You’ll naturally want to recruit people to cover the necessary work when you run a business. Some businesses turn towards college students since they need money and can offer physical labor. But how do you convince college students to join your company?
If you plan to seek college students for the recruitment process, make sure to apply the tips below. You must also review the 10 creative college recruiting ideas and look into common questions to improve your student recruitment strategy.
What Are the Best Tips for Recruiting College Students?
Keep these general tips in mind as you focus on college recruiting ideas.
- Remain honest with them
- Explain what the job entails
- Make the pay rate clear
Whenever you discuss a job with students, you want them to know what they must expect. However, never try to hide anything or trick college students since doing so can affect your reputation and make it challenging to hire people in the future.
Once you show them your honesty, you should explain the job to them. Make sure you go over the details, tell them the pay rate, and even let them know how many hours they must work. Since college students have busy schedules, they must know these details before they commit.
Doing so will help you hire the right students. Knowing what to expect from your business can determine if they can handle the job. From there, you can pick out the right students so that they can work alongside you.
What Are Some Creative Ways To Recruit College Students?
If you plan to hire college students, you must consider recruiting ideas that appeal to the students. Doing so will help you draw more students to your recruitment process and boost your real prospects through innovative campus recruitment strategies.
1. Offer Them Lunch
When you consider university recruiting strategies, you’ll want to figure out what they want, such as lunch. Most college students appreciate a free meal, so if you offer them lunch, they’ll like to attend the meeting. As a result, they’ll become more likely to apply, so you gain more recruits.
You can also offer them incentives and gift cards if they join the job, so you secure more of your target audience. Ensure they know the lunch is free, so they don’t feel pressured or guilty about not paying for the food.
2. Treat It Like Customer Service
As you seek prospective students to work with your business, you must treat the situation like customer service. When you treat prospective students like applicants, you’ll focus on what they can do for you instead of the other way around.
As a recruiter, you must appeal to potential employees and do what you can to make them happy and comfortable with the job. They should feel like they’re doing you a favor by taking the job while enjoying multiple benefits.
3. Go to Career Fairs
Usually, schools will host career fairs to help students look into opportunities and see what they can do. Depending on your industry, you can attend these career fairs and offer positions to college students as innovative campus recruitment strategies.
Looking for people in the right field will help you find students who want to work with you and have the skills necessary for the job. You can also find people naturally interested in your industry, so you hire the right students.
4. Talk With Non-Profit Organizations
Depending on your available resources, you could work with non-profit organizations. For example, you may have local churches or student organizations to identify potential candidates. You can see if they’ll let you use some space to find qualified candidates.
If you take this approach to recruit prospective students, make sure to offer either service or money to the non-profit organization. Even if they decline the offer, you can at least offer compensation to them.
5. Ask for Referrals
Once you hire a few students, you can ask people for referrals. Referrals work well since you can have students point you in the right direction. You’ll receive even more referrals to gain potential candidates if you incorporate a referral bonus into the system.
Make sure you ask everyone for referrals so that the most people can benefit from the referral incentives.
6. Seek Referrals From Referrals
As you receive referrals, make sure you ask for referrals from those people. For example, you could call your referrals to see if they want to work with you. If they don’t, you can ask them if they know anyone you should contact about the job.
Once they offer you an email contact or a phone number, you can reach out to that person.
7. Talk With Your Current Employees
To create effective student recruitment strategies, you must consider who in your company can help. For example, you may have current employees that know college kids you can hire, so reach out to them.
If you establish a referral system in your business, you can reward people and offer an incentive to receive employee referrals.
8. Talk With the University
As you seek effective student recruitment strategies, you can discuss a student referral program with the university. They can help you organize a program and offer opportunities to reach individual students at campus events.
If you plan to do anything on campus, you must talk with the university or community college to avoid legal problems.
9. Try Out Online Recruiting
So many college students use social media daily, so take advantage of this trend. Go online and visit pages focused on finding jobs for people in the area. Find online pages for hiring and utilize them as one of the best innovative college recruitment strategies.
This approach works well since you can use your online marketing tools to reach more students.
10. Offer Academic Assistance
As you look at a range of students, you’ll notice that some need student loans to go to school. If your business offers academic assistance to them, they’ll become willing to work with you to help with their schooling.
Such an approach will also help you find the brightest students who take their education seriously.
What Are Some Common Mistakes Made When Recruiting College Students?
As you focus on recruiting ideas for college students, you’ll want to avoid these common mistakes to minimize problems and find the best ones available.
- Not offering flexible hours
- Expecting graduate-level work
- Not providing a training period
Even if you use the best college recruiting strategies, you won’t get very far if you make these common mistakes. College students must attend classes, so you should offer multiple hours to meet their needs.
Remember that they’re either current students or just graduated, so don’t expect graduate-level work. You should still expect great work from them, but nothing past what they can do. You also need to provide training during the process to help them learn how to handle the job.
As you avoid these issues, you’ll make the transition and job easier for people. They’ll also speak highly of your business, so you can secure more recruits and continue to grow your business.
How Can You Ensure That You’re Recruiting the Best College Students?
If you want to hire the best college students through your campus recruiting strategy, you should make a job application. Job applications work well since you can ask them to share details. That way, you can review the information and weed out people based on the details.
You can also request proof that they can work in your country so you don’t face legal problems. Since most college areas have international students, you must confirm this information beforehand.
Following the standard procedures and going through applications, you’ll find the ideal students for your situation.
What Are the Most Important Factors To Consider When Recruiting College Students?
As you apply campus recruitment strategies, make sure you think about these factors while hiring them.
- Their experiences with jobs and education
- Their available work hours
- If they can work in-person
Some college students will have experience with different jobs, so you should look into those experiences. Doing so will help you identify college students who may find it easy to transition to your workforce.
College students have a schedule they stick with throughout the semester, so see what hours they can work. You should also know if they can work enough hours to cover your needs as a business.
Working in person also matters to some businesses. However, you could offer some flexible remote work if you want to reach more college students. Luckily, if they go to school in the area, they most likely have the means to work in person if you need them.
They may be excellent people for the job if they can provide the experience, hours, and ability to work for you. These three factors matter the most since you need a college student committed to the position who can do the necessary work to help you out.
Final Remarks
As you consider potential students to work for your business, you must think about the best recruiting ideas for college students. Doing so will help you appeal to more potential candidates, fill the slots, and get the employees you need to succeed.
