We’re kicking off the Forum by putting the collective expertise of the room to work. This opening plenary is a fast-paced, peer-led exchange focused on four “”hot topics”” currently shaping our work. You will have the opportunity to choose the topic most relevant to you and join a focused breakout group to share best practices, discuss shared hurdles, and swap “”what’s working now”” strategies.

The Hot Topics:

• Killing the Info Session: The traditional 60-minute presentation is struggling. What high-impact engagement formats are actually taking its place on your campus?
• Beyond Bums in Seats: How do you measure success when attendance numbers don’t tell the whole story? Share the metrics you use to prove ROI to your leadership.
• The CRM “”Must-Have”” Data: Beyond basic contact info, what are the critical data points you capture to manage your employer relationships? Share the insights you can’t live without and how they inform your outreach.
• The Ghosting Phenomenon: From skipped interviews to unanswered emails, professional etiquette is shifting. How are you holding both students and employers accountable?

Start the day by connecting with peers who are facing the same “”in-the-trenches”” challenges. You’ll leave these discussions with fresh perspectives and a handful of practical ideas to apply to your own employer relations strategy.” Graham Donald, President, Brainstorm Strategy Group Inc.

Career fairs and info sessions still matter — but many institutions are redesigning employer engagement to be more intentional, relationship-driven, and aligned with student outcomes.

In this panel, employer relations professionals from post-secondary institutions in Canada and the U.S. will share how they are designing innovative engagement formats with employers to deepen connections, expand access, and deliver stronger outcomes for students.

From embedded classroom partnerships and targeted roundtables to EDI-focused employer vetting and rethinking success metrics, this session explores how schools are moving from “event planning” to strategic relationship-building.

Questions panelists will address:

• How are you moving beyond one-size-fits-all events to design more tailored engagement experiences?
• What does co-designing with employers actually look like in practice?
• How are you embedding equity, inclusion, and access into employer engagement models?
• How do you measure success beyond attendance numbers?
• What internal shifts (resources, partnerships, mindset) have made innovation possible?

In a competitive talent market, forward-thinking employers are moving beyond traditional info sessions and career fairs to build stronger, earlier, and more authentic connections with students — both on campus and through employer-hosted initiatives off campus.

In this panel, employers from diverse industries will share the innovative formats and strategies they’re using to attract, assess, and engage student talent. From hiring-linked case competitions and hackathons to employer-hosted workshops, affinity-based programming, community partnerships, and experiential projects, panelists will explore what’s working — and why.

This session offers a candid look at how employers are aligning engagement strategies with hiring goals, DEI commitments, and evolving student expectations.

Questions panelists will address:

• What innovative engagement formats have you implemented — on or off campus — and why?
• How do these initiatives support your hiring, branding, or talent pipeline goals?
• How are you ensuring engagement efforts are inclusive and accessible?
• What makes a campus partner attractive when piloting new ideas?
• How are you evaluating ROI and long-term impact from these engagement strategies?

There is often a gap between how a post-secondary career office operates and how a corporate talent acquisition team thinks. Some of the most successful employer relations strategies are built by those who understand both worlds. This panel features recruitment leaders who began their careers within higher education and have since “”crossed the floor”” to lead campus hiring.

In this candid panel, we will explore the “”behind-the-scenes”” realizations these leaders had once they stepped into a recruiting role. They will share what they now see clearly about the recruitment cycle, what they wish they had known during their time on campus, and the specific ways their dual perspective helps them build more effective campus partnerships today.

We’ll Explore:

• What the transition to recruiting revealed about the most common misconceptions campus professionals have regarding how employers make hiring decisions.
• How the “”recruiter’s calendar”” and internal ROI pressures change the way these leaders now prioritize which schools they visit and which partnerships they maintain.
• What specific campus-side habits or processes these leaders now find the most helpful—or the most difficult to navigate—now that they are the ones being recruited.

How to use “”recruiter-speak”” more effectively to align your school’s offerings with the high-pressure goals of a talent acquisition team.

Employer relations teams play a critical role in helping employers understand how students explore opportunities, evaluate organizations, and decide where to engage. Yet students are increasingly selective—and their decisions are shaped less by polished employer messaging and more by whether interactions feel informative, relatable, and genuinely useful.

This panel offers candid insight into how students experience employer outreach today. Students will share what helps them understand what it’s actually like to work at an organization, what makes employer interactions feel meaningful and credible, and what influences their decision to engage—or disengage. The discussion will also explore how students navigate job postings, employer events, and the broader job search process, including the real-world role of AI.

We’ll Explore:

• What students need to see to “”picture themselves”” at a company and which specific employer behaviors build or break credibility.
• What makes a positive employer encounter feel helpful and genuine rather than transactional or scripted.
• Conversely, have you ever had a negative interaction with an employer, and if so, what about it turned you away from engaging further with them?
• How students prioritize information when reviewing postings or attending events and what triggers them to opt out of an opportunity.
• How students are actually using peer networks, online resources, and AI to research employers and navigate the application process.

This session will provide the perspective you need to guide your employer partners, shape your campus engagement strategies, and ensure outreach efforts align with what students genuinely find helpful.

Universities are navigating crowded engagement calendars, unpredictable student participation, and increasing employer expectations for measurable return on investment.  High volume programming and loosely structured engagement models can create strain for students, uncertainty for employers, and significant operational lift for career services teams. 

Over time, the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business Career Services team evolved its approach and developed an employer centric career development model designed to create shared value for students, employers, and staff. 

Using quantitative and qualitative insights gathered from students, employers, and participation trends, the team refined existing programming and more intentionally structured employer integration throughout the student career development journey.  This evolution strengthened core programming, reduced excess and unpredictable engagement activity, and created clearer, more purposeful pathways for employer involvement.  The result was increased consistency in student participation, more reliable engagement opportunities for employers, and a more sustainable operating model for the career services team. 

Attendees will gain insight into the data that informed these decisions, the adjustments implemented over time, and the outcomes that followed across employer participation, student engagement, and team workflow. 

Leave with a practical framework they can adapt to design a more intentional and sustainable employer engagement model within their own organizations.

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify existing data sources within your institution that can inform employer engagement decisions.
• Audit your current event and engagement schedule to reduce duplication and unpredictability.
• Reallocate employer involvement into structured career development touchpoints that improve consistency and sustainability.

While the potential of Artificial Intelligence is a common topic of discussion, its practical integration into the day-to-day work of employer relations and campus recruitment is still evolving. This session offers a space for professionals to go beyond the conversation and discuss what is actually happening on their campuses and within their employer networks.

Designed as an interactive knowledge-exchange, this session moves from a brief framing of current AI adoption trends into peer-to-peer breakouts. Participants will have the opportunity to share their observations, discuss common challenges, and explore how technology is—or isn’t—being used in students job search, employers’ screening or selection processes, and for operational efficiency within employer relations.

We’ll Explore:

• How teams are using AI to streamline employer research, draft marketing materials, and personalize outreach to partners.
• What are we hearing from employers about how AI is impacting their screening and candidate selection?
• What practical AI tools (if any) ER teams are using to manage their own workflows and administrative tasks more efficiently?

The most resilient employer relationships aren’t built on standard service menus; they are built by solving specific problems together. This session goes behind the scenes of a successful school-employer collaboration to show how a specific challenge was identified, tackled, and resolved.

This “”Best Practice”” deep dive features an Employer Relations professional and their lead employer partner. Using a Challenge-Solution-Outcome framework, they will walk through a real-world project—whether it was fixing a “”diversity pipeline”” gap, solving a “”skills mismatch,”” or revitalizing a stalled recruitment strategy.

We’ll Explore:

• What was the specific “”pain point”” that brought the school and employer to the table?
• How did the two partners co-design a solution that worked for both the institutional side and the corporate side?
• What were the measurable outcomes for students, the employer, and the career office?
• Looking back, what would the partners do differently? A candid look at the “”lessons learned”” during the process.

You’ll walk away with a blueprint for how to transition from a “”service provider”” to a “problem solver” for your employer partners.

Effective employer engagement rarely happens in isolation. To create meaningful connections, employer relations professionals must navigate a complex internal network of faculty, student clubs, and advancement offices. When these alliances work, they allow you to tap into existing student networks and faculty expertise to expand your reach and enhance your employer offerings without significantly increasing your own workload.

This session focuses on the “”internal”” side of the employer relations house. We’ll begin with a brief, real-world case study of an ER team that successfully leveraged an internal partnership to meet a specific employer demand. You will then have the opportunity to share experiences and gather creative ideas on how to build a unified campus front that makes your institution more attractive to external partners.

We’ll Explore:

• How to secure “”buy-in”” from faculty and student leaders so they become active advocates for your employer partners and events.
• How to identify the internal partners who hold the most influence with the specific student cohorts your employers are looking to hire.
• What practical steps help define “”who owns what”” when co-hosting events to ensure the employer experiences a seamless, professional interface.
• How to navigate common internal hurdles like data sharing, competing priorities, and institutional silos that can slow down employer engagement.

Strong employer partnerships don’t happen overnight—they require strategy, persistence, and the ability to adapt when market conditions shift. In today’s “”fair”” hiring market, moving beyond transactional services to become a strategic partner is what keeps employers coming back year after year.

This session features experienced employer relations leaders sharing real-world case studies of partnerships that have stood the test of time. Using a straightforward Challenge-Solution-Outcome framework, we’ll skip the theory and get straight to the practical strategies used to sustain engagement when institutional or industry priorities change.

We’ll Explore:

• How to move from “”selling a booth”” to helping employers solve specific talent and branding challenges.
• Candid stories of stalled relationships and the specific pivots used to re-engage partners.
• A look at the simple metrics and “wins” that demonstrate the long-term value of these partnerships to your institution.

Walk away with a clear set of lessons learned and actionable ideas you can use to strengthen your own employer relationships immediately.

Small and medium-sized employers (SMEs) are often the primary drivers of regional job growth and offer students the most direct paths to high-impact work. However, these organizations face a distinct set of hurdles when engaging with campus talent—from competing with global brands for student attention to navigating academic hiring cycles. To support these partners, we need to understand the unique “”friction points”” that influence how they recruit.

In this panel, leaders from small-to-mid-sized organizations will provide a candid look at their experience in the campus market. This is an opportunity to hear directly from employers about what makes student recruitment successful—or difficult—for their organizations, and how career offices can help bridge the gap between niche opportunities and student awareness.

We’ll Explore:

• How to articulate your “”value prop”” to students who are often defaulted toward household names? What helps you stand out in a crowded market?
• What specific hurdles—whether it’s recruiting technology, budget constraints, or administrative timelines—make campus engagement difficult?
• How to manage “”just-in-time”” hiring needs when they don’t align with the typical “”year-in-advance”” campus schedule or the timing of large career fairs?
• What supportive campus partnerships look like  and what flexibility or creative solutions make it easier to stay engaged long-term?

The campus recruitment process is becoming increasingly complex. Between managing a surge in application volumes and navigating new expectations around AI and work-readiness, recruiters face unique internal pressures. For employer relations professionals, the key to building successful partnerships is understanding what is actually happening behind the scenes.

This closing panel brings together talent leaders to share their insights about the current state of campus hiring. This session will provide you with an “”insider’s view”” of the internal hurdles your employer partners are facing, offering practical insights to help you refine your outreach, better advise your students, and build more resilient campus partnerships.

We’ll explore:

• What recruiters currently value most in campus partnerships and the specific “”friction points”” that cause them to disengage.
• How employer expectations of career offices and students are shifting in a market where technical skills are high but work-readiness is often in decline.
• How recruiters are balancing the need for efficient screening with the desire to build authentic, high-touch connections with students in a tech-driven world.