Campus hiring is the stepping stone for recent graduates or freshers as well as for organizations who are on the lookout for fresh talent. However, the overall campus hiring is predicted to fall by 1.9%, according to a survey by NACE’s Job Outlook 2024.
Certain challenges such as budget cuts or uncertain economic conditions, limited vacancies, and sparse resources, hamper recruitment. Using campus recruitment tools and proper management along with a broader perspective in mind, these challenges can be conquered.
Source: naceweb.orgCampus Recruitment Challenges Faced By Companies
Organizations access potential talent via campus recruitment, it is an integral part of the talent acquisition process. But, these processes face challenges hampering the growth of the organization. The following are the challenges encountered:
Limited time and budget
Although campus hiring is time-saving and cost-effective when it comes to recruiting candidates by saving on advertising costs, they do pose a challenge in terms of time and money.
Much of the time is needed to screen candidates, followed by the in-person interview processes. These steps are backed by the finance team, which needs to sponsor the recruitment processes. The talent acquisition team is sometimes reluctant to approach a large group of candidates due to these limitations thus, overlooking potential talent.
👉 Read more: Methods for Screening Candidates to Hire the Best Talent
Limited staff
It is the HR that is responsible for conducting campus hiring, however, sometimes due to unseen circumstances such as tight schedules, these teams are not able to carry out the hiring process.
Therefore, if there is a low availability of hiring managers the entire task of campus recruitment is affected.
Use of traditional recruiting methods
A traditional hiring process begins with the screening of candidates via resumes. Regardless of how important a resume is, they are just words on paper. One cannot rely simply on a resume, as one cannot assess a candidate’s character, skill, or talent by reading through a resume.
Likewise, students do not expect to wait an entire day to talk to recruiters, with all the evolution of technology as well. They look for more flexibility, transparency, and versatility in the interview process. Therefore, such conventional methods if followed may be a challenge for recruiters.
👉 Read more: Problems with Resume Screening - What You Should Do Instead?
Diversity and Inclusion
The current generation of candidates believes in diversity and equality and would like to work at an organization that follows this principle. A study claims that 42% of candidates would reject an offer at a company that lacks diversity.
Therefore, many companies express ensuring the potential candidates at a campus, that they follow diversity and inclusion becomes a challenge for them.
Lack of brand awareness
Potential candidates involve millennials and Gen Z, whose beliefs and expectations are versatile. When recruiters look for these potential candidates, they often forget to deliver the brand’s vision, and these potential candidates, on the other hand, determine their application by first viewing the company’s values.
Employer branding is a vital force in the recruitment process. A study suggests that 37% of millennials and 39% of Gen Z turn down proposals due to unmatched values. Such a lack of effective employer branding makes it difficult for recruiters during campus hiring.
Failure to deliver positive candidate experiences
Recruiters looking for the best candidates if show a lack of involvement while engaging with the individual can create a negative impact. With the ever-evolving generation, such individuals have higher expectations when it comes to being recruited.
Research says that 74% of candidates seek opportunities to engage with recruiters, and if these chances are missed, it will create an obstacle during campus hiring.
Skills and competency gaps
With resume-based hiring, recruiters may have half access to knowledge about the skills possessed by the candidate.
This lack of competency creates a gap, making it difficult for organizations to assess the skills and how potential a candidate is for the role.
👉 Read more: How to Identify Skills Gap & Address it?
Competition for talent
Many organizations seek talent via campus placement, and therefore there is a greater amount of pressure on the talent acquisition teams.
This pressure can have a significant impact on the process of hiring.
A low number of vacancies
A low economy has a huge difference in the hiring sector. Economic Times stated that with the recent COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical conflicts like Ukraine and Israel, Indian IT companies have lowered fresher hiring to about 250,000 in fiscal 2023, thus, affecting the new recruitments.
Due to such instances, HRs prefer interns to freshers, leading to a low number of vacant positions.
Higher volume of candidates
Often the hiring team is dominated by a large number of candidates.
When the call for a position is raised, many candidates immediately start applying and this results in a big task for the recruiting agency.
Student perceptions/ misconceptions
Many students apply for the role at an organization without prior information about the same. Their peers highly influence them about a company, and without taking their opinions they apply.
This can be disadvantageous for them, as they might find the role to be not suitable for them and therefore result in early employee attrition. This affects the company’s growth overall.
Retention and engagement
Another challenge of campus hiring is to maintain the recruited candidates at hand. This may be the final challenge of campus hiring and needs to be addressed accordingly.
How do enterprises approach campus hiring challenges?
Now that we know the numerous challenges faced during campus hiring the next step is to conquer them.
Companies must start with an appropriate strategy for campus recruitment, where it involves outlining of steps and following best practices to effectively attract, engage and retain hired talent.
As said earlier, with the uncertain economic changes affected due to either pandemic or foreign wars, organizations are striving to balance growth and safety. Hence, they are shifting their hiring practices by exploring technology in the form of assessment tools to ascertain the continuity of campus hiring and further growth plans.
Comprehensive training and development programs, creating a positive and unbiased working environment in order to inculcate diversity and inclusion, and providing future growth opportunities are few elements that can be applied to solve the campus hiring challenges.
WeCP is one such tool that offers a well-crafted campus recruitment software that solves all the major challenges addressed above. It aids the recruiters by making university recruitment process much simpler along side increasing the ROI from college career fairs.
The key challenge of saving time and money is solved by using WeCP’s software, where they offer powerful features like -
- Smart sync-up with ATS (Application Tracking System)
- Direct integration with candidate databases
- Automation in regards to engaging of candidates and scheduling of screening test
- Assess the candidate for on-the-job skills
- Instant export of individual and bulk reports
- Quick review of candidates with hiring managers
With such clever recruiting software, the other challenges are resolved straight away.
Using WeCP’s recruitment software, one can assess a candidate for their skills according to the requirements.
A recruiter can have the option of creating, customizing, or using pre-built test templates from WeCP’s vast library of questions.
These assessments once evaluated make way for the best candidates. The assessments follow the DEI concepts up to the mark where 100% cheat proof tests are conducted using advanced proctoring.
👉 Read more: How Mindtree Multiplied Its Engineering Talent with 90% Fewer Interviews
Using such assessment tools not only guarantees the best talent but also gives the candidates a positive recruitment experience.
Campus hiring, though essential for companies and students, deal with challenges such as time and money constraints, insufficient knowledge, or economic difficulties. These challenges can be dealt with virtual recruitment solutions such as assessment tools.
Want to know more on how WeCP can help you out? Try WeCP for free or Schedule a Call with us.
