of travel and lost productivity can hit your business hard without a budget strategy. However, campus recruiting is possible even for organizations with a limited budget.

When creating (or modifying) your campus recruitment budget, start with a clearly defined strategy. Understand your company’s needs. What is your current cost-per-hire, and how could you improve it by recruiting on campus? Are you pursuing undergraduates or graduate or doctoral students? Who from your company will attend recruiting events?  A junior or senior employee? How will you deck out your recruiting booth? Giving away any swag?

These are just some questions employers should consider when creating their campus recruitment budget. Remember, plan early and plan often.

Save these campus recruiting budgeting basics

How to Execute a Successful Campus Recruiting Event

70% of companies are recruiting on campus, which means pressure is mounting to stand out at career fairs and recruitment events.

Here are some recruiting event ideas to consider:

• Reach out to university career centers to source candidates and build a talent community before you show up on campus.
• Maximize your college recruiting efforts by attending on-campus  job fairs. Attend career fairs in person, but don’t forget to leverage technology, creating ongoing relationships with the students.
• Develop a recruitment event communications plan. With candidate sourcing technology, you can connect with young talent before you even step foot on campus (and before your competitors). With a quarter of college students looking for jobs within the first two years of college, employers need to meet these students where they are.
• Use recruitment event software to collect resumes and evaluate candidates during career fairs. You’ll be happy when you don’t have to manually enter hundreds of candidates into a spreadsheet post-job fair.
• Focus on metrics. How many resumes do you want to collect at each career fair? How many students do you want to engage by the end of the semester? Which universities are most successful in sourcing future hires?

Download the campus recruitment events checklist

Build your campus recruiting events around goals and objective criteria.  Not only will this help you fill any immediate needs you may have, but it will also allow you to develop a relationship with both the students and the schools, creating an executable and successful college recruiting program.

Learn more about how to execute a successful recruiting event

What is Campus Recruiting Software?

Recruiting on campus is one of the best ways to connect with qualified candidates — but if your recruitment event processes involve spreadsheets, tedious administrative tasks and manual reporting, campus recruitment software can help.

Event management software streamlines campus recruitment:

Pre-event

Let candidates register in advance, check in before the event and schedule interviews on-platform

During events

Collect resumes digitally, capture attendee data,  and evaluate candidates from a mobile device

Post-event

Re-engage event attendees with regular emails and texts, schedule interviews and assess event performance

Learn more about campus recruiting software

How to Engage a New Generation of Students

Recruiting is different for each generation, and Generation Z is no exception. To create a compelling college recruiting program, employers need to understand their audience. Learning how to recruit the youngest generation is key to not only implementing a successful hiring strategy but also attracting top talent.

Generation Z brings a whole new set of talents and expectations to the marketplace:

• Nearly one in five Gen Zers expect a job offer one week from the initial phone screen. The majority expect an offer within two weeks. 
• Gen Z has no patience for outdated recruiting technology. 46% have applied for a job on their mobile device, and 54% won’t complete an application if your recruiting methods are outdated.
• Gen Zers value face-to-face relationships and meaningful work: they rank their relationship with their recruiter as having the highest impact on their decision to accept a job.
• Gen Z wants their work to be meaningful: they rank job duties & responsibilities higher than any other generation when it comes to accepting or rejecting a job offer.
• Gen Z expects to job hop more than their millennial and Gen X counterparts: 55% plan to work for their current employer for less than three years.

Understanding who you’re recruiting will allow you to better engage with a new generation of students. Adapting your recruiting methods to the preferences and skillsets of Gen Z will help you secure a future of talent— today.

Learn more about Generation Z’s career expectations

Campus Recruitment Metrics and ROI

Measuring the effectiveness of your campus recruiting is key to the growth and development of your hiring efforts. Understanding your campus recruiting KPIs, such as time-to-hire and cost-per-hire, will allow you to understand your successes while identifying areas that need improvement through an objective lens.

“Talent acquisition is quite literally our business. Any time we’re not operationally excellent, that’s money that’s gone.”
— Adam Godson, SVP of Global Technology Solutions, Cielo*

*Source: #STRIVE19, The ROI of Recruiting Ops

According to an Aptitude Research Partners study, employers who recruit on campus are 3x more likely to improve retention, and 2x more likely to improve engagement and productivity. However, only 30% of companies have processes in place to measure their recruiting efforts, allowing them to capture this success.

To capture data, provide transparency, improve the candidate experience, and understand the impact on ROI, implement reporting processes that help your team streamline your recruiting efforts while making more informed hiring decisions. The more you know, the better your results.

Not sure what metrics to track? Think about your organization’s hiring goals. Are you looking to fill open positions more quickly? Do you want to establish a better employer brand on campus? Are you hoping to reduce hiring costs? Knowing what’s most important to your team will help you determine what to include in your reporting and analytics.

Learn more about how to measure your campus recruiting efforts

Download your own campus recruiting KPIs tracker