3 Steps to Making the Most of Campus Hiring

Corporates looking to infuse creativity and innovation, turn to campus recruitment for hiring fresh talent every year. Campus hiring takes on greater significance in the wake of Industry 4.0. With the rise of innovative technologies such as robotics and automation, companies need to identify young talent that already has the relevant skills sets or can be quickly trained in new skills. But educational campuses are one of the most competitive environments for hiring teams, making it challenging to sift through large volumes of applications. Global IT giant Wipro plans to double its campus hiring to meet the rising demand for its services as well as address the talent gap in the emerging technologies field. So, how can companies efficiently pick the best talent off campuses and maximize their ROI on campus hiring?

Following these three steps can put your campus recruitment strategy on a sound footing:

• Create campus ambassador programs to attract top candidates

Leading companies leverage their employer brand to differentiate themselves and attract top talent during campus recruitment drives. Innovative measures such as deploying student connect programs/apps, sponsoring events, setting up labs, and influencing curriculum are some ways to attract the attention of talented students. Coca-Cola runs a yearlong brand ambassador program where in student ambassadors plan, promote, and execute events across the campus. As part of the program, they hand out product samples and giveaways on behalf of the company and engage with college students through social media. This helps ensure that students become familiar with employment and growth opportunities offered by the brand.

• Use online assessments for first level screening

Campus recruitment is a long and tedious process where companies need to optimize their resources to maximize efficiency. Initiating recruitment programs using traditional methods are time and resource consuming. Forward-looking firms are changing the way they are going about campus hiring by using automated assessment tools to expand the reach of their campus hiring drives. Tech-enabled scientific tests help recruiters accurately assessing candidates based on cognitive skills and domain knowledge in the initial rounds. The result: ability to filter the best talent from a large pool of candidates through a more objective screening process – in a much shorter time. Global leaders such as Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Walmart and many others leverage tech-enabled assessment solutions and online testing software for shortlisting candidates who match their job description and company culture.

• Use interactive tools to screen students for cultural alignment and soft skills

The success of campus hiring rests not just on spotting the best talent, but also on finding the candidates with the right soft skills and cultural fit. 91% of employers say soft skills are very important to the future of recruiting with 63% citing the inability to identify soft skills as the biggest issue with traditional interview formats. Candidates might perform well on a given day, but whether they are the right fit in the real world, over the long-term is a question that needs to be answered. As soft skills become an increasingly critical criterion for hiring, recruiters are turning to more engaging and interactive methods to find how the candidates fare on those. Personal interviews, group discussions, group presentations, online tests and games are some of the tools that are being to test candidates on skills such as team work, attitude, communication, etc. Pymetrics uses interactive games to evaluate candidates based on their top soft skills. Leading companies like Deloitte also routinely use online aptitude tests and game-based assessments to ensure candidates have the right soft skills and cultural alignment.

Futuristic companies are putting their best foot forward to hire fresh and motivated talent on campuses. With streamlining the campus hiring processes and enhancing the candidate experience turning into key focus areas, employers that adopt a combination of online and in-person assessments will gain a definite edge in attracting, hiring and retaining the best fresher talent.