However, time has changed. Campus recruitment is now a proactive game where recruiters work round the year to build a recruitment strategy and have a talent pipeline ready so that a vacancy can be filled up efficiently.

Apart from saving time, having a talent pool ready means you can take up new projects and assure your prospective clients of your capabilities. Recruiters need to build a diverse talent pipeline so that you have access to diverse talent, culture, demographics, etc. and the best way to build a diverse pipeline is by building a rock-solid college recruiting strategy. We will look into the details in the subsequent sections of this post.

Employer Branding Before Anything Else

Before you jump on to tweak your campus recruiting strategy, understand that campus recruiting is a long process that begins with paying attention to your employer branding. It starts right from engaging with your audience through your social media handles to ensure your present employees are talking positively about your organization and work culture outside the office campus.

The fate of your campus hiring strategy depends largely on how you have portrayed your employer brand over the years. Make a strong employer branding proposition, before you reach out to colleges for recruitment. Now that you’re all set, here are some tips to help you build a winning college recruiting strategy for a diverse talent pipeline.

Identify Your Organization’s Hiring Need

To build a talent pipeline, you need to analyze and understand your organization’s hiring needs. As highlighted by Xobin, brainstorming with every functional head to understand the job skill, roles, and responsibilities that each function aims to have.

Also, take into account the investment you need to make to train a college grad before onboarding into live projects. Consider the budget and headcounts estimated for each function too.

Choosing The Campus

When it comes to college recruiting, choosing the right campus to pick up talents plays an important role especially when you are aiming to build a diverse talent pipeline. While opting for local colleges can be an easy fix, possibilities are more to find homogenous groups.

If you have the time and budget, exploring campuses in other cities makes sense. For example, if you are in tier one city, do not miss the opportunity to go to tier two cities too for campus recruiting. This will ensure you have a good mix of diverse talents.

Hackathons Are Great

One of the best ways to tap a diverse talent pipeline without having to go from college to college is organizing a hackathon. Hackathons can attract a large and diverse talent pool and make your task easy as a recruiter.

Hackathons work great if your recruitment marketing budget is tight. It also helps to tap candidates who might not do well on 1:1 interviews but can show their creativity through their work.

Work On Your Campus Pitch

Remember, you are pitching to a bunch of young talents when you’re going for a campus pitch. They belong to the generation of the workforce that prioritizes work culture above anything else. Plus, different candidates have different career aspirations.

While some look forward to ‘cool’ work culture, some aspire for rapid growth and learning. Customize your campus pitch that appeals to everyone. For example, Siemens has done away with its traditional image and promotes its cool culture during its campus pitch.

A Data-Driven Approach Yields Better Results

Since you are spending a lot of effort and budget on-campus recruiting, you need to measure different metrics to tweak your campus recruitment strategy.

For example, you should track the total number of hires you have made in the year, the diversity of your talent pipeline, the retention rate of new hires, and anything else that matters and affects your bottom line. This will help you tweak your strategy for optimum results.

Campus Hiring Can Be Fun Only If…

Yes, campus hiring can be fun and effective to build a diverse talent pipeline. But you need to have the right strategy in place to make it effective. The pointers discussed above can help you build a robust and diverse talent pipeline when followed diligently and consistently. For additional information on how to gear up for Gen Z in the workplace, read here.