Insights

When recruiting early-career talent, many employers tend to overlook community colleges as great sources for early career candidates. But community colleges can be an excellent place to find intern and entry-level talent with diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and experiences. In fact, some ground-breaking professionals have attended community colleges, including co-founder of Apple Steve Wozniak, legendary film director Clint Eastwood, former NASA astronaut Eileen Brooks, and co-founder & CEO of Costco, Jim Sinegal. With more than 9 million students attending community colleges today, employers seeking talent there will have access to a massive pool of capable students. To get started, here are some of the impressive community colleges to recruit from:

The pandemic changed the landscape for remote work, and Gen Z was the first generation to fully embrace remote positions as the norm. In fact, since much of their education was disrupted by the pandemic (which resulted in a largely virtual education environment for at least a few semesters), embracing remote work has been a natural transition for Gen Z to make.

After going through the process of finding the ideal candidate for a position and supporting them through the interview and hiring process, the last thing recruitment teams want to do is hear that the candidate backed out the offer for another opportunity. Not only does this create more work for recruiters, but it costs the company more money in the long run.

When it comes to recruiting talent, the pool at public universities continues to grow. There are about 8 million students enrolled in public 4-year colleges, accounting for roughly 43% of all college students in the United States, which are home to a diverse slate of candidates. In fact, nearly 80% of Hispanic and Latinx students, 70% of Black students, and 77% of American Indian or Alaska Native students attend public universities. With so many potential candidates from a variety of backgrounds, it is important to target the right schools when creating a campus recruiting strategy.

In this Product Update Blog, you’ll learn about the latest updates to RippleMatch’s Events product, which include a smoother in-person candidate check-in experience, optimizations to the mobile experience, better functionalities to accommodate international candidates, and more.

An investment in early career talent is a long-term investment in the success of any company — but in times of economic turmoil, that message can be hard to communicate to leadership. While stories of widespread layoffs at companies big and small have saturated the news lately, how does that narrative translate to the youngest members of the workforce?

Unconscious bias during the hiring process is a real threat to building a more diverse and inclusive workforce. That’s because unchecked biases in both human and technology-assisted decision-making can disproportionately hurt underrepresented groups. In an effort to help employers combat bias in hiring, we are committed to ensuring our products limit both human and algorithmic bias to the greatest extent possible.

Having good data to power decision-making is more important now than ever — especially in the field of talent acquisition. That’s because even though top companies might be continuing to hire entry-level candidates and interns in 2023, the uncertain macroeconomy is causing early career recruitment teams to shift their priorities and refocus on high-impact efforts. And it takes data to understand what exactly those efforts should be. The benefit of collecting the right data to showcase the ROI of your team’s recruitment efforts is twofold; it will help you make the case to leadership for why early career is a good investment, and, with the pressure on leaner teams to do more with less, it will help you focus on the strategies that are actually working. But where do you begin?

Internship programs are a highly cost-effective method for recruiting full-time talent — which is especially crucial during an economic downturn like the one we are currently experiencing. In fact, recent employment data shows that internship programs serve as strong pipeline of talent for entry-level roles, with 75.5% of interns from 2020-21 returning to work at their company full-time. Plus, interns are more likely than non-interns to stick around, saving you in recruiting and onboarding costs. The data shows that the 1-year retention rate for interns turned full-timers is nearly 70%, compared to 36% of non-interns, and the 5-year retention rate for interns turned full-timers is nearly 41.5%, compared to 26% of non-interns. But how do you take a step back and source your new cohort of interns in a cost-effective way, as well? Try incorporating some of these strategies below into your next recruitment cycle.