Part one of this series dealt with the business case of implementing a new college recruiting program aimed at moving the activity out of antiquated gallows of campus career fairs, campus career centers and the like, and into the modern era. This direct approach is aimed at reaching those who know and can influence the truly valuable students who wouldn’t be caught dead in a career resource center.
The proposed approach is one that all but the very best talent acquisition functions scoff at, not because it isn’t possible, but rather because it isn’t easy. Beyond the business case, part one outlined the major players corporate recruiters can leverage on college campuses to reach top talent and detailed the benefits of the approach.
Now, in part two, the attention turns to the steps and activities needed to implement such an approach.
Developing a Formal Relationship-Building Process
Today, if you want to identify top students, build your brand, and “sell” the best students, you need to go beyond the career center and build relationships with the faculty who know and have the ability to influence the decisions of these students. Once your firm makes the decision to build long-term relationships with faculty, the next logical step is to develop a formal process that you can use to build these relationships in many diverse academic programs.
Who Should Have The Relationship?
Although recruiting managers can help develop and manage the overall process, recruiters are not the best ones to build relationships with faculty. Instead, the best people to build the relationship with faculty are your program directors and your hiring managers.
Directors are the first choice because not all individual managers hire graduates every year; however, directors and GMs will likely have some hiring in their organization each year.
Because senior managers are often domain subject experts, they have a better chance of having advanced education in the subject and being considered as “equals” by faculty. They also know the latest jargon, tools, problems, and opportunities. In addition, because senior managers control significant financial resources, faculty often look upon them more favorably because they could potentially offer research support and funding.
Create a Relationship-Building Template
This roadmap can guide the relationship-building process for all managers across the firm. Include the steps to take, the best practices, common errors, and the metrics for assessing the strength and the success of their relationship. The recruiting department should also provide training, advice, and guidance so that individual managers can minimize the time they spend on these recruiting relationships.
The “relationship building map” should support localization, so that the final approach best fits the type of university that you’re targeting (i.e., top-10 schools, other research institutions or teaching institutions, as well as public vs. private schools). Differences should also be allowed for international universities.
Process steps should cover identifying the faculty to target, how to communicate with faculty, and what are the current best practices for getting faculty to play nice. The key here is to utilize multiple approaches and reach school employees and staff who recruit the most influential individuals within their academic program.
Also, develop a macro-level communications process that minimizes the chances of duplicate efforts on individual faculty members and best practice/problem sharing processes among those building relationships. Add metrics in order to demonstrate the success of the process and its ROI.
Finally, put together a “toolkit” of approaches that allows an individual hiring manager to pick and choose from among the many available approaches and techniques. Rather than putting together a strict “program,” offer choices and the opportunity to learn from their successes and mistakes. This allows managers to “own” the relationship-building process, which is the No. 1 critical success factor for relationship-building programs.
Rule #1: Don’t Embarrass the Faculty Member
There is a lot of “emotional baggage” associated with building relationships with faculty. It’s also true that some practices that are fine at some institutions are frowned upon or even banned at others.
In case of doubt, don’t assume; instead, find out. If you try something that creates waves, be prepared to modify your approach so you don’t embarrass the faculty member. In most cases, they can’t be fired but they can catch flak from other jealous or politically opposed faculty members.
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It would be pretty hard to throw a stone in most HR organizations without hitting someone who manages an antiquated process. Despite significant changes in how people live, work, and play, many HR practices continue on as if they were operating in 1960. For years employment advertising specialists relied on channels with shrinking audiences, simply because that’s how it was always done. Now, as more and more newspapers fail, the award for most antiquated recruiting practice looks like it will pass to college recruiting. Like employment advertising, college recruiting is an activity bound by tradition. While numerous studies demonstrate that an increasing percentage of students no longer engage on campus career-related services/events, such channels remain the focus of most corporate practices.
As the economy continues to affect the recruiting industry, companies have been making budget cuts in many areas. College recruiting is often one of the first programs to go when deciding how to appropriate the budget during a recession. However, as past recessions have taught us, this can prove to be a costly mistake in the long run, creating gaps in succession plans for entry level management roles several years down the road.
