Insights

A blog for leaders who care about recruiting and retaining the next generation of talent.

Investing in the Future: How To Build Out an Early ID Strategy Without Overloading Your Team
Apr 01, 2025

In today’s fast-moving campus recruitment landscape, it can be difficult to think beyond the next month—let alone plan for next year. But if you want to ensure you have a continuous pipeline of top talent, investing in Early ID programs is essential. In fact, RippleMatch data finds that 60% of candidates say they go directly to a company's career page to check out available opportunities when searching for a job or internship. That means the early recognition you build early on can have a big impact in the kind of talent you can attract later on.

How to Prevent Candidates from Reneging After Accepting an Offer
Mar 24, 2025

In today’s hiring landscape, securing an offer acceptance doesn’t mean your job is done. With 60% of Gen Z candidates continuing to passively search for roles after accepting an offer and a number of employers reporting that candidates are reneging on offers, employers must think strategically about how to reduce post-offer fallout—and it starts well before a candidate’s first day.

All Articles

7 Unique Challenges to Crafting an Early Career Hiring Strategy
RippleMatch
While recruiting for any role at a company can be tough in today’s tight labor market, early career hiring has its own unique set of challenges. The way that you attract, evaluate, and ultimately hire entry-level employees will likely differ from your approach to recruiting more experienced professionals. As you develop your early career hiring strategy, here are some of the main challenges you may encounter (and some of our recommended solutions).
Program Innovator Spotlight: Ashley Wodarek, Senior Campus Recruiter, MKS Instruments
Kate Beckman
RippleMatch is proud to spotlight Ashely Wodarek as a Program Innovator! Ashley Wodarek is currently a Senior Campus Recruiter at MKS Instruments leading the recruitment and program design for its Graduate Internship Program on a global scale (North America, EMEA, and APAC regions). This is far from Ashley’s first award in the early career talent space —-she has been a consistent achiever and role model since the start of her career, and was nominated by a colleague as a RippleMatch Program Innovator.
50 Recruitment Event Ideas to Attract Top Gen Z Talent
Kate Beckman
Recruitment events are a critical component of any campus recruitment strategy — and benefit both recruiters and candidates alike. Events allow recruiters to meet and engage with top candidates either in-person or virtually, and help candidates learn more about your company and get excited about starting a career in your industry. They open the door for you to connect with candidates and follow up with resources and applications, and give candidates a friendly, human connection to your company who they can feel comfortable reaching out to with any questions or concerns they might be grappling with.
Outstanding Leader Spotlight: Kayla Woitkowski–Director, Early Career Talent Acquisition, SAS
Kate Beckman
RippleMatch is proud to recognize Kayla Woitkowski, Director of Early Career Talent Acquisition at SAS, as an Outstanding Leader in the Campus Recruiting Community! Kayla has spent the majority of her career honing her skills as an early career recruitment specialist in the tech/software industry. She has over a decade of progressive experience, including strategy development for an award-winning intern program, university and diversity outreach strategy development and execution, recruitment technology implementation, data driven decisioning, global UR consulting, and a dedication to developing team members to achieve their full potential.
100 Reasons Why Our Employees Love RippleMatch
Kate Beckman
When I started at RippleMatch in March 2021, I was the 46th employee to be added to our thriving company Slack channel. Since then, I have watched our exceptional team expand nearly as fast as our product has grown. And while there’s a lot of change happening here at RippleMatch, one thing has remained the same: the environment is one that makes everyone feel valued and celebrated, and everyone is motivated to make a difference for job seekers and employers everywhere.
What Gen Z Workplace Values Say About the Future of Company Culture
RippleMatch
As employers navigate new working models in the wake of COVID-19 — such as remote-first, fully on-site, or hybrid — showcasing company culture to prospective employees has been more challenging than ever. Recent research from RippleMatch’s What Gen Z Wants report shows that company culture remains a key factor in the Gen Z job search, indicated by the value that these candidates place on work-life balance, a sense of community at work, and how companies have supported employees’ well-being during the pandemic. Our data further illustrates that company culture is not only helpful for recruiting new talent, but also for retaining interns for full-time positions after graduation.
How COVID Has Shifted the Importance of Professional Development to Gen Z
RippleMatch
For Gen Z college students, the importance of learning and growth doesn’t stop after graduation. In fact, a RippleMatch survey from 2018 found that professional development was the top priority for Gen Z job-seekers at the time. But as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge both educational and professional norms, has Gen Z candidates’ focus on professional development during the job search changed?
What Gen Z Expects From Candidate Experience in the Era of COVID-19
RippleMatch
As the competition for entry-level talent continues to intensify and the pandemic ebbs and flows, candidate experience can be the difference between hiring your next superstar or losing out to a competitor. Our latest report focusing on what Gen Z wants at work uncovers new insights on this generation’s top priorities during the interview and hiring process — including where they are looking for jobs, how they prefer to communicate with prospective employers, and what main factors contribute to a positive candidate experience.
The Top Reasons Early Career Candidates Are Willing to Relocate For A Job
RippleMatch
Over the past several years, job candidates have been increasingly less likely to move in order to accept a new job. In fact, the percentage of job seekers relocating for a job in 2019 was only 10%, the lowest it had ever been. And with the COVID-19 pandemic normalizing remote work and shifting job seekers’ priorities, recruiters may be facing additional challenges in attracting job candidates who are willing to relocate for a job with an on-site requirement.
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