You might not be able to offer recruits a Googleplex-sized salary, but you can still attract the brightest grad talent to your start-up.
Tomas Barreto said no to Microsoft. After two summers working in the software giant's accounting division, Barreto turned down an offer for full-time work. Instead, he went in search of a start-up where he could play a bigger role, and perhaps get a bit more recognition for his contributions.
The same year, Barreto met Dylan Smith, a classmate who founded Box.net, a cloud-computing software start-up that ranks 152 on the 2010 Inc. 500 list. The two hit it off and soon Smith offered Barreto a job at Box.net, which was based in Palo Alto. Barreto decided to make the move. "One of the biggest selling points for me was having that level of impact and ownership, giving me a lot of the skills I needed to grow," says Barreto who's now 24. "I'd have more of the ability to make decisions from a product and engineering standpoint and have the resources to become a manager, which I am now."
Apart from his speedy promotion, Barreto has also enjoyed the excitement and risk-reward element to his job, which he thinks encourages him to challenge himself more. He's happy, productive, and feels valuable at work. He's not sure he'd feel the same way at a large corporation.
How can you compete with the big dogs when searching for new talent? We've created a list of strategies companies can use to attract, connect with, and hire the country's most talented college graduates.
Recruiting on College Campuses: Focus On Your Strengths and Connect
Companies, especially small and growing companies, should realize they are in a position to offer employees a lot of room to grow. Even if they can't match the starting salary of bigger companies, start-ups can make employees feel a lot more important by fostering open communication and project ownership.
Aaron Levie, a co-founder of Box.net, believes this is one of the biggest draws that brought Barreto and other great young employees to his company. He says candidates are generally good at choosing if they want to take the start-up route or work for a large corporation, but as a founder or representative of a start-up, it is your job to communicate the advantages and disadvantages of each. "When you're working for Microsoft or Google, a specific project will have a longer release cycle and you won't see the benefit for a much longer period of time," he says. As Levie describes, this is the difference "between being in the rain nine months of the year or being in the sun 12 months of year."
Experts agree that start-ups are in a unique position to allow employees to grow and innovate. Beverly Principal, assistant director of employment services at Stanford University's Career Development Center, says the most successful companies are the ones that communicate to students how involved they can be in their new idea. "The No. 1 thing that students are attracted to at startups is the ability to be visible and play a larger role of a really cool product or project," Principal says. "At a larger company, maybe the excitement isn't there, or it's harder to figure out or harder to find," she says.
Beyond recognizing those advantages, students also want to feel as if your company has a genuine interest in pursuing them. Much of this gets back to old-fashioned sales and marketing. Principal says that the most successful companies at career fairs will go out of their way to say hi to students and give feedback on their resumes. They will also be knowledgeable about their organization and what kind of environment students find appealing.
Dig Deeper: 10 Tips For Recruiting at Business Schools
Recruiting on College Campuses: Overcome Name Recognition Shortcomings
Emerging from obscurity is never easy. One of the inherent challenges to recruiting for any small company is getting prospective talent to relate to your brand when they likely have never heard of it. Principal advises smaller companies to first get students to understand what they do and who they are before trying to pursue them. "Is there something that the company does that they can start a conversation with a student about?" she asks. Once again, it's all about communication skills and finding areas that truly interest people.
Mary Scott, founder of the Scott Resource Group, based in West Hartford, Connecticut, has been consulting in the recruiting field for more than 20 years. She agrees that building a warm and welcoming presence on-campus is a great way to reach students. "An awful lot of large employers waste a lot of money and don't invest what truly matters to students, and that's face time," Scott says.
Some of the ways she suggests companies build on-campus rapport is to get involved with student associations and leadership groups that align with your business. Don't bother spreading your resources too thin by sending recruiters just to job fairs all across the country. The most efficient recruitment programs focus their searches on specific schools or even specific programs within those schools.
For instance, Scott cites a consulting firm in Chicago that has established a virtual stranglehold over students in Notre Dame's graduate business program. The firm has zeroed in on the exact type of employee it needs and uses its alumni presence at the school to continue networking with contacts and incoming students. As Scott points out, the firm used its established resources efficiently without having to branch too far out.
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Recruiting on College Campuses: Get Creative
