Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership
Unemployment for computer science grads is 2x that of art history majors! WOW. With such an unusual occurrence, it’s clear that a significant amount of innovation will be needed in order to be successful in this suddenly crazy college recruiting environment.
And part of that innovation will be because now, even traditional recruiters who recruit exclusively for experienced technical talent may be forced to do some college hiring. If your corporation has been trying to hire in critical fields like AI or data security, then you already know about the outrageous millions that are now expected.
Compensation for experienced talent in mission-critical fields like AI (and those outrageous starting salaries) have suddenly made effective college recruiting in technical fields critical. For many corporations, college grads may now be the only new hires they can afford in mission-critical technology areas.
Sourcing Is The Best Way To Gain A Competitive Advantage In College Recruiting
Because of the heightened recognition of the importance of college recruiting, there will now be even more intense college competition from recruiting giants like Google, Amazon, MS, and Apple. And that means that lesser-known corporations, SMEs, government agencies, and NPOs won’t have much of a chance of hiring exceptional talent.
Unless they have a secret competitive advantage, it turns out that sourcing hidden exceptional college talent is the most effective and the hardest way to match competitive advantage. Incidentally, these students are labeled as “hidden” probably because they didn’t enroll in the right major, they didn’t go to a “top school,” or they didn’t join the right student organization. Or they weren’t active on college or professional career job sites because they had been planning to attend grad school for years.
So, in order to encourage innovation in college sourcing, this article highlights the top five innovative college sourcing approaches that have been proven to be effective for finding hidden (harder to identify) exceptional students.
An illustration of sourcing Hidden Exceptional Talent (HET) from college
Brock Purdy was a college quarterback from Iowa State, a non-football power. As a result, he was off most everyone’s recruiting radar. In fact, only one team decided to even give him serious consideration with a draft pick. Fortunately, the 49ers’ approach for identifying hidden exceptional talent eventually led to their hiring of this quarterback. He amazingly took them to the Super Bowl in only his second season. He is clearly an example of a hidden college talent that turned out to be an exceptional college hire.
The Top 5 Innovative Approaches For Identifying Hidden Exceptional Talent (HET)
Most corporations create their target list of candidates based on their university, exceptional grades, and a high class ranking (even though Google found that these factors weren’t often great predictors of long-term job success). So if you want to identify these “harder to identify.” But still highly capable talent. You will need to use one or more of the following innovative alternative talent identification approaches. You should know that each of the listed innovative approaches is not brand-new. Because each has been successfully used by at least one major corporation. Note that the most effective and easiest to implement talent identification approaches appear early in the list:
- Surprise, grad assistants are the best referrers of hidden exceptional talent – many mistakenly assume that professors are. Because they have so many students, they are the best source for identifying the top students. However, professors don’t always frequently interact with the best students. And they definitely aren’t the best judges of corporate talent. They are less useful as a source because many professors are reluctant to recommend one student over another. Either because of their personal fairness/ethical concerns or because of restrictive college recruiting policies.
Fortunately, there is another more accessible source for identifying exceptional talent. And they are the grad assistants of the best practical college professors. They are a great referral source because they are not in the least bit reluctant to recommend the best students. But also because they are the most likely to spot “soft skills.” Grad assistants spend so many hours outside of the classroom observing, assessing, coaching, advising, and tutoring students. Grad assistants also attend many informal group student study sessions. They easily observe first-hand a student’s leadership, collaboration, and team skills.
Fortunately, the very best well-connected grad assistants are easy to find. Because every student in the major knows them well. Recruiters should also know that firms like Valero have validated the accuracy of these grad assistant referrals. And as an added benefit, the most popular grad assistants are also extremely effective at convincing the best students to apply for your internships and open positions. Finally, great recruiters, of course, target the top grad assistants themselves. In part because they have passed another rigorous screening process. When they were handpicked by the best professors. - Those who have completed internships should be prime recruiting targets – because most college students have zero experience working in the field of their major. It makes sense to specifically target those few students who have some level of experience as a result of a corporate internship. These former interns are likely to be top-performing hires. First, they have already come out at the top of a rigorous corporate intern candidate screening. But also because their internship likely provided them with a pre-graduation reality check. So after being hired, these former interns will be less likely to be arrogant and/or completely confused about what is expected of them. And unlike most graduating students, you won’t have to rely solely on their grades and coursework in order to accurately assess their capability. With interns, you can also use their internship products as something concrete that you can use to assess their capabilities. Another benefit when you hire former interns is that they bring with them the best practices and the plans of the companies where they interned. Finally, realize that finding students who have successfully completed a rigorous corporate internship is relatively easy. They will list all of their internships on their résumé.
- Referrals are also effective at identifying hidden college talent – employee referral programs of all types have routinely proven themselves to be the most effective sourcing channel. Yet most college recruiting programs unexplainably have no referral component. You can overcome that omission by seeking referrals from your own college hires from last year. These recent hires are likely to still know current student talent because they probably shared several classes and projects with them. A second group that you should seek referrals from is your current and past interns. You should also seek students from each of your current top recruiting targets. Next, you should make it a standard practice to use “interview name gathering.” During the last interview of each of your current finalist, you specifically ask them to show their connectedness. By listing the names of the top five “hidden exceptional students” that most wouldn’t be aware of. Finally, make it a standard onboarding practice to ask each of your new college hires, “Who else is good in this major?”
You should also seek referrals from others in the college community. This should include the leaders of student organizations, the best tutors, and even the department secretary who works in your targeted major. You probably won’t need to provide a reward for these referrals. But if you do, a well-funded Starbucks coffee card will likely be sufficient.
- Online gaming platforms are the best way to find and communicate with every college student – few in college recruiting realize that the best way to find and communicate with nearly every college student today is by using one or more popular gaming platforms. 85% of college students report that they regularly play video games (which may be a higher percentage than those who attend class regularly). In addition to their wide reach, these platforms are effective because they also reach the hidden students who are not easy to find because they are not actively seeking a job after graduation. Finally, relying on these platforms will provide you with a competitive recruiting advantage. Because you won’t find many other college recruiters using them for recruiting purposes. One company, Riot Games, actually used in-game play to predict the future on-the-job performance of each candidate.
Both hiring managers and recruiters should realize that gaming platforms can help them identify students who possess effective collaboration, leadership, and team skills. That is possible because today, many college students play in groups or may even be members of a formal gaming team. In addition, gaming requires joystick proficiency and quick responses. The skills of gamers may be directly transferable to many corporate jobs where robots, drones, and manufacturing equipment are often operated remotely. And if you want to know which are the best gaming sites for recruiters, simply ask a few of your recruiting candidates. Note: You can learn more details about recruiting on video game platforms here.
- On-campus student ambassador programs are effective at finding and selling hidden talent – even though many college students now complete much of their education remotely. Having “boots on the ground” is still a highly effective recruiting approach. And because no corporation can afford to have a paid recruiter continually present on every targeted campus. The best alternative for building a full-time campus presence is the use of “on-campus ambassadors.” The students volunteer to become “company ambassadors” after they return to campus. And when they are on campus, their role 24/7 is to continually spread your corporate employer brand message. This is normally done during discussions in their own classes as well as outside of class during student club meetings. Ambassadors can also work with professors to get your corporation’s employees invited as speakers and as evaluators for class project presentations. Firms like Google and Microsoft have previously found this ambassador approach to be highly effective.
Try These Two Innovative Selling Approaches When You Can’t Land The Top Students You’ve Identified
Because finding exceptional talent only gets you halfway to your hiring goal. Some recruiters may need a few innovative approaches to convince their finalist to accept your offer.
- Give your company a second chance by adopting an “extended recruiting time frame” – even the best recruiting efforts will fail to hire one or more of your top recruiting targets. So rather than giving up on your top recruits at the end of the recruiting season, convince your hiring managers to accept “a long-term view of recruiting,” which means that instead of giving up, you will be patient and keep trying for at least another year or two to convince a top candidate to join your company.
During this extended time, you continue building your relationship with your target, and your chances of hiring a candidate who once turned you down may improve over time. After one year of working in their career, many recent grads become disillusioned or develop a new and clearer perspective about where they want to go. And it is that evolving perspective that may make them more interested in a career with your corporation.
It’s important to note that if you finally hire your extended recruiting target, extending the hiring window also means that your one-year-out-of-college hire will be more desirable. Because after a year or two of working, they will now be more mature, fully trained, more experienced, and more sure of what they want.
- For exceptional college candidates, use a “buddy hire program” to close the deal – because college friendships are often extremely strong. Many exceptional college students have a pipe dream of working side-by-side with one of their exceptional colleagues. So if you have another headcount, consider adopting a variation of the successful U.S. Army buddy hiring program. This is where you offer a truly exceptional recruit the opportunity to work alongside a close friend, colleague, or even family member. This “hire them both” approach will provide you with a competitive advantage because none of your recruiting competitors will be able to match it. Obviously, the timeframe for any promise of working together would have to be a limited amount of time. Note: You can learn more about developing a buddy hiring program here.
Final Thoughts
During tough economic times, it’s not unusual for corporations to try to save money by cutting back on their college recruiting. But this year things are different. The cost of paying experienced technical new hires has become so outrageous that the only technical talent that most can afford to hire are graduating seniors.
Unfortunately, this affordability has heightened the degree of recruiting competition on college campuses. So now, in order to have any real chance of recruiting success, a recruiter must have at least one competitive advantage.
In this article, I have highlighted why innovative sourcing approaches for identifying “hidden” exceptional students are the best recruiting advantage to have.
Thanks for finding the time to read and share these recruiting innovations
Notes for the reader
This is the latest article from Dr. Sullivan, who was called “the Michael Jordan of Hiring” by Fast Company.
You can subscribe to his weekly Talent Management articles here or by following him on LinkedIn.
