Move over millennials, Gen Z is the next generation to graduate. And with this new graduating class, comes the need to recruit them. The college industry is beginning to change, the rising cost of higher education, the abundance of online classes, and the heightened substitute-ability of colleges give businesses and colleges a greater difficulty in drawing in the best talent for open positions. Companies are finding unique and fun ways of identifying candidates for their openings. So we cobbled together 25 unique campus recruitment event ideas that are sure to attract not just the best students, but also the best companies to the floor.
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Competition
One of the best ways to win over college students is playing a game to win free rewards. These various competitions will help you decide who is the best candidate for a certain job, while they are seeing how fun working at your company can be.
1. Pitch Event Competition
Allow students to give 1-minute elevator pitches to sell their idea, company, or anything you throw at them. You can even throw a curve ball and see who can best pitch themselves. Teach them the best tactics for selling their ideas.
2. Startup Engine
Give students 2 hours, 24 hours, a week, or any amount of time to come up with an idea for a company. Give them the chance to design a business plan, MVP, pitch, or anything that can sell a company, and have them present it to a team of judges. Watch out for students with the ability to lead, follow, or work under pressure.
3. Consulting Competiton
Call it an innovation challenge, a case competition, or something fun, but this is a classic competition put on by the large consulting firms. Give students between 4 hours and 3 months to research a problem and come up with a solution. Make sure to give them enough freedom so you can see solutions evolve to questions you can't even answer.
Example: Accenture Innovation Challenge
4. Business Plan Competition
A more formal competition: this will allow students to prove to you they know how to work through every aspect of running a business. Look for new possible investments, amazing talent, or the next big company.
Example: McKinsey Venture Academy
5. Hack-a-Thon
A hack-a-thon is the perfect tech-based competition that can incentivize your recruitment event and company. This event will identify the best of the best as they prove their exquisite computer programming, science, or engineering background. Awarding winners with offers to your company will ensure the strong potential of your business.
Examples: PayPal's Money2020 Hackathon, NBA Hackathon
If you'd like to register competitors and potential recruits, consider using an event management software. Book a demo to see how it all works.
Sponsor Some Fun
Instead of a full-blown recruitment event, attaching your name to something may be enough to put your company's name in the head of recruits. This is a cheaper way to connect with students without compromising your image.
6. Concerts
Almost every medium to large college will have at least one concert that draws a large crowd. Give the student body a little extra dough so they can host someone everybody knows. Putting your name on an event outside of the career fair will lock that name in their brains as somewhere they want to work, especially if it attached to their favorite artist. Working with the student union may also help you find students who already know how to do the role you are looking to fill.
7. Puppies
Shelters love to bring their animals to campus to show students that they need their help. Sponsor an event that connects your business with cute dogs. It's also a great way to loosen up these often times stressed and nervous grads so that they can speak with more confidence and relaxation with recruiters.
8. Meditation and Yoga
Teach healthy habits with mindfulness by forcing students to take a break from their stress-educing lives. University can be hard and letting them take a break from their work by killing two birds with one stone will draw in the best and the brightest. Recruit and refresh.
9. Sports
Not everyone is going to be skilled at sports so choosing something relativity easy will make it fun for everyone. Prove to these youngsters that your company is not full of boring robots in an office. Have fun with the recruits and let them enjoy some downtime with some friendly sports.
Workshops
Hosting workshops will show potential recruits that you are here to help them improve just as much as they are going to help you. Find those who are willing and ready to learn and sort out those too cocky to ask for help.
10. Interviewing Workshops
Behavioral interviews are the easiest to prepare for, but the easiest to slip up on. Case and technical take a ton of practice and require someone to work with. Come to campuses and show students how it's done while giving them the chance to test their skills on actual interviewers.
11. Mock consulting cases
Rather than a challenge, watch undergrads lead and follow as a team to formulate a solution to a problem you give them. Guide them along the way so they know if they are heading in a good direction but let them slip up along the way. Then, have them present in front of the company like they would as a real employee.
12. Externships
Don't fear, less commitment is here. Give them a chance to test the internship by only hosting them for a week or weekend. Watch them get their hands on a project and see what they can do under pressure. Sometimes the brightest candidates are the dullest employees.
13. Resume Workshops
Resumes and CVs are oftentimes either poorly put together when it comes to fresh graduates. Or they're too nervous about their lack of work experience so they stuff it full of needless info. Resume workshops are a great way to teach those who thought they learned it all already by the time they graduated. It gets them on the right track to writing what you as the employer want to see in a resume, and it gives them a healthier chance of landing that job with another employer should they not get picked up by you.
Philanthropic Events
Members of newer generations find improving the world for the better as a key trait for their life. Prove to them that your company loves helping people, cleaning the world, or raising money for organizations that need it by recruiting through philanthropy. Many Fortune 500 Companies focus on one or two ways to help the world and choosing something specific will help choose an event to start.
Gilead Sciences works to eradicate HIV/AIDS and liver disease, Walmart helps the anti-hunger charity Feeding America, and JPMorgan Chase has a “service corps” of employees that assist Detroit nonprofits in developing strategic plans, financial models for earned revenue, and improved human resources systems. All of these companies can work to include potential recruits in some way to better their company and their philanthropic endeavors.
14. Foodbank
Collect cans from students that they don't know what to do with at the end of the semester or have potential recruits provide a helping hand at local food banks. Both will point out students with a mindset that includes values outside of a salary.
15. Habitat for Humanity
Look for students who are wanting to spend a Saturday building houses rather than attend a darty (day-party). They are the ones who want to see the world improve and are willing to help.
16. Run for _____
Host a 5k, 10k, or half-marathon to find recruits who care about their body and whatever organization you are raising money for. Join some students on the run and find out why they are running. You will learn a lot about students as neither of you can wait to cross the finish line.
Mentoring
Connect several students each with an employee so they can get help from someone in their potential field of work. Let them ask what classes they should take, what extracurricular are meaningful, how to write a resume, how to network, and so on. Spending 30 minutes each week will create a lifelong expert worker.
17. Speed Networking
Bring several employees to campus to help recruit by talking with many students for 5/10/15 minutes. Determine who can spend their time wisely while learning about the max number of students in a short amount of time.
18. Questions & Answer Sessions
Let them ask a few questions so they can learn if the company is right for them.
19. Resume Review
Do fast resume reviews to show the students that they have limited time to make an impression with a piece of paper.
20. Interviews
Do a mock interview to ask the essential questions and give feedback on good or bad responses.
Free Food!
21. Coffee
A great way to bridge the gap between a college student who never sleeps and someone who works around the clock. Free coffee will attract students to attend your events by making it worth-it to escape their “books” and grab a much-needed energy boost.
22. Berries
Gen Z'ers are just like millennials when it comes to nutrition. Finding good fruit on campus may be difficult for secluded campuses. Bribing students with vitamins will attract students who care about their body and will care about your company.
23. Just Desserts
Let's get the students out of bed and trick them into grabbing a treat while having a worth-while conversation to find the perfect candidate.
24. Grill some Dogs
Show students you care and have a great community by grilling hot dogs for students who never stop eating. Ketchup, Mustard, and Recruiting anyone? Relish this connection.
25. Luncheons & Follow-up dinners
Now for the perfect candidates, take them out to dinner. They will say yes to their out-of-budget restaurant allowing them to brag to their friends. This gives you 2-hours to have a positive connection with the few students you need on your team.
Are 25 Campus Recruitment Event Ideas Enough?
Probably not.
Campus recruitment is a combination of professionalism and casual fun. It has to show graduates the future that lies ahead of them, that it's fruitful, endeavorous, and it has to be attractive. It's part marketing, it's part recruitment, and it's part strategy, and 25 ideas aren't nearly enough to scratch the surface. Recruitment events can often time revolve around one industry and in many cases, these ideas will need to be adjusted to encompass this. Use your imagination, and see what your competition is doing as well. Spy on their tables and adapt or adopt their strategies if you see it's working as well.
Planning your own recruitment event is essential to connecting with the best and brightest of recruits. In-person connections will always beat the job board websites that are seemingly taking over this field. Let Glue Up do the heavy lifting for your next event with a built-in CRM, Email Campaign tools, event web page builder, and much, much more. Book a Demo to see it for yourself. Back to Top.
