In Part 1 of this article, I described the importance of building a solid business case for campus recruiting. This is the first step in developing a world-class campus recruiting program. Your business case plays a vital role in helping you get the resources you need for a successful program. Here are nine topics you may wish to research and include in your business case:

1. The demographic shift

This is probably the most compelling (and perhaps obvious) argument for investing in campus recruiting today. A Google search will quickly provide you with plenty of evidence of the aging population, declining birth rates, and the fact that fewer workers are going to have to support more retirees. There is plenty of evidence (and those who debate the opposite as well) that this will lead to shortage of workers within the next few years.

But that’s not the only aspect of the demographic shift that may affect your company. January 1st of this year (2011) marked the date that the first baby boomers turned 65 – the traditional retirement age. Most companies are sitting on a potential mass exodus when your senior employees decide they can afford to retire. What are the projections for your organization? Obviously retirees can’t be immediately replaced with new grads, but foresight is required to put your organization in a good position to fill future gaps.

Seek out national data, industry-specific data and then complement that with information about your own organization. Include labour market details specific to your industry. Data is best, but opinion pieces and case studies will help support your case.

2. Eye on the competition

Compile evidence of what your competitors are doing in terms of campus recruiting. Is this your opportunity to get ahead of competitors by attracting the best young talent? Or are you in severe catch-up mode? Either way, learn your position among your competitors and build your argument around that.

3. Future workforce

The world of work is changing: how it gets done, where it gets done, and who does it. Young employees are keen and able to work in collaborative work environments; they know how to connect and communicate with others around the world through a variety of technologies; and they may adapt more easily to how businesses will operate in the future. Understand how the changing workplace is affecting your business and add details to your business case about how new grads can support that change.

4. Building diversity

Simply put: if your business is trying to re-balance its workforce to reflect the diversity of the population, campus recruiting can be one of the most effective ways to attract and recruit your target audience. Ensure that your efforts, and your business case, align with your organization’s diversity efforts (and you may even be able to acquire support and resources from that area of HR).

5. Understanding changing times

The world outside your organization is changing in ways that older workers sometimes don’t grasp. Compile information about how your business is expected to change and make the case that students in the programs you recruit from are being trained for these changing times.

6. Creativity and innovation

Few will argue that young talent can bring creativity and innovation to an organization. If this is something your organization values – it may even be built into your organizational vision – be sure to demonstrate alignment with campus recruiting.

7. ROI – corporate examples

Seek out case studies of successful organization and articles by respected business leaders that endorse the case for recruiting and “developing your own” talent straight out of campus. It may not be “data”, but it can be persuasive.

8. Future customers

If your organization directly serves or sells to consumers, there is likely an effort to ensure that your employees are also a reflection of your customer base. Make the case that it takes young people to understand, market, and sell to young consumers.

9. They “get” technology

Never before have we been in a position where all young new hires have wealth of know-how that is in demand by more experienced workers: how to use new technologies. Develop opportunities for younger workers to share their knowledge of these technologies and add this as evidence to your business case.

Collecting this information may seem like a lot of work – but unless you’ve been asked for it right away, you can work on this over time. Always be on the lookout for new statistics, hiring trends, and case studies to support your argument.

That’s it for Step 1. The next step (coming soon!) is to evaluate your recruiting programs, processes and people to help you determine the highest priorities in your recruitment strategy.

What else do you include in your business case for campus recruiting?

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These are the five steps:

1. Build a solid business case
2. Evaluate your current programs, processes and people
3. Create your campus recruitment strategic plan
4. Focus on your Employer Value Proposition
5. Implement

Your process does not necessarily have to occur in this sequence. Chances are that you are in the midst of implementation right now – and it’s unlikely that you can take a lot of time away from that to prepare your business case or develop your plan. There’s no right or wrong way to do this, but completing the first four steps before your next recruiting cycle will dramatically enhance your success at implementation.

My approach to this process is based on two fundamental truisms:

1. Failure to plan is planning to fail; and,
2. That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially. (Karl Pearson)

Step 1: Building Your Business Case

Building a solid business case for investing resources into campus recruiting is the first step towards developing a truly strategic program. Even if you’ve been “thrown” into the job and told that you already have a clear mandate, the sooner you can get to work on building a solid business case the better. For one thing, it will help you better understand the needs and opportunity that support your organization’s investment. It will also provide some clarity that will support better decision-making when it comes to the many choices you will have to make regarding marketing, target school selection, program types (co-op, leadership development, internship), and so on.

Regardless of your situation, there will inevitably come a time when you’ll be asked: “why exactly are we doing this?” In fact, even if your current support comes from the CEO level, there will undoubtedly be those in your organization – people you rely on – who will not be completely convinced of the importance of your work. This could be your boss or your boss’s boss; your direct reports; hiring managers; colleagues in the marketing department; others in HR; recent hires you want to bring to campus; and many others. And of course, if there are leadership changes, you may find yourself having to defend your costs there too – or risk starting from scratch!

Part of your job is to ensure clarity among others. Your colleagues may think there is an endless supply of young talent or they may feel threatened, or concerned, by new hiring on campus when there are layoffs elsewhere in the business. Almost certainly, the colleagues you need support from are very busy with other tasks and responsibilities. The reasons for recruiting on campus may seem obvious to you, but often they are not; everyone deserves the opportunity to see the case clearly laid out. And remember, anecdotes are not data. You will need both.

Building your business case is a continuous process. You can continue to add data, case studies, and competitive intelligence to your business case on an on-going basis – the stronger your case, the more secure your role and your potential to expand your programs.

In my next article I will share eight topics that you should include in your business case.

Of course, if you’d rather discuss all five steps in person (along with many other topics at the conference), join us an upcomingCampus Recruiting Forum:

• San Francisco, December 12th (www.CampusRecruitingForum.com)
• Waterloo, December 15th (www.CampusRecruiting.ca)

But most employers do NOT need a social media strategy.

Why not? Simply put: because they aren’t ready!

There are many reasons that a business may not be ready to develop a social media recruitment strategy. A big one can be a lack of buy-in from those who control the resources to make it successful – often because they question if it is really necessary and how success will be measured. Another reason can be the recruitment team’s lack of expertise – even if they are all over social media in their personal lives, they may not be ready to implement social media in their professional roles.

But the biggest reason that many employers are not yet ready for social media has nothing to do with social media at all. It is the simple fact that they have lower-hanging fruit to pick. That is, there are simpler challenges with better-understood solutions that should be addressed first.

Campus recruiting has many moving parts: campus events, coordinating hiring managers, making effective use of co-op programs, training interviewers, campus relations, projecting hiring needs, ensuring management buy-in, understanding today’s students, campus ambassador programs, developing an effective employment value proposition, on-boarding, an effective website, effective advertising, and so on.

To take advantage of the opportunities on campus, all these pieces need to be aligned and used effectively. Somewhere in that long list (and the list goes on), there is almost certainly something that can be fixed or improved more easily. That’s the low-hanging fruit you want to pick first.

Developing and implementing a social media strategy can and should be a vital part of your attraction strategy (which is itself a part of your recruitment strategy). There is plenty of guidance and support available to make it a success – but it does require the development of internal expertise and most likely the support of external resources and expertise also. It doesn’t have to be intimidating, but it is probably not your low-hanging fruit.

Social media will develop interest, start conversations, and expand your candidate pool. But the first step is to do an assessment (we call it a Campus Recruitment Audit) to make sure you are ready for success when it comes. When you’ve done your assessment and addressed your major challenges, then you’ll be ready to take on social media. (And we’ll be happy to help you when you do!)

Join the conversation and sharing of expertise regarding campus recruitment program audits, social media strategies, and campus recruitment best practices at the Campus Recruiting Forums coming to Calgary on November 30th (www.CampusRecruiting.ca), to San Francisco on December 12th (www.CampusRecruitingForum.com) and to Waterloo on December 15th (www.CampusRecruiting.ca).

At the NACE conference in Orlando last month a panel of expert campus recruiters discussed the use of various metrics to evaluate and improve their recruiting. For me, what was most striking was when the facilitator, John Flato of Campus Strategic Partners, asked the audience how many of them measured “quality of hire”. There were about 75 employers in the room and yet only a handful raised their hands. I was so surprised that I posed the same question in my own workshop at the conference the next day – and the results were the same.

To be clear, “quality of hire” refers to the success of your new hires as they progress in their careers in your organization. It doesn’t mean how many other employers wanted them, how well they interviewed, or other assets they demonstrated during the recruiting process. Quality of hire measures whether or not they deliver value to your organization, get promoted, and fit well enough with your culture to want to stay long enough to deliver a great return on your investment.

Tracking cost-per-hire, time-to-hire, job offer acceptance rates, and other data helps to measure whether or not you are “filling seats” efficiently. But these metrics say nothing about whether or not you are actually hiring the right people. Without measuring the quality of hire – the true success of your process – you can’t demonstrate your effectiveness nor learn how to make improvements to your talent attraction and management.

In fact, your metrics may be entirely misleading. Perhaps you should be doubling the value you attribute to your candidates’ extra-curricular activities; perhaps those who interview well are your worst performers. How do you know?

Most employers have failed to design and implement a process to determine whether or not the students and graduates they are hiring are actually the right fit for their organization – and therefore likely to be promoted and make a meaningful impact. Many have no idea how long their new hires stay in the organization or how well they perform in the long term.

But it is quite possible that your “top picks” are failing miserably on the job, or succeeding wonderfully but leaving quickly when they find the work isn’t what they were looking for. Meanwhile, the “second tier” candidates you are hiring may be staying for the long term and excelling on the job. Obviously you’d like to re-vamp your hiring process so that those you have been considering “second tier” become identified quickly as your top candidates. You simply can’t learn this without tracking your quality of hire.

All that is really needed is a process and documentation to track your campus hires as they progress in their careers; access to their performance reviews; their exit interviews if they leave; and the original details from the hiring and interviewing process. This doesn’t have to be difficult, but it is challenging when there is high turnover in the campus recruiting roles – as is the case with many employers. There are tools such as RECSOLU that are designed for campus recruiters and some ATS systems will also facilitate the maintenance of such information.

You can always find ways to cut costs and add more efficiency to the process, but your ability to advance the role of campus recruiting in your organization; gain more resources; a commitment for more hiring; and truly add value is severely limited if you aren’t measuring your quality of hire.