Tips For Identifying Your Organization's Target Schools

By Francine Fluetsch on July 6, 2015

Inspired by this article on NACE.

As you know, job fairs at colleges can be an awesome way for you to meet some talented new employees to add to your team. Since these fairs take a lot of time and effort on your part, you’ll want to make sure that the schools where you are presenting will have students who are going to fit the criteria that you are looking for.

You want some smart, diverse individuals, and here are some ways to make sure that you will have a chance to meet as many as possible at specific schools.

Do some digging

Now-a-days, you can look anything and everything up on the internet, so it’s time to do some digging on potential schools where you are going to have a job fair. This article recommends that you check if the school is accredited, and that you look into the curriculum that the school is focusing in.

UC Santa Cruz, for example, excels in research, so if you want some science-y students to join your team, that would be a great place to look. If, on the other hand, you want some creative minds and crafty fingers for your team, you could check out a school like the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.

A lot of schools will have diverse majors, so if you want students who excel in multiple things, you can look on YouTube to see stereotypes of the school. Take these with a grain of salt of course, but you can see videos that students have made of the most common majors, and the personalities of groups of students who attend the school.

You can also contact the school’s career center and ask if students would be interested in the work that your company does. Getting the dirt on the school beforehand can really save you a lot of time in the long haul, because then you can make sure you only attend schools that will have a good amount of interest in what you are doing.

Distance

How far away is the campus where you want to promote your work from your office? This will affect both you and the students so it is something to keep in consideration. First, you have to see if it makes sense for you to travel all the way to the school with your team. If it’s close by, no problem, but if travel arrangements must be made, you really want to make sure the school will be worth the effort.

Second, are you planning on hiring students upon graduation or are you willing to hire some while they are still going to school? After they graduate, students will have an easier time commuting/moving to where they are going to work, but while they are still in school, they will want to work at a place that isn’t too far away. If your company has multiple locations, make sure to have this as a selling point. Moving can be scary for some graduates, so the closer you can be, the better chances you’ll have of getting students to work for you.

Student orgs

A big part of having a successful experience at a career fair is getting people to know you will be there! Contact some student organizations and the career center to see if they will help advertise your company and when you will be there to meet students. Students are busy and their schedules are all over the place, so if you can have multiple meeting times available, you’ll be able to give more students a chance to check out your company.

If student organizations can send out emails for you and post up flyers, you’ll have a great turnout for sure, so you’ll want to make sure that you are attending schools who can help you with getting the word out there.

Opinion of the school

What does your company think of the school overall through your research of it and word of mouth? Does it have a good reputation? Would you want someone from that school working for you? While you shouldn’t simply go off of stereotypes, it should be a consensus within the company over whether or not the school will be able to produce candidates that are worthy of getting a spot at the company.

Demographics

You want your company to be diverse, so it would help to recruit at a school that has a good amount of women and minorities attending it. You can easily check this by looking up the school online. Knowing this beforehand will allow you to go to schools that will let you meet tons of diverse candidates that could really change your company for the better.

These are just a few things to keep in mind when figuring out which schools would be best for your company to recruit from. Good luck!

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