Mindcircuit is an innovative recruiting company founded by technology professionals for technology professionals.

Tips for recruiting candidates out of college and the benefits of campus recruiting

Posted On: Wednesday, June 29, 2016

1.Tips for Top Career Fair Performance

Attending career fairs is a great way to meet a large quantity of potential candidates.There you can collect resumes, promote your company and make connections.  If you take the right steps at the career fair, it is well worth the cost to find the next generation of talent for your organization.

    • Send the right representation: Your company should send a diverse group of representatives. Preferably, one from each department that have entry-level job openings or internships available. Carefully select who you send. Make sure you send an enthusiastic and confident representative that will provide students with the necessary information and that they will enjoy speaking with. College students are new to the professional world and are sometimes nervous in these settings. Send someone who can make candidates feel at ease and feels comfortable initiating conversations with shy students. In that moment your representative is the face of your company, and are creating important first impressions with the next generation of the workforce. Choose someone who encompasses the company’s values and also represents millennial values, which include: innovativeness, flexibility, and philanthropy.
    • Avoid the Most Common Career Fair Mistake: At the career fair, make it your goal to speak to candidates of all ages. It is easy mistake just to focus on seniors since they can result in an immediate hire. While it is important to fill current positions, do not lose sight of long term hiring-goals. Give the younger students smaller chunks of your time, so you can begin to foster a relationship. Answer a few of their  questions, give them a compliment or two about their resumes, invite them to connect with you on LinkedIn and encourage them to come speak to you in the coming years. This will create a memorable first impression that these students will remember, and gives them the confidence and desire to approach you in the future when they are a more developed professional.
    • Promote internship programs: Develop an internship program and advertise it at career fairs. Students are eager to add internship experience to their resumes whether it is paid or unpaid. Internships are great tools for companies to test the abilities of millennials without having to fully commit to a full-time hire. Having multiple interns allows companies to choose the best of the talent presented. It will also allow you to see the actual abilities of students who may not perform as well as others in interview settings. Often, students gain a great sense of loyalty to companies who gave them their “first shot” and developed their intellectual capital. This sense of loyalty can be a huge asset. Additionally, interns become student ambassadors for your company on their campus and can promote your company’s internship program. More importantly, when they graduate they become great candidates who know the ins and out of your company and are eager to work for you.
    • Stanford, MIT & Harvard are not the only schools with top tech talent: Those schools are being bombarded by name brand firms like Google, Twitter and more. Many times start-ups and midsize firms cannot compete on compensation with names like those. Howard Marks developed his own list of underrated technology schools that recruiters should not ignore (click here to the link to the list). So instead of getting the leftovers at MIT, it may be better to get the top-student with tons of extracurriculars at UMaryland.

 

 

 

  1. Vital Steps to Take After Attending Career Fairs
  • Conduct interviews:  Make the most out of your time on campus by conducting interviews with qualified students. Extend your visit by a couple of days, so that you have time to interview as many qualified students as possible. This gives you the exciting opportunity to speak in person with students that may live on the other side of the country. If they are interested in your company and the interview goes well this could also encourage them to relocate. Since this would be going on during the school year the student would also have more time to think and prepare for possible relocation.
  • Use social media to stay in touch:  During campus career fairs it is important to have a strategy to keep your company relevant after your representatives leave campus. Make an effort to have students follow your company’s social media sites. Also make sure you connect with exceptional students on LinkedIn. Now you have access to contacting them, as well as, their constantly updated resume. Correct social media implementation can keep your company in the minds of students who are only in their 2nd or 3rd year or who may not be fully ready to commit.

 

 

  1. Innovative Alternative to Add to your College Tech Recruitment Strategy Hackathons( for recruiting stem students)
  • Getting involved in Hackathons hosted on college campuses, is a great way to network with technology and engineering students. A Hackathon is an event where programmers meet to do collaborative computer programming. Hackathons encourage creativity through technology. Students with technical majors or just students with a passion for coding come together and form teams with the goal of solving a certain problem. Each team has to code a unique solution from scratch and the best solutions wins.
  • The easiest way for your company to get involved in one of these events is through employer sponsorship. Your company will be allowed to send a representative, who can give info sessions and tech talks throughout the event. This is where your representative can create excitement about your company amongst the participants as well as trade information with students that stood out in the competition. Instead of just sitting and speaking to these students about their skills you are able to see them in action. Also evaluate how candidates collaborate and work with others. This is an innovative way to approach technology students and can illustrate how your company encourages creativity, technology experimentation, collaboration and most importantly fun.

 

 

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Sam is receiving her BBA in Marketing, from the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. She started as an agency recruiter for Mindcircuit in 2014 and transitioned to a content writer for the business in 2016. Feel free to reach out to her by email, or connect with her on LinkedIn.

 

 

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Amanda is receiving her BA in public relations, from the S.I. Newhouse School of public communications at Syracuse University.  She started as a business development specialist in 2014 and transitioned as a content writer in 2016. Feel free to reach out to her by email and LinkedIn.

 

 

 

 

Sources:

“7 Ways to Build Your Brand On Campus Beyond Career Fairs – AfterCollege Employer Blog.” AfterCollege Employer Blog 7 Ways to Build Your Brand On Campus Beyond Career Fairs Comments. N.p., 14 Oct. 2013. Web. 29 June 2016.

“Best Practices for College Recruiting.” Best Practices for College Recruiting. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 June 2016.

“Enhance Your On-Campus Recruiting Efforts | Monster.com.” Monster Hiring Resource Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 June 2016.