How to Create a Successful College Recruiting Program – Plan/Schedule On-Campus Visits (Part 9 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 ninth entry, we’ll discuss how to plan and schedule your on-campus visits.

Planning on-campus recruiting is so critical to your college recruiting program that it is best done by experienced professionals. The college recruiting experts interviewed for this article were asked what activities were key to their on-campus recruiting. They gave the following responses which are presented in three categories (Initial Activities, Interviewing, and Post Interview Communications). The author’s comments are italized.

Initial Activities

• Prepare for and organize on-campus interviews. Information is provided (by Enterprise Rent-A-Car) well in advance of interviews. Axciom uses information sessions as one way to provide information to students.
• Make sure the right students with the right skills are participating in the interviews.
• Get the right company representatives on-campus (decision-makers positive about student engagement).
• Make company presence known through an advertising campaign.

Interviewing

• Be flexible: allow applicants to interview on-campus or apply on-line. Those applying on-campus are assessed during the screening interview. Those applying on-line can be assessed through on-line assessment programs.
• Conduct interviews in-person whenever possible (versus phone interviews).
• Standardize the selection process.
• Use a consistent set of interview questions.
• Get to second interviews as quickly as possible.

Post Interview Communications

• Move quickly through process and follow up with potential candidates.
• Keep in touch with candidates through phone calls, emails.
• Make offers competitive.
• Be responsive; establish trust.

Interview Scheduling
Sandra Grabczynski has fifteen years of college recruiting experience at the University of Michigan Business School and has advised thousands of companies on recruiting Michigan BBAs and MBAs. Here is what this experienced recruiter says about campus interview scheduling in her book, A Corporate Guide to College Recruiting:

“Most schools open their scheduling books a year in advance to reserve dates for presentations and interviews. The best dates fill very quickly at most schools.
Schedule interviews with individual schools according to their time line.
If the school’s timing is really out of line for your company, go off-campus for interviews, but only if you cannot live with the career office arrangements and notify the career office staff of the dates when you will be interviewing.”