Campus Recruitment 2.0 – leverage social media to hit the talent jackpot

Is your organization missing opportunities to get the best young talent? HR consultant Jamie Allison looks at student and graduate trends, and how you can get the right people on board.

As the job market begins to recover, there is an increasing competition among businesses to attract the best talent from colleges and universities across the world into their organizations. Recruiters, staffing firms, career centres, small and large companies are actively developing innovative recruitment strategies to communicate their value to graduating students.
 
The complex decision-making process of students in pursuing a job and the emergence of social media as the preferred communication platform for the millennial generation are two key factors affecting the rapid evolution of campus recruitment practices.

In 2013, a global survey found that more than 50% of students were using all the five most common social networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest) ‘all the time’ and within North America 78% of the post-secondary students were using Facebook, 82% were using Twitter and 85% were using YouTube.
 
Any organization not engaging its prospective employees via these channels is at a severe disadvantage in attracting the best campus talent.
 
In the past, traditional campus recruitment activities like job fairs, information sessions and magazine advertising reached the target markets for most employers. Now, more than ever, those methods must be part of a broader toolkit that includes a social media strategy.

A recent survey showed that more than a third of students had never attended a career fair on campus. Even more telling is that the remaining two-thirds of students attend at least one campus career fair at some point, but half of them do not find the experience helpful enough to attend a fair again in the future. With these traditional campus recruitment strategies proving less effective, organizations have been increasingly leveraging social media to recruit students.
 
For a newly released whitepaper that explores campus social recruiting patterns and highlights the best practices in using social media to attract and best and the brightest university and college talent to your organization visit:  http://epitomehr.com/whitepaper.html
 
 
Jamie Allison
Founder and President
epitome.
www.epitomehr.com