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?
It’s crucial that early career teams understand how their competitors are approaching recruitment throughout the year so that they can determine when they should be ramping up their sourcing efforts to compete for top talent with companies in their industries. To shed light on when top employers today are sourcing and recruiting Gen Z talent, we analyzed data from thousands of recruiters using our platform from spring 2022 to 2023. See below for what we’ve found:
Our data shows that October is the most popular month for employers on our platform to be accepting applicants. Specifically, we found that 44% of all STEM roles listed on our platform during the calendar year were accepting applicants in October, as well as 36% of non-STEM roles. For STEM roles, this share consistently dropped through the rest of the school year until an uptick in August, while the share of open non-STEM roles dropped through December and rose again in February. Only a small share of STEM and non-STEM roles accepted applicants in the summer.
Looking by industry, we found that October is a popular month for the banking, finance & investing, and accounting industries; insurance industry; and engineering industry to be sourcing for their roles. We also discovered that the share of consulting roles and software & IT roles that are accepting applicants peak in early fall (September/October). Finally, the education industry sees its largest share of open roles in the spring, and the entertainment & media and marketing & communications industries’ open roles peak in late winter (February).
In addition to looking at the share of open roles on our platform in each month, we also collected data on the amount of applications employers received throughout the year. We found that employers receive nearly a quarter of all applications for STEM roles in October, which is consistent with the peak of open roles for STEM candidates in that month, followed by a decline in applications through December and a slight uptick in January.
The second most popular month for STEM applications is September, with 17% of all applications for STEM roles being submitted then. Looking at applications to non-STEM roles, we found two peaks for submissions during the year — though they are less drastic than STEM applications. We found that 16% of all applications for non-STEM roles are submitted in October and in February.
We also found that September is the busiest month in terms of recruitment events for early career candidates, with 26% of all recruitment events for the year on our platform taking place just as students get settled back on campus. This aligns with the fact that the highest share of open roles and applications occur just one month later in October. Clearly, employers view September as an ideal time to increase brand awareness and invite talent into their funnel as they begin to open roles for them. Recruiting software such as RippleMatch Events can help employers today get the most of our recruitment events by helping them invite the right talent and turn RSVPs into hires.
Acknowledging that September is the most popular time to build brand awareness through recruitment events, and that October is when the highest share of roles listed on our platform are both accepting and receiving applicants, its crucial that employers that enter the fall prepared to recruit at scale, efficiently sort through applications, and swiftly advance qualified candidates. It’s also critical that you have the systems in place to sift through applications mid-fall while continuing to provide a great candidate experience for all applicants, such as RippleMatch Sort. In fact, employers using RippleMatch Sort have successfully surpassed their competitors when it comes to sorting applications, ranking applicants, and responding to them to invite them into their hiring funnels swiftly. Learn more about how recruiters on RippleMatch are performing and more recruitment trends in our full 2023 benchmarking report here.