With the fall recruitment season just around the corner, RippleMatch recently hosted a weeklong customer conference titled Now & Next to see how talent leaders are balancing the recruiting demands of today with the challenges of the future. To conclude the weeklong event, we asked a panel of four talent leaders across different industries — Cindy Loggins, Head of Emerging Global Talent at eBay, Grace Williams, Director of Early Talent and Internal Mobility at Palo Alto Networks, Tracy Mendygral, Senior Recruiting Manager at McMaster-Carr, and Vicky Higaldo, Vice President and Senior Recruiting Manager - Early Talent National Lead at U.S. Bank — to talk about their short-term and long-term goals when it comes to early career candidates, as well as how they are tackling challenges head-on. These are some of the key obstacles they shared.
In the war for talent, some employers are finding themselves competing for candidates with other companies that have much stronger name recognition. That means when trying to recruit candidates for in-demand roles, building an employer brand that’s known for a positive candidate experience, a competitive compensation and benefits package, and a strong company culture is more important than ever. One of the leaders from the panel also shared that creating recruitment materials with high levels of engagement and transparency can go a long way in attracting candidates into the recruitment pipeline.
Companies are not only vying with other organizations for candidates’ attention, but are also having difficulty keeping candidates engaged throughout the recruitment process. In fact, some of the talent leaders on our panel reported an increase in canceled interviews, reneges, and candidate ghosting among Gen Z applicants. Aside from building a strong employer brand that candidates will want to engage with, the panelists agreed that recruiters can improve the candidate experience by communicating early and often about the steps involved in the recruitment process, and reduce the time it takes candidates to fill out the application, schedule interviews, and complete any relevant project rounds. In addition, recruiters can encourage candidates to be open about where they are in the hiring process with other companies, and then adapt their hiring timeline so as to not lose the candidate to another offer.
The speakers on our panel championed the importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I), and acknowledged that bringing in more diverse early career talent requires intentional changes to recruitment strategies. One of the biggest takeaways from the talent leaders was that expanding their candidate sources was one of the best ways they have been able to improve diversity in their talent pool. For these leaders in the field, some of those sources included expanding target schools to include HBCUs and women’s colleges, taking a school-agnostic approach to recruiting, sponsoring or attending industry events for underrepresented communities, working with candidate sourcing platforms like RippleMatch, and partnering with professional industry organizations designed for college students from underrepresented backgrounds.
When colleges and universities shifted their instruction online early in the COVID-19 pandemic, companies needed to adjust their strategies for early career recruiting on campus. As a result, the rise of virtual recruiting and remote/hybrid work enabled recruiters to expand their talent pools to new schools and locations, because they were less limited by geography. And now they need to keep that momentum going, while balancing on-campus recruiting and in-person recruitment events. To do so, some of the talent leaders on the panel said they have incorporated a school-agnostic approach to early career hiring, rather than returning to solely relying on a targeted list of colleges and universities.
Another way that leaders from our panel have considered expanding their talent pools is to redefine what “early career” talent looks like, encompassing more than recent college grads or graduates with a specific major. Some are expanding their target list of majors, often recruiting liberal arts majors and building more technical skills training into the onboarding process. Others are seeking early career talent through pipeline programs with organizations like GEAR UP for underserved high schools, and SkillBridge for service members who have returned to the civilian workforce. Others have considered reaching out to career changers or parents returning to the workforce in order to grow their potential talent pool.
Most entry-level candidates have limited work experience. Without a track record of their work in similar roles, recruiters and hiring managers may have to work harder to assess early career candidates’ abilities. One panel member emphasized the importance of training interviewers and hiring managers in how to assess candidate competencies, in order to successfully recruit higher quality hires. Another mentioned that adding assessments into the recruitment process were a potential way to level the playing field when evaluating candidates from nontraditional academic or professional backgrounds.
As early career candidates and professional norms continue to evolve, adaptability in the moment and preparation for the future are both critical for recruitment success. To learn more about how talent leaders are attracting early career talent today while still preparing for tomorrow’s hiring landscape, download the session replays from our Now & Next conference.