How to Create a Successful College Recruiting Program – Track Your Program (Part 12 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 twelfth entry, we’ll discuss how to track your program.

Once recruiting professionals have executed their annual program and the quota of interns and new hires has been filled, one might think it is time to kick back and take a well-deserved vacation. Maybe, but then again, maybe not. First, there is the new employee orientation to handle. Then, the managers of successful programs take a look at what they have accomplished and figure out what they could improve.

Remember those “lessons learned” discussed in a previous part? The best recruiting programs use debriefing techniques, usually in a session or sessions designed for this purpose. Recruiting professionals then use the documented “lessons” in planning the next program. And this process does not stop with “lessons learned.”
In fact, the author of Kickstarting Your College and MBA Recruiting Program, Sherrie Gong Taguchi, recommends creating a feedback loop. The author recommends the following activities as part of your feedback loop:

Be relentless in your pursuit of how you are doing, particularly how you can improve.
Initiate 360-degree feedback on what is working, what is not, what your most formidable competitors are doing, what your reputation is in the marketplace, etc.
Surveys, exit interviews, quick e-mails or phone calls can be effective for candidates who you wanted to say yes, but said no; new hires; school administrators/faculty; recruiting team members; and hiring managers.