Insights

Looking for a strategic partner to support both your in-person and virtual recruiting events strategies? Check out our buyer's guide for a recruiting events software that will meet all your needs.

In a competitive talent landscape, recruitment events are a great way to engage with candidates, giving them an inside look at your organization, culture, employees, and opportunities to help them make informed decisions about where they might want to work. And by offering some of those events virtually, you open the door to connecting with a much more diverse slate of candidates from varying backgrounds, improving accessibility to your open roles. However, executing impactful recruitment events — both virtually and in-person — can be challenging to navigate, from inviting the right candidates to your events, quickly following up afterwards with applications to keep the momentum going, and pipelining attendees who aren’t great fits for your open roles right now.

In today’s competitive recruitment landscape, a quick application response time is an indispensable tool for employers looking to attract and retain top talent — especially at the early career level. That’s because Gen Z candidates searching for internship and entry-level roles today expect a quick feedback loop from companies, and prefer to be rejected than ‘ghosted’ during the hiring process.

While it’s promising that many organizations today are prioritizing diversity in hiring and strengthening their commitments to building a more inclusive workplace, there is still much more progress to be made to make the workforce a more welcoming place for all. That includes supporting traditionally underrepresented talent during their college careers, as they begin internships and job searches, and all the way through when it's time for them to seek a promotion at work. In other words, in order to truly support the newest entrants to the workforce — who are also the most diverse generation to date — your organization's commitment to D&I needs to be found in its recruitment strategy, hiring process, and support for employees.

In a competitive recruitment landscape, it's essential that talent teams have the right partner by their side to help them reach their hiring goals. This is especially true as talent teams are shrinking and they are being tasked to do more with less. For Gen Z talent especially, candidates are expecting high-tech and seamless recruiting processes from their future employers. By working with recruiting software that has Gen Z in mind, you can make strides on your internship and entry-level hiring goals, and bring in the best talent out there today.

The current state of early career hiring isn't serving anyone, failing to meet the needs of both job-seeking candidates and employers hunting for Gen Z talent. Candidates are submitting over 100 applications to land one internship or job, only to receive little to no response afterwards (commonly referred to as "getting ghosted"). Meanwhile, employers are investing significant time, resources, and funds into finding suitable candidates but are overwhelmed filtering through unqualified applicants, and are struggling to identify and prioritize top inbound candidates. Plus, the response rates for outreach to qualified candidates are alarmingly low, and sourcing candidates through in-person events, such as large-scale diversity conferences and campus visits, is costly and produces unpredictable results.

While there has certainly been progress made for each first-generation college student who dons a cap and gown, this population of students still faces difficulty entering the workforce. For example, first-gen college students are more likely to work during college to support themselves than participate in extracurricular activities on campus, which can harm them when it comes time to demonstrate their leadership skills and school involvement on their resumes.

Candidates and employers alike agree that the status quo of early career recruiting and hiring today is no longer effective. Candidates are sending out upwards of 50 internship or job applications to roles that they aren’t even sure they are qualified for, and in many cases, aren’t hearing back from companies after submitting their applications. At the same time, employers are spending a lot of time, effort, and money to find the right candidates and build diverse teams, but the response rates on their outreach are extremely low. In fact, for all the work that recruiters are putting into their outreach strategies today, many are experiencing response rates as low as 2%.

It’s no secret that the fall semester is the busiest season for campus recruiting teams. As students return to campus after summer break, university recruitment teams have been known to shift into high gear, looking for top talent to fill internship and entry-level roles with start days that are months away. But how does the fall season compare to the rest of the year in terms of open roles for early career candidates, and when exactly are students applying for those opportunities? Does this timeline change across different industries?