Campus Recruitment – Meaning, Benefits & Challenges

campus recruitment

According to a research, almost 70% of companies are looking to employ new college graduates every year. However, only those that adjust their campus strategies and use time-saving technologies will be successful.

The days of standing in queues and waiting to deliver interviews are long gone. Graduates these days don’t look up billboards or wait for weeks for a phone call or a letter in the mail.

As we know them, Gen Z’s are the most recent generation to enter the workforce. Born between 1997 and 2012, this generation is just out of college and is already changing the way companies hire and recruit. More and more companies are looking to meet them mid-way and are transforming the recruitment and selection process that has existed for years. The latest generation of graduates know what they want and devise means to work out the best work-life balance.

Campus recruitment also referred to as campus hiring, is the process of attracting and connecting with college students to recruit them once they graduate eventually. This is accomplished in various methods, including corporate branding, sponsoring specific recruitment events, social networks, and university alliances.

What is meant by Campus Recruitment?

Campus recruitment, also known as campus hiring, refers to companies’ methods to source, attract, and hire talent. As fresh graduates look for new opportunities, placements in colleges help them secure internships, full-time entry-level jobs, and even seasonal jobs. Typically, medium and large-sized companies with large hiring capacities prefer to hire on-campus. Every year, companies spend a significant amount of money on on-campus recruitment drives in the hopes of attracting the best talent. They also tend to use various campus recruitment software to streamline their recruitment process.

Did you know that about 85% of jobs are filled through networking? While new graduates may not establish a network yet, they can certainly get their way to the company of their choice through campus recruiting.

campus recruitment meaning

Campus recruiting is usually a multi-step process that includes campus targeting, pre-placement activities through college internships, assessment, interviewing, and boarding. Campus recruitment aims to have access to an immense pool of recent graduates looking for work. This helps most companies meet their expanding talent demands by employing applicants from different educational institutions.

Advertisement

What are the advantages of Campus Recruitment?

The digital prowess of students isn’t limited to Instagram, Facebook, or Snap Chat. When it comes to their jobs, this generation of graduates is more inept than ever before. The nature of employment is constantly changing, and it is anticipated that 85 percent of the jobs that individuals will have in 2030 don’t already exist.

This next generation will be equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to take on these new responsibilities. Using campus recruitment is a terrific approach to ensure that your firm has enough young workers to meet the need for new technology.

Below are the top 5 advantages of campus recruitment:

1. Saves Time & Efforts

These days, everything is fast-paced, and people want to save time and effort throughout the campus recruiting procedure. Before the advent of the digital age, companies would have had to devote a whole day hiring candidates. They had to engage in various methodologies such as advertisement, and let’s not forget the interview process and time taken to hire talent.

But with on-campus recruitment, things have become easy and efficient as companies can directly coordinate with colleges/universities to find the talent they need. This simplifies and streamlines the entire process, ensuring that it is successful from start to finish.

2. Improved Retention Rates

We all desire to feel valued and needed. Employees are known to be more loyal to their first employer, and they’ll feel more valued and recognized if they are made to feel welcome and appreciated.

No one wants to feel uncomfortable and out of place, especially if you’re working for that company day in day out. As a result, it is up to the employer to persuade their employees to offer a welcoming and conducive work environment. While recruiting on campus, companies can offer the applicants a clear understanding of what they’ll be required to perform when they join the firm and a clear explanation of the prospects available to them inside the organization.

Hiring employees shortly after they graduate allows companies to welcome people who are already committed, interested, and dedicated. All companies now need to offer them the best opportunities for career advancement and growth. As a result, for businesses, this may imply less financial investment every once in a while, to replace workers who are prone to giving up and leaving.

Advertisement

3. Getting New Knowledge & Skills

One of the most significant benefits of campus recruitment is that organizations can choose individuals with a high level of confidence, passion, and dedication. As a result, this is regarded as one of the most acceptable conceivable methods of acquiring new skills and talent, allowing organizations to thrive in ruthless competition easily.

On-campus hiring will always allow employers to appraise applicants’ talents using various types of testing, such that they can have a thorough understanding of the skills held by the candidate and can assure high-quality campus recruitment decisions.

4. Quick Learners & Multi-tasking candidates

Besides bringing new knowledge and skills to the organization, recent grads can typically observe, grasp, and undertake different tasks and training more easily and quickly than an older workforce.

Young Employees

Because of their ability to adapt and multitask, they frequently have out-of-the-box and creative solutions. Senior college students are also eager to learn and are constantly seeking ways to impress their bosses, so they take on a variety of duties inside the organization.

Millennials and Gen Z’s are also more likely to assist their co-workers when necessary. They aim to learn a great deal during their early steps in their work, putting themselves in a position to avoid any disruptive behavior. They may also be faster and more efficient than someone with an extensive professional experience.

5. Good relationship between Organization & Campus

When organizations conduct campus recruitment with particular colleges or universities, they have better rapport and relationships. This relationship facilitates graduates’ careers by offering them work opportunities while gathering a pool of talent.

Students working in a given company will also recommend the company to their juniors, and this will eventually aid in establishing a perfect relationship between the campus and the company. This increases the odds of future students being picked for that particular company.

Human Resource Management Course

Top 5 Campus Hiring Challenges

According to the Harvard Business Review, 72% of millennials learn about companies via their peers, 68% through a job portal, and only 45% learn about their prospective companies on campus. Although campus recruitment helps companies sour for the best talent in the market, it is a double-edged sword, and the sheer volume that acts as strength could also become a weakness.

Below are the top 5 campus hiring challenges:

1. High Volume of Talent Pool

As we know, companies screen thousands of candidates during regular campus recruitment drives. For this, they often send 2-4 representatives to campuses. As a result, the team is outnumbered when reviewing prospects. Any employee-driven company will not tax its employees unnecessarily. Yet, screening 1000s of candidates in 2-3 days is an exhausting task.

Furthermore, in-depth screening must ensure that eligible individuals are not overlooked. And establishing good contact and rapport with thousands of candidates at the same time is another problematic issue.

This challenge can be overcome by uisng artifical intelligence in the hiring process as it can increase the efficiency of the HR recruiters and enhancce candidate’s experience.

2.  Resumes are the only way to select a candidate

To date, more than 70% of employers choose to screen student’s resumes based on their academic success in their particular courses.

Resume screening

Resumes are not the all-or-nothing documents that we make them out to be. Often employers focus solely on the resume and lose good candidates in the process. In addition, employers that deal with a high volume of applications don’t have the time to review them thoroughly. Employers can get a more holistic overview of their candidates by providing students the opportunity to promote themselves in a video CV or one-way video interviews.

Resumes are a vital element of the recruiting process and are essential for getting decent employment, yet they are only words on paper. The fact is that candidates are considerably more nuanced and diverse, and there are several critical characteristics of good hiring that recruiters cannot get from a resume.

Advertisement

3. Limited Staff & Time

The majority of campus recruitment drives follow a similar pattern. Companies send a small group of their employees to the universities to complete the whole hiring process. Now that the staff is outnumbered by many candidates, coordinating the entire campaign presents a variety of challenges.

Candidate engagement is a significant challenge, and occasionally, a few applicants are not appropriately updated by the company about the next steps. This contributes to the process being incredibly sluggish, inefficient, and complex.

4. Employer Branding to attract the younger generation

Many companies are having difficulty attracting young talent. According to Collegefeed data, 92% of companies say they have a “brand problem” when hiring college students.

There are big MNC’s and companies that are household names, yet many others don’t have the same popularity. This doesn’t signify that they aren’t good companies to work for. These small to medium-sized companies need to show off their employees and organizational culture that sends a simple, straightforward, and coherent message to their candidates, showing what the company stands for and its culture.

This branding gap is often a significant issue in campus recruitment, as prospective candidates aren’t sure of the brand or company’s values and opt not to apply for them.

5. Outdated recruiting practices

If companies want to recruit young people, they must meet them where they are. These applicants may attend career fairs and apply for jobs in person. However, companies will find that shifting their college recruitment efforts online will provide more remarkable results. Young talent wants to see their companies online. Therefore, businesses must swiftly adapt to the digital world.

Having an active social media presence that welcomes and engages in discourse is part of this. Companies can use digital channels to demonstrate to students why they are great places to work and what they have to offer. They risk losing out on some outstanding job applicants if they don’t.

Advertisement

Conclusion

All said and done, when approached correctly, campus recruitment may be an unrivalled source of talent. By connecting with applicants online, developing an attractive brand, and hiring a diverse team, campus recruitment can significantly help companies and applications.

Using the latest digital practices and technologies will further enhance the process and ensure that it is a mutually beneficial relationship.

Merin is an HR professional with an MBA in Human Resource. She likes doing a lot of research and study in the field of Human Resource and can't help but share her knowledge on the same in this platform. She is also a great cook and during her free times she keeps experimenting with new dishes. Know more about Merin by clicking here.
4 Shares
Copy link