Step-By-Step Approach To Building A Winning Campus Recruitment Strategy

As per the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), 2020-2021, released in January 2023, student enrollments are at 4.13 crore - a 7.5% increase from 2019-20. Clearly, the talent pool of qualified candidates has never been bigger. And campus hiring is one of the most effective tools that organizations today can utilize to tap into this pool of suitable candidates. 

An effective campus hiring strategy goes a long way in connecting job seekers with employers. The next wave of campus recruits comprises Generation Z, aka the 'online' generation. It's imperative that organizations reach out to these recruits at the right time and in the right manner. This is where campus recruitment strategy comes into play. A mismanaged or ill-planned campus hiring strategy can lead to a loss of time and resources, not to mention missing out on the next wave of talented freshers and young professionals. 

Before we dig deeper into the steps, advantages and challenges of planning an effective campus hiring strategy, let's first understand what is campus recruitment. 

What is Campus Recruitment?

Campus recruitment is the process of sourcing, assessing, engaging and hiring talent from colleges and/or universities. It's also a branding exercise for organizations. Campus hiring allows organizations to enhance their brand recollection and build relationships with students. 

Campus hiring usually takes place for entry-level or junior roles in an organization. More often than not, the potential candidates are final-year students. However, for summer jobs or internships, organizations may also connect with college graduates in their first or second year of college.

Both large-scale and medium-scale organizations indulge in the campus recruitment process. While campus recruiters exist in almost all industries, business consulting, technology, and engineering have a stronger presence than others. 

Campus Recruitment: It's Not Just About Visiting Colleges

A common misconception is that campus recruitment is all about visiting colleges and recruiting on campus. While hiring on-campus is definitely a part of campus recruitment, there's a lot more to it than just visiting colleges. 

Campus recruitment is never just about the physical visit. Rather, it's a combination of outreach activities and in-person recruitment - all culminating in building a strong relationship with the youngest generation of talent, while also finding the best talent for entry-level positions. It can take place through virtual recruitment drives, physical visits, or a combination of both. 

Campus Hiring Strategy: Why Do Organizations Need It? 

The simple answer is to find better-qualified candidates and build a stronger connect with post-graduate and/or graduate students. Generation Z is expected to make up 30% of the workforce by 2030. This digital-native generation is likely to have a significant impact on any organization and a successful campus recruitment strategy can help organizations understand and engage this audience. 

In fact, Harvard Business Review states 45% of millennials hear about companies through on-campus recruitment drives. 

Most companies encounter a talent shortage when looking to hire entry-level employees in the firm. Freshers, right out of college and looking to build their careers, are ideal for such roles. And campus recruitment, which gives you access to hundreds of candidates under one roof, is the perfect way to connect with potential candidates. 

Why do you need a campus recruitment strategy?

It's one thing to consider connecting with campuses for recruitment. But developing a detailed strategy to approach campuses, engage with students, and find the right candidate for the role is a whole different ball game. 

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. Thus, it's important to build an efficient and innovative campus recruitment strategy - one that yields successful results for your campus recruitment efforts, while also setting you apart from the crowd. 

Yes, one of the main reasons why organizations need campus recruitment strategies is the increase in competition - not just among job seekers but also among employers. Reports indicate that 70% of companies are recruiting on campus, which means the pressure is mounting to stand out at career fairs and recruitment events. An innovative campus recruitment strategy is the answer to finding the brightest students from the lot. 

The 5 Stages Of Building A Campus Recruitment Strategy

Now that we've understood what campus recruitment is all about, and the difference an effective strategy can make, let's understand the basic steps of building a campus hiring strategy. 

Identify your needs and choose the right campuses

The first step in building any strategy is identifying your needs. It's crucial that you understand why, as an organization, are you engaging in campus hiring and what problem are you looking to solve. Once you've identified what you need, it's time for the second step of the first stage  - choosing the right campuses. 

India is home to over 1000 universities and 43,000+ colleges. If you start visiting all of these, then finding qualified candidates will be more difficult that even finding a needle in a haystack. Thus, campus recruiters need to shortlist the colleges they wish to attend. 

Pro Tip: Reach out to a college's career center and ask for information on graduates - this is data readily available with the center, as they often use this information for academic programs and official communication. 

Build the right assessment solution

Once you've understood why you're indulging in campus hiring and the colleges you're targeting, it's time to build an assessment framework. The assessment of candidates is important in any hiring strategy, including campus hiring - it's how you filter through the potential candidates to find the person best suited for the role. Some common assessment tools are: 

• Aptitude Tests
• Technical Tests
• Communication Skills Test
• Business Simulation/ Case Studies
• Coding Skills Test or Hackathons
• Group Discussions and Interviews

Connect with career centers and advertise

Connecting with career centers is essential for the success of any campus hiring strategy. University career services or placement committees act as the bridge between organizations and candidates. Thus, it's important to have regular communication with career centers in colleges. Career centers can also provide relevant information about past programs, helping you analyze data and build better strategies. 

At this stage, it's critical that organizations pick the right company representative - one who can effectively communicate the company's vision and requirements to potential applicants. This allows organizations to source candidates and even improve candidate quality before they even step on the campus.

It's the responsibility of the representative to disseminate accurate information to the career centers, e.g. whether hiring for full-time positions or internship programs, if there are any networking sessions planned, possible timelines for the campus recruiting event, etc. 

However, it's not enough to simply connect with career centers. Organizations also need to advertise campus hiring events on social media sites and through emails. The idea is to build a strong presence on campus before the actual interview day - be it by sending emails to candidates, organizing virtual or physical meets, conducting pre-placement talks, or other activities. This stage can significantly impact the applications, especially for small-to-medium-scale organizations, or even for large-scale organizations hiring for a new domain. Because this is the stage where college students evaluate potential employers. 

Pro Tip: Considering Gen Z's proclivity to use mobile devices for everything, from accessing social media platforms to submitting applications, ensure that you have an effective social media marketing strategy, and information about career opportunities is easily accessible via mobile. 

Assess and interview candidates

After creating the first shortlist of potential employees, it's time to assess and schedule interviews for the final shortlisted candidates. Your strategy should clearly lay out the type of assessment that will take place, the number of selection rounds, and even the judgment criteria. Brief information about the same should be communicated to the career centers of the PoC at the organization so that candidates applying for the role are aware of what to expect when they sign-up for the event. 

Schedule interviews for the candidates who make it to the final round and conduct one-on-one interactions to make a final decision. In rare cases, and for specific positions organizations can also take advantage of a comprehensive assessment tool that eliminates the need for interviews. Like Walmart did with Walmart Sparkplug. 

Extend offers

Once you've completed the interviews, it's time to roll out the offer letters to the campus hires. Ensure that your offer letter includes all important details, like joining date, designation, location, etc.

Organizations can opt for digital recruiting solutions or campus recruiting software as well, to streamline the process and make it more efficient - like an online tool that allows you to roll out multiple offers to a bunch of candidates in one shot.

You can avail of such tools, and comprehensive campus recruitment solutions offered by Unstop to find the campus hiring strategy you need, and target colleges in India to hire the best at a seamless pace. Find more information here.

How to approach colleges for Campus Recruitment

Remember campus hiring is also a way for students to judge prospective employers and find an organization where the company culture best aligns with their values and ambitions. 

Whether you're hiring for full-time entry-level positions or any other role, it's important that clear communication channels are established between the organization's Human Resources team and the campus career center. 

The talent acquisition team should devise ways to regularly stay in touch with students and build a talent pipeline of future employees. It could be through campus events on university campuses and/or social media platforms, sharing compelling content about the industry through email campaigns, or through other outreach activities that help improve candidate experience. Organizations can also start a campus ambassador program or hold campus competitions to connect with the campus audience. 

To sum it up, when approaching colleges for campus recruitment, have a strategy for regular campus connect and build a strong relationship with the career center. A career center is a valuable resource in campus hiring and is important for its success.  

Campus Hiring Strategy: Benefits

The campus hiring process has several benefits, such as: 

i) Size of the talent pool: The college recruiting process provides a vast talent pool, enabling organizations to hire from a diverse mix of candidates and find the best talent. 

ii) Strengthen the relationship between colleges and corporates: Through campus hiring and internship recruitment programs, corporates can build long-lasting relationships with colleges. The ongoing relationship can reap other benefits, like 

iii) Young professionals are eager to learn: Not only are entry-level employees more loyal to their organizations, but they are also more eager to learn and experiment. They offer a fresh outlook and are also more comfortable working with emerging technologies. 

iv) Higher onboarding rate: Campus recruitment usually enjoys a better onboarding and even retention rate than traditional methods of hiring. In traditional hiring, there is a greater likelihood of a candidate backing out in the middle of the recruitment process, or even after it. But campus hires are more motivated. 

v) Save resources: Campus hiring strategies save resources, especially when organizations take advantage of digital tools. There are few events that will allows a single organization to connect with such a wide pool of candidates in a single event like campus hiring. 

A strong employer is one who not only recognizes the benefits of campus hiring but also builds dedicated recruiting teams who can craft a robust campus recruitment strategy. 

Campus Hiring Strategy: Challenges

Here's a look at certain challenges that organizations may encounter during the campus hiring process: 

i) Time-consuming: Campus hiring can be time-consuming since the candidate-employer ratio is heavily skewed. 

ii) Manual effort: In the absence of digitization, assessing a wide pool of applicable students requires extensive manual effort. 

iii) Assessment: If your assessment tool is not comprehensive, or if you're relying on resumes alone to screen candidates, then it lowers the chances of finding the right candidate. 

It's only when organizations identify and prepare for such challenges, that they can build effective campus recruiting strategies. 

The Unstop Difference

Unstop has partnered with organizations from different industries and provided custom campus hiring solutions, enabling them to build a stronger connect with their target audience and find the right talent. 

Flipkart GRiD is a campus hiring challenge. An online hackathon, GRiD saw over 4 lakh registrations in Season 5 - twice the number of registrations for CAT 2022. Over five seasons, it's seen a whopping 70x growth. All 5 seasons of GRiD have taken place on Unstop, enabling Flipkart to find talented candidates among budding engineers. 

Automotive giant Hero Motocorp has been collaborating with Unstop for five years to conduct its flagship campus hiring challenge, the Hero Campus Challenge. In its last season, it received 75K+ registrations. 

Find more information about Unstop's campus hiring solution here. 

It's clear that campus hiring is not just about finding the right candidate, but also about developing a relationship with the next generation of workforce. 

Suggested Reads: 

• What is Campus Recruitment? How To Tap The Untapped Talent?
• Lateral Hiring: A Complete Guide To The Process, Its Benefits, Challenges & Best Practices
• Walmart Sparkplug: Intimidating Interviews Replaced By A Fun Hackathon With Better Results