What Makes Campus Hiring Different
Campus hiring isn't just regular hiring with younger candidates. It's a fundamentally different process with different timelines, different candidate expectations, and different failure modes. The timeline is compressed. Campus recruiting has recruiting seasons, and if you miss the window, you miss the class.
Planning a Drive for 500+ Candidates
Weeks 8-6 before the event: Define your hiring targets. How many roles? What functions? Agree on a scorecard before you begin reviewing a single candidate.
Weeks 6-4: Distribute async interview invitations to pre-registered candidates. For a drive of 500 candidates, you want pre-screening complete before the physical event so that your campus day is spent on final conversations, not first screens.
Weeks 4-2: Review async submissions, shortlist candidates for on-campus or virtual final rounds. For 500 candidates pre-screened to 150 finalists, you typically need 15-20 interviewers running 6-8 interview slots each over a 2-day period.
Using Async AI Interviews to Pre-Screen Before Campus Events
This is the highest-leverage change you can make to your campus hiring process. Pre-screening 500 candidates with 30-minute phone calls would require 250 hours of recruiter time. With async video, the same 500 candidates can complete a structured screen in their own time, and your team reviews the responses in roughly 25-40 hours total.
The async screen also levels the playing field. Candidates from smaller schools who might not have the same networking access as candidates from target schools get an equal shot at demonstrating their skills.
Converting Offers Post-Drive
Extend verbal offers on the day of the event for candidates you want. Waiting 3 days to deliver the news is 3 days of the candidate entertaining other offers.
Assign a "candidate champion" to each offer. This is an employee, ideally a recent grad, who stays in contact with the candidate from offer through start date. This single practice is probably the biggest driver of offer acceptance in campus hiring.