Employers’ demand for professionals with a liberal arts background might actually be greater than generally perceived, largely because their broader scope of knowledge and skills learned can differentiate themselves from the pool of candidates… Click here to read the full article
Fall is upon us! And for those of us working on mid- and large-sized college recruitment programs, it’s the time of the year when all the thoughtful planning we’ve done over the summer goes into execution mode.
By this point, we have carefully selected our target schools and started lining up our onsite visits, career fairs, and interview days. We are armed with engaging collateral, intern and new grad success profiles, and job postings that speak to the soul of today’s college student. Our College Ambassadors are eager to get out and spread their contagious passion for our brand to future college hires. Our Hiring Managers and their teams are prepped for what’s to come. They have strategically planned and mapped out the meaningful and challenging projects that next year’s intern and new grad hires will be working on. Right?
We hope it is, because college recruitment is not a cheap proposition, at least not if it’s done right. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the cost of an entry-level college hire in 2014 averaged $3,5821 (and that only includes the direct recruitment-related costs2; if one takes into account the time spent by hiring teams, that number becomes gaspingly larger).
A lot has been written about how to build and run a top-notch college recruitment program and for good reason – it’s a sizeable investment. According to NACE, the average employer with a structured college recruitment program converts 51.7% of its interns and 37.8% of its co-ops3. They extend job offers to 74% of the students they interview, of which 38.3% accept the offers4. Retention rates of new college grad hires were reported in 2011 as 92% and 69.2% after one- and five-years of employment, with larger companies having a harder time retaining new hires.
But are we measuring the right outcomes? When analyzing recruitment success, companies often overlook broader metrics that actually tie into business success. For instance, just like planning can help customers make smarter choices for long-term health, assessing the right hiring metrics ensures better employee retention and business productivity.
Based on our experience, as well as data from NACE, most companies with formal college recruitment programs do a good job on the operational piece the program. Where employers tend to miss the mark is with the explicit alignment of college recruitment outcomes to the ultimate business objectives. To accomplish such an alignment, data analytics specific to the longer-term business objectives are far more valuable in helping to shape college recruitment strategies and design internships and recent grad programs.
NACE suggests a number of common metrics5 to evaluate college recruitment programs, which include:
NACE, in its Standards document6, provides an evaluation of the various metrics in terms of their relative use and importance as reported by NACE employers.
However, aren’t those distal data points the ones that are the most meaningful to the business in terms of the bottom line? Aren’t those the most critical metrics that should be shaping and driving our college recruitment strategy?
Let’s look at two examples:
Example 1: Assume you work for a manufacturing company that recruits new MBA graduates for a leadership training program. There is a big push to recruit from Ivy League schools and regional operations-focused programs. After five years, your analysis shows Ivy League hires leave faster and perform lower than regional ones. The ROI favors local schools. Similar to how attract price-conscious customers, focusing hiring from high-retention campuses gives better value to your recruitment dollars.
Example 2: Your company pays $45K to attend Ivy League School X’s career fair but hires just one candidate. After three years, that hire files three patents—far outperforming peers. These insights reshape your view on the school’s ROI. Measuring such long-term impact transforms hiring decisions.
Conclusion: Staying focused on desired business results is what ultimately should drive your company’s college recruitment strategy. And in order to stay focused, we need to be measuring the right things (or putting the right measuring processes in place to capture what really matters to the business), even if our patience for data availability may be taxed. That is not to say that proximal process-related metrics such as Applicant-to-Hire, Interview-to-Hire, or Intern Conversion Rate do not matter—but without the ultimate goal in mind, we may have a very efficient and effective process that yields all the wrong results to the business.