15 tips for recruiting technology students other than through on-campus interviews

Recruiting technology students can be particularly effective through practical experiences and digital outreach that go beyond traditional on-campus interviews. Employers can partner with universities and coding bootcamps to offer internships, co-op programs, or project-based roles where students can apply their skills in areas like software development, data science, and IT support. These hands-on experiences allow students to work on real-world tech challenges while getting to know the company’s tools, culture, and work environment. Early engagement helps build a pipeline of tech-savvy professionals who are prepared to transition into full-time roles upon graduation.

In addition, leveraging digital platforms and virtual events is key to reaching tech students. Posting internships or entry-level tech roles on specialized job boards, as well as professional networks like LinkedIn or GitHub, can attract students eager to showcase their technical skills. Virtual hackathons, coding challenges, and webinars on emerging technologies like AI or blockchain provide a dynamic way to engage students and demonstrate the company’s innovation in the tech space. These methods allow employers to connect with a broader pool of students, highlighting their cutting-edge projects and growth opportunities without relying solely on-campus recruitment.

We asked CEOs and founders for their best alternative recruiting tips to help Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies hire recent graduates for tech roles. From partnering with coding boot camps to leveraging storytelling and real-life examples, here are fifteen tips to help your organization think outside the box when recruiting.

• Partner With Coding Boot Camps
• Develop a Collaborative Project Portal
• Find Candidates Online
• Offer Paid Remote Internships
• Implement an Ambassador Program
• Leverage Virtual Recruiting Platforms
• Showcase Company Culture on Social Media
• Establish Industry-Specific Apprenticeships
• Use Coding Assessments
• Sponsor Hackathons at Universities
• Implement a Mentorship Program
• Engage in Online Communities
• Explore Partnerships With Online Platforms
• Leverage Virtual Events and Online Platforms
• Leverage Storytelling and Real-Life Examples

Partner With Coding Boot Camps

One effective alternative to traditional on-campus recruiting is partnering with coding boot camps and online education platforms. These programs often produce highly skilled graduates who have hands-on experience and are eager to enter the workforce. Offering virtual internships or project-based assessments is another way to evaluate candidates while giving them practical experience. This approach not only broadens your reach but also taps into a pool of talent that may have been overlooked through traditional recruiting methods.

Sergiy Fitsak, Managing Director, Fintech Expert, Softjourn

Develop a Collaborative Project Portal

Develop a collaborative project portal where students can work on real-world problems set by your company in a virtual environment. This portal can function as a dynamic recruitment tool by allowing students to engage directly with challenges that are current and relevant to your company’s needs. It gives recruiters the chance to observe not only the technical skills but also problem-solving approaches, creativity, and ability to deliver under deadlines. This approach not only enriches the student’s learning experience but also provides the company with a pipeline of candidates who have already aligned themselves with the company’s objectives and culture.

Alari Aho, CEO and Founder, Toggl Inc

Find Candidates Online

On-campus recruiting of candidates for technology roles is a traditional approach, but in many respects, is no longer needed. It is a somewhat archaic approach, very much centered on a “we come to you” ethos.

What I have found works best is a “find them where they play” approach. Technology students and graduates hang out a lot in virtual environments, so it can be very fruitful to engage them in their own (online) space.

Run competitions such as “hackathons” or coding challenges like “virtual escape rooms” on platforms they often frequent such as Twitch, GitHub, Stack Overflow, amongst others. Not only does this act to impress potential candidates by demonstrating that you know what is important to them and where they hang out, but it also attracts the very top talent who may not be found physically “on campus” so much. The most capable technology students will likely be found more online, rather than traipsing around campus recruitment stands.

This approach also allows you to assess how strong their technical skills and problem-solving capabilities are in their own environment—it doesn’t feel much like an assessment at all! These platforms allow organizations to evaluate candidates’ abilities through direct and fun engagement, without needing to visit a physical campus at all.

Jonny Pelter, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Founder, CyPro

Offer Paid Remote Internships

Engaging college students and recent grads without relying on on-campus events? It’s all about offering paid remote internships and project-based gigs. This approach opens doors to a wider array of candidates who bring fresh perspectives and innovative solutions to your company. Plus, it aligns perfectly with the flexibility today’s students crave.

Remote opportunities let students tackle real-world problems from wherever they are, making it easier to attract bright minds who might otherwise miss an on-campus recruitment event. This not only diversifies your talent pool but also provides a more comprehensive view of a candidate’s potential than a traditional interview process. You get to see their problem-solving abilities, communication skills, and work ethic in action.

A practical framework to follow involves setting clear, outcome-based objectives for these projects. Outline the scope, expected deliverables, and deadlines, then provide the necessary support and resources. This structured yet flexible setup enables students to contribute effectively while honing their skills, giving you a realistic preview of how they might perform as full-time hires. Embracing this strategy positions your organization as forward-thinking, adaptable, and committed to nurturing new talent.

Will Yang, Head of Growth & Marketing, Instrumentl

Implement an Ambassador Program

Develop a student-ambassador program where current young employees can connect with their alma maters and act as company representatives. These ambassadors can host webinars, and workshops, and participate in university career groups, effectively communicating the opportunities and culture of your organization directly to potential candidates. This peer-to-peer marketing strategy not only enhances your visibility among tech students but also adds a layer of credibility and relatability to your recruitment efforts.

Mark McDermott, CEO & Co-Founder, ScreenCloud

Leverage Virtual Recruiting Platforms

My top tip for Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies looking to hire college and university students for technology roles is to leverage virtual recruiting platforms. These platforms allow organizations to access a broader and more diverse pool of candidates without the limitations of geographic location. 

By using virtual job fairs, online assessments, and remote interviews, companies can streamline the hiring process and tap into top talent from universities across the country. This approach also reduces the costs and logistics associated with on-campus recruiting.

Christian Espinosa, Founder and CEO, Blue Goat Cyber

Showcase Company Culture on Social Media

Social media campaigns are a powerful tool for attracting top tech talent. We showcase our vibrant company culture and exciting projects through targeted content on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. This approach has significantly increased our applicant pool and helped us find candidates who align with our values and mission.

Yarden Morgan, Director of Growth, Lusha

Establish Industry-Specific Apprenticeships

Apprenticeships are an excellent alternative to on-campus hiring for technology positions. With the practical learning opportunities these programs provide in software development, cybersecurity, or data science, students and recent graduates can expand their skills while collaborating with industry experts. Tech talent can easily acquire experience relevant to the sector through apprenticeships, which frequently result in full-time employment. Companies can develop talent in this way according to their requirements, which encourages long-term loyalty and guarantees that new workers have the necessary skill set.

Adam Wood, Co-Founder of RevenueGeeks, RevenueGeeks

Use Coding Assessments

Using coding assessments from platforms like HackerRank or LeetCode filters out candidates who may appear strong on paper but struggle with practical coding challenges. These platforms ensure that those moving forward in the hiring process have demonstrated both technical expertise and problem-solving abilities. This data-driven approach enhances the confidence of hiring decisions, leading to the selection of candidates who excel in real-world scenarios.

Kyran Schmidt, Co-Founder, Outverse

Sponsor Hackathons at Universities

I’ve found that sponsoring hackathons at universities is one of the most effective ways to source candidates. By providing students with our API to build apps, we get to see candidates in action and assess skills that align with our needs. Two of our best hires were previous hackathon winners.

We also built an internship program where students work on a real business issue, like improving a machine-learning model. Interns who demonstrated solid data science skills received full-time offers. Three top candidates joined our team last year through this program.

These methods move beyond traditional recruiting to evaluate candidates’ abilities to solve complex problems creatively. While on-campus recruiting has its place, hackathons and internships provide companies a way to find talent with specialized, in-demand skills. And for candidates, they offer a chance to showcase skills in a real-world setting.

The key is designing challenges custom to your needs. Provide data sets, APIs, or other resources for students to build something meaningful. Then hire the best performers. This approach helped us fill key roles on our data-science and engineering teams with candidates that were a great culture fit. I highly recommend it.

Brian Pontarelli, CEO, FusionAuth

Implement a Mentorship Program

Implement a comprehensive mentorship program that pairs students with seasoned professionals in your organization. This approach has proven incredibly effective in my work, as it provides students with valuable insights into real-world applications of their skills. Not only does this foster a deeper connection with potential recruits, but it also allows you to assess their fit within your company culture and their potential for leadership roles.

Barbara McMahan, CEO, Atticus Consulting LLC

Engage in Online Communities

I think the best way for a Fortune 1000 company or government agency looking to recruit technical talent to follow is to go beyond the confines of traditional on-campus recruiting initiatives and go after people who are hanging out in online communities and forums such as GitHub, Stack Overflow, or, if you so dare, even Reddit. 

These are places where many students and young graduates usually publish their projects, discuss topics, and seek best practices. These forums become the sites where people are working on real problems and offer opportunities for companies to identify promising candidates based on their contributions and how they actually solve problems on the ground.

To truly tap into these communities, companies could propose sponsored challenges (“Guess how long it takes for my AI agent to beat mine in a game of Go”) or project ideas (“Could you integrate your travel-planner app with ours?”) and look at how candidates undertook those tasks. They could connect with them by mentoring (tie into a site’s alumni to pair back to its commercially oriented branches; pair your current engineers back to sites for community outreach) or by asking for help with small problems (“Could you log in and fix this JSON problem that’s causing some of our games to get stuck?”). They could see not just if candidates had the technical chops, but if those candidates also cared about learning, cared about their colleagues, and cared about the community. 

When companies engage with potential hires this way, they can assess not only the candidate’s practical skills but also their fit as a cultural addition to the company well ahead of a formal interview. The benefit of this socially networked extension to hiring isn’t just that you can get technical work out the door faster (although that is true!); it is that it creates an ongoing community investment in and assessment of potential clients before they become employees.

Thomas Franklin, CEO, Swapped

Explore Partnerships With Online Platforms

Explore partnerships with online coding platforms and tech-focused communities. These platforms, such as GitHub, Stack Overflow, or Kaggle, are hubs where talented students and recent graduates showcase their skills through open-source contributions, problem-solving, and data-science competitions. By engaging with these communities, organizations can identify promising candidates based on their actual coding abilities and project portfolios rather than relying solely on academic credentials.

This approach allows recruiters to assess practical skills, creativity, and passion for technology, which are crucial in the fast-paced tech industry. Also, sponsoring or hosting online hackathons or coding challenges can attract top talent while providing a hands-on evaluation of candidates’ capabilities in real-world scenarios.

Oliver Aleksejuk, Managing Director, Techcare

Leverage Virtual Events and Online Platforms

My top tip for Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies looking to hire college and university students and recent graduates for technology roles is to leverage virtual events and online platforms as an alternative to traditional on-campus recruiting.

In the post-COVID era, although in-person recruiting is on the rise, the landscape has shifted towards a more hybrid approach. Virtual events and online platforms remain incredibly valuable, especially for companies seeking candidates with specific technical skills.

Without the need to physically visit campuses, companies can create employer accounts on platforms like Handshake or RippleMatch, where they can post technology roles and filter students by specific requirements. This approach saves significant time compared to attending in-person career fairs, where there’s no guarantee of who might stop by your booth.

Additionally, virtual events can be tailored to attract attendees who specifically meet all the technical requirements of the role. Effective marketing of these events is key to ensuring they reach the right people. This strategy allows you to connect with prospective recent graduates from all over, rather than being limited to one specific geographic location.

By embracing virtual recruiting, you not only broaden your reach but also make efficient use of time and resources, meeting candidates who are the best fit for your technology roles.

Audra Metzler Vita, University Recruiting Manager, Angi

Leverage Storytelling and Real-Life Examples

My top tip for Fortune 1,000 companies and government agencies looking for an alternative to on-campus recruiting for technology roles is to leverage storytelling and real-life examples to engage students and recent graduates. 

Equip your recruiters with compelling assets that showcase how past interns have successfully converted into full-time hires. Provide realistic job previews to give candidates a clear picture of what it’s like to work at your organization. 

Additionally, invest in a strong internship program that includes leadership-development sessions, meaningful work assignments, and access to mentors to build long-term relationships with emerging talent.

Steven Amrhein, Manager, Employer Brand & University Relations, PatientPoint