When your business plans a Campus Hiring Program, there are some well thought out reasons for the same. On the face of it, the need for a campus hiring program may seem like a futile exercise of getting some fresh talent. However, there is more to it and well if planned well, a campus hiring program can be a great step towards addressing your future talent requirements.
You can always help improve your campus hiring program so that it actually adds value to your business in the short run as well as for the long run.
Key Focus Areas – for Planning an Effective Campus Hiring Program
- Identify the Purpose of Campus Hiring Program. Identify how the Campus Hiring Initiative, aligns with your business.
- Generate a buy in for the program, amongst the key members & management. Your functional heads, your business head – everyone should be in sync.
- Decide the talent requirements and shortlist the campuses that would best serve your requirements.
- Decide on numbers based on your discussions with various functional heads, and with a tab on the manpower budget.
- Plan the selection criteria, interview panel, assessment tools etc.
Once you get the concerned Campus Hires on board, the following areas need to be carefully looked at and you need to plan accordingly.
- Build High Engagement of Campus Hires: Engagement is essential; it is the basis of retention, and performance. From Day 0, you need to ensure that the campus hire feels welcome; he or she is able to get integrated in the organizational culture and feels proud to be a part of your organization.
- Ensure impactful mentoring and nurturing of Campus Hires: Mentoring and nurturing, through traditional training or separate interventions like buddy program, mentoring by senior management and performance coaching sessions through the reporting manager always helps the new hire stay focused and motivated. Nurturing is not just about development, it is also about motivation.
- Review of Assessment Process & Assessment: It always helps to put in place a clearly defined process for assessment and performance feedback. If you plan for on the job training through projects or live assignments, having a performance assessment and review mechanism always helps you keep the new hire focused and interested. It also helps you identify suitable role for the concerned trainee for the final deployment.
- Developmental Initiatives on Competencies & Managerial Skills: To enable the new hires to contribute better. – Depending on business requirement, you can add traditional developmental interventions like class room training, project training and out bounds to help inculcate the right learning.
- Effectiveness & Monitoring of the Campus Hiring Program: Finally, what ever you plan and decide has to be well executed. You need to monitor and see if the program goes as per plan. Ensuring quality execution is always the key.