What is Campus Recruiting (or Campus Recruitment)?

Campus Recruitment: recruiting students... soon young workers

Campus Recruitment is an asset to be integrated into your external sourcing strategy: establish and maintain contacts with students (universities, colleges) in order to turn them into qualified candidates after graduation. Linked to this practice, called "University Marketing", Campus Recruitment is based on actions such as:

• mentoring programs,
• communication campaigns on social networks or through newsletters,
• events at recruitment fairs and other university events.

These 3 elements guarantee constant interaction with students throughout their university career. They also give recruiters the opportunity to follow their progress and, when the time comes, influence their future career choices thanks to a high-quality employer brand identity.

Thanks to partnerships with the most relevant universities for your recruitment needs, and a regular company presence on campus, future graduates can be :

1. identified in good time,
2. made aware of your employer brand
3. motivated to apply before receiving other offers or applying to other companies when they graduate.

👉 Find out more: 6 steps towards an effective recruitment marketing strategy

Which companies benefit from Campus Recruitment?

University marketing tells us that students make decisions about career paths during the last semesters of their studies. If you can interest these young talents during this period, you can build a trusting relationship between you and these students, which will benefit everyone involved.

Campus Recruitment will be useful to any company with at least one of the following needs:

• candidates with specific profiles and/or skills
• candidates with knowledge of one or more specific sectors
• candidates in a talent shortage environment.

This is the case, for example, for all companies needing talent in the disciplines known as STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. But it's also true for other sectors such as healthcare, industry, etc.

Companies wishing to implement a Campus Recruitment strategy benefit from having access to qualified candidates who are already familiar with your company, without having to use paid sourcing channels. But it's important to remember that this relationship-building process, which generates quality applications as soon as they leave school, requires time and investment - regular communications, time spent keeping in touch, and so on.

Fortunately, there are tools available to make the task easier. Such is the case with CRM (Candidate Relationship Management) platforms, which recruiters are increasingly using to build personalized relationships with their talent pools, including students and recent graduates. 

How to set up an effective Campus Recruitment strategy?

Define targeted groups of students to find the best talent

You need to select the most relevant schools and universities for you; the aim is not to collaborate with everyone, but only with the most relevant organizations. The key? Prioritize!

Given the diversity of degree programs and specializations at different universities, a comprehensive market study is crucial before you start. You should only partner with schools and universities that match your exact profile requirements. And to do this, you need to take a long-term view and answer these questions:

• What are your recruitment needs today?
• How will they evolve over the next few years?

Based on this, you'll know which organizations to partner with. Even after you've defined which partnerships would benefit you, you need to define target groups of students within these schools and universities. These target groups can be defined by areas of expertise, type of study, future careers, etc.

Defining all this before you embark on your Campus Recruitment strategy will be useful in establishing your future personalized communication plans with these young talents. Because, yes, personalizing your exchanges with each target group will enable you to have a more relevant approach for each of them, and to be more convincing than your competitors. 

The right strategy: prioritize your campus communications

With so many student targets, at so many universities and schools, with so many different profiles... you might be tempted to spread your efforts all over the place. Testing whether an action works and then either extending or improving it is a very good solution. But beware: you won't be able to carry out as many tests as you have ideas!

The best way to prioritize is to know, over and above your creative ideas, what will interest your different target groups. The ideal solution: ask them and base your strategy on their opinions. This can be done using short, concise questionnaires or by telephone. Don't hesitate to work with your contacts on the educational teams of the structures you partner with.

💡 Our advice: you can also consult your colleagues who have recently joined the job market, the “former students”. They have more objectivity than the young talent still in university, but their student experience is close enough that their recommendations are still valuable. Involve them in shaping your communication campaigns targeting potential future candidates. They'll be able to tell you whether the career path you're preparing will hit the mark... or not!

Collect student data in a Candidate Relationship Management system... to keep in touch over the long term

Let's be honest: the goal of a Campus Recruitment strategy is to turn the young people you're in contact with into candidates. To achieve this, you need to collect their data, but also use it wisely to be able to offer the right job at the right time.

Collecting student data must start by complying with the GDPR; this is one of the first advantages of using dedicated CRM (Candidate Relationship Management) software for your company. These tools generally offer data management options that are fully compliant with these directives, both when collecting data and when updating it on a regular basis. 

The second advantage of a CRM tool? It allows you to build a long-term relationship with these young talents, while updating their profile regularly to be as precise as possible in the communications you send them. These communications can be easily automated, saving you time and increasing your relevance. The advantage of this tool is that you can also set up :

• specific talent pools (by profile type, study level, university/school, etc.)
• tags (by skills, aspirations, etc.) thanks to tag management.

These two complementary methods of sorting your talents in your CRM database will enable you to send them specific communications, according to their profile, in a totally automatic way! Of course, you can choose how you want to sort them, as these tools can be adapted to your specific recruitment and organizational challenges.

👉 Want to understand how CRM works? Request a demo

Why are Campus Recruitment and employer branding so closely linked?

Campus Recruitment allows you to increase your visibility and reputation as an employer. How do students with little (or no) professional experience choose the direction to go when they start looking for their first job? They go for what they know and like, so the chance of them becoming attached to a brand is very high, and it's up to you to do everything you can to become that brand!

Your image on a campus is essential. Because even if you only recruit a small percentage of these young talents, you will still have succeeded in making yourself known and appreciated by a majority of students. They will become your ambassadors, even if they don't join you. And who knows, maybe they will after their first professional experience with another company?

How can you improve your employer brand awareness on campus?

Two important elements:

1. Be visible... (multiply communication channels, even advertising: ads in university media, event participation, newsletters, on-site signage, etc.).
2. ... with the right message: if students know you, that's a good thing. But you also need to be able to talk to them and convince them that your employer brand matches their aspirations. Here are a few examples of what you can offer them:

• Relevant content: a better understanding of the world of work, tips, teaching advice, etc.
• Suitable internships or work-study programs
• Discovery days with your teams and/or customers
• Individual or group interviews to talk to them about your professions, with testimonials from your own employees
• Stays abroad in one of your establishments
• Group activities with student life partners
• Projects to be carried out in class, then applied in the workplace
• Competitions with rewards to be defined
• Training in a promising field
• Etc.

There are many ways to interest these young people, but it all comes at a cost (in terms of budget and/or human resources): prioritize your actions! And once again, ask these students for their opinion, so you'll be right on target.

3 common mistakes in Campus Recruitment and how to avoid them

Campus Recruitment - 100% or not at all

Students and future graduates are in regular demand, and you won't be the only one interested in them.

That's why it's important not to get caught up in this process only half-heartedly. Competitors may do better than you, and you'll have invested time for poor results. Be serious and regular in your efforts to convince this target group. You can lose interested profiles if they don't hear from you for too long. Competition is fierce, so don't leave anything to chance. 

Gifts and rewards are not your (only) added value 

The gifts or goodies you could offer will make you look great for a few minutes, or even a few hours (if you're lucky). Also, spending money on this kind of action isn't as relevant as you might imagine.

It's not a problem to do it, but your actions for these young people shouldn't stop there: they need to be accompanied, reassured and stimulated! This is a promising target group, keen to be solicited, but also very volatile. Be there for the fun of it, but also for the more serious needs that will really serve their future. 

Good contact with students, but no action to sustain the relationship

Making contact with a young student with a quality profile is already quite an achievement. But most companies let this profile grow without them, and only contact them again a few months (or years) later, when it's already too late. Sure, they may be available at that point... but they won't know you; they may not even know what you do! And they might not even open the mail with your job advert.

We know how complex it can be to manage long-term relationships, given your already busy day-to-day life. We also know that some recruiters find it hard to invest time in actions that won't have an end result until a few years later. Yet proactive recruitment is the future of talent acquisition.

With the help of a CRM (Candidate Relationship Management) tool, you can continue your current missions while activating Campus Recruitment to its full potential. It's the key to success!

All the data you collect is processed, up to date and, above all, usable quickly and easily. You'll also be able to measure whether the actions you implement are having a real impact, and how to improve and industrialize them the day they really work.

👉 Build lasting relationships with your talent pools with our Talent campaigns tool