17/02/2016
5 Strategies for Better Campus Recruitment
Hi All,
I have come across with a list of 5 strategies that can help you make the most out of your campus drive:
1. Spice up the job description
Most of the companies do a poor job of writing job descriptions, more so in case of campus placements. A job description done well can set the right expectations and help you connect better with the candidates. Campus placements are frenzy for candidates as well, as they have to choose between multiple companies opening in the same time slot, especially in the first few days of the campus season. In such situations an interesting job description can help in tipping the scales in your favor.
2. Be innovative with Pre-Placement Talk
Pre-placement talk plays a very crucial role in attracting the right talent. It often sets the first impression of your company and hence it’s important for you to come across as an exciting company to work for. Everyone seems to talk about their growth/ outreach by focusing on metrics of revenue, geographical expansion etc., but that might not necessarily is interesting for the candidates. More than that, they are interested in knowing what impact they can make, the work culture, hierarchy followed within the organization, where do they fit in as a college graduate and what kind of projects they will be working on. Talking about interesting market and technology trends related to your industry is a good way to excite them about what you are doing.
3. Filter candidates using assessments, not just resume
Filtering the right candidates for interviews is absolutely critical to the success of the campus hiring process. Most of the college graduates don’t do a good job of writing resumes; hence resume filtering alone cannot help you achieve the same. Scanning through scores of lengthy resumes, you are quite likely to miss out relevant candidates. A more reliable way to filter is through preliminary written tests. The objective of these tests is to filter out those candidates who don’t have the core skill that you require most. Although it might be tempting to cover all the topics – technical aptitude, logical reasoning, verbal ability, psychometric quotient etc. but what works best is to have short and focused tests. Identify that one skill that’s most important to you, be it programming proficiency, logical reasoning or communication skill and conduct a quick 45-60 min test on it.
4. Cut the repetitive manual work, use an automated solution
Time is of essence in campus drives. If you take too long to take a decision the competing company can take away your ideal candidate. Conducting pen and paper tests not only requires too much manual work, but also significantly increases chances of error in evaluation. A better alternative is to use an online recruitment solution that lets you automatically conduct online tests to evaluate different skill sets and view candidate performance.
5. Interview Smartly
Personal interviews are when you make a final decision on who to hire. Taking back to back interviews can be tiring and it’s easy to make mistakes. Few things, if taken care of, can ensure effective interviews
Conduct at least 2 interviews for each candidate; one messed up interview cannot be THE BASIS OF rejection.
Programming puzzles/questions are not the only way to judge technical aptitude. A lot of candidates now have open source contributions, which can serve as a relevant metric.
Have a large question set for the interviews so that repetition of questions with different candidates is as less as possible. Despite your best efforts to prevent it, candidates discuss about their interviews.
Manage interview slots such that candidates don’t have to wait long hours. If kept waiting for too long, candidates get tired and are not able to perform their best during the interviews.
