How Career Services can increase college hiring

Success of Career Services function is often associated with the number of students hired from the college. Even though the scope of career services is much larger and addresses overall career readiness of the students, the effectiveness of Career Services function is quantified in terms of number of students hired. Hence, building and managing relationship with employers is vital and more the number of employers the Career Center is engaged with, more the chances of students getting hired. Attracting employers to the institution, facilitating access to the talent pool and facilitating smooth hiring requires dedicated effort and teamwork. It’s even more important to keep the employers interested by regularly engaging them so that they come back to your college every hiring season. 

Ability to network and connect with people is an essential trait of a career services professional. By networking you make your college/university visible to the employers, build a brand for your institution and be on the radar of recruiters. 

Events 

Events such as NACE Conference help Career Services professionals in networking with fellow CS professionals as well as Employers. Event participation will help you attract employers to your campus and refresh older connects and acquaintances. Events in which students can participate and make presentations representing their college/university is an effective branding avenue as well as highly helpful in getting noticed by the employers. 

Social Media 

Active presence in social media (LinkedIn and Twitter) is extremely important for any educational institute. All the major Universities’ Career Centers are very much active on LinkedIn and the staff members post regularly, connect with recruiters and participate in groups & discussions. LinkedIn is a powerful medium for targeted communication and building your network of recruiters as most of them actively use LinkedIn. In fact, many companies use LinkedIn as a hiring tool and hence they are active on LinkedIn and Career Center staff members can connect with them easily. 

Twitter is another media where the institutes can share regular updates about the latest developments in their school. Several Career Centers already have their Twitter handles and tweets multiple times in a day with relevant hash tags. The tweets could be about the events you are doing in the campus, any success stories & achievements, career fairs or even seasonal greetings and wishes.  

Career Services Management Platforms 

Career Services Management platforms will have jobs listed from the recruiters for which the students can apply directly. Some of the CSM platforms are integrated with popular jobs boards and hence the jobs from those job boards will be available on CSM platform. CSM platforms will also help you maintain relationship with the employers by helping career centers to be in constant touch with them, collaborate and share information just by a mouse click. Building a rapport with employers and maintaining it is so much easier if you have a sophisticated CSM platform. CSM platforms also facilitate smooth hiring from the campus using workflow driven processes. Modern systems also provide online interviews which makes it easier for the employers. Having a CSM System that can integrate with ATS systems will simplify the hiring process for employers. 

 Email Campaigns and Invitations 

Career Centers run email campaigns to employers requesting them to hire from the campus and send them invitation to participate in the career fairs. This requires persistent follow up and dedicated effort. Also, you should be having an accurate database of recruiters.