How to Create a Successful College Recruiting Program – Gain Organizational Commitment for the Program (Part 7 of 14)

The purpose of this series of CollegeRecruiter.com Blog entries is to define and describe the basic steps to create a successful college recruiting program. In the first entry, we defined success and laid out the steps to the program. In this seventh entry, we’ll discuss how and why you should gain organizational commitment for on-campus recruiting program.

Failure to get your company leadership committed to your college recruiting program usually ends up in a disaster. No recruiting manager wants funds to disappear, either gradually or suddenly. Avoiding a program budget slump appears simple — turn your program into a highly-recognized success, or, like Allison Nicholas, be fortunate enough to work for a company whose President did college recruiting in the past. But what if you are not as fortunate as Ms. Nicholas and you are beginning a new program or trying to rejuvenate an old one?

Here is what Heather Kreider, University Relations Manager for Red Lobster, advises on the topic of gaining organizational commitment:

Showcase your program and its impact to company leadership in a public relations effort. Part of this effort is to engage company leaders in on-campus recruiting activities such as speaking to campus groups.

Organizational commitment also means engaging employees in the recruiting process. Experienced employees sometimes see college recruits as kids stealing coveted jobs. But employees who interact with students on-campus or on-site report win-win situations. Students get to talk to employees about day-to-day activities while employees better understand the importance of bringing “new blood” into the company.
Getting employees engaged in college recruiting produces results. Here is what Wetfeet’s Student Recruiting Outlook 2006 reports about this topic:

Companies that are serious about hiring campus talent (especially banking and consulting firms) are committing serious resources to their campus hiring activity; many send large numbers of alums back to their alma maters multiple times per year. These efforts seem to bear fruit for their employees, as many of them are identified as “Top Recruiters on Campus” by the students surveyed.