6 Tips to Succeed in Hiring College Graduates

Getting college graduates to join your team can bring a fresh perspective to your company. They are innovative, tech-savvy, filled with excitement about working, and often in touch with their creativity and instincts. College graduates can be a great addition that leads to a well-rounded and effective team.

However, you aren’t the only one with that idea in mind. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, employers’ hiring intentions will increase by 16.5% in 2021. Therefore, you need to bear in mind that many other companies want to attract the best talent among college graduates.

Considering that most college graduates don’t have extensive work experience that showcases their competence, you need to know how to hire the right candidates. The following tips aim to make the hiring process of college graduates more strategic and successful.

Why Hiring College Graduates is Beneficial

First of all, let’s clarify why hiring manager college graduates can be a good idea. Here are the advantages of welcoming a fresh-out-of-college workforce in your company.

• College graduates are in tune with current trends : They can help you get an inside scoop about what people want these days.
• College graduates can boost the team’s morale: As newbies to the work scene, they are eager to prove themselves. They are also excited to tackle new work challenges.
• Get insight from different generations: The generation gap can lead to a huge difference in opinions. College graduates can add age diversity and more versified opinions.
• College graduates can bring innovative ideas to the table: Experienced workers are used to methods and techniques they’ve been using for ages. This can prevent them from thinking outside the box and making interesting suggestions for improvement. College graduates can bring that new perspective.
• College graduates keep up with new technologies: They can inform you of up and coming technologies that can improve your work. Or, they can help you with technology-oriented tasks.

How to Successfully Hire College Graduates

To attract and hire college graduates, you need to have a somewhat different approach compared to hiring experienced workers. The process of hiring should be designed to recognize talent and get the right candidate interested in your company. Here are a few tips that can help you to do that.

1. Assess Their Personality

Paying attention to candidates’ personalities is a must when hiring college graduates. They need to exude ambition and dedication. However, you should also consider how they will fit within your existing team.

What can help you with this task is asking certain questions such as:

• Which past project did you like the most and you are most proud of?
• Who was your favorite professor, and why?
• What are you passionate about?
• What inspired you to opt for this career?
• Did you prefer group or individual projects in college?

These questions can help you find out their openness to criticism, aspirations, flexibility, team spirit, etc.

Don’t be afraid to dig a little deeper. You can learn a lot about a candidate by asking more than just traditional questions. For example, asking about the project they liked the most and are most proud of can reveal their work interest and their motivation.

You can check out Subjecto for examples of suitable questions for different job positions.

2. Boost Their Interest in Your Company

Portraying your company as a community of people who thrive towards innovation will evoke the candidate’s interest. This can matter in two ways. Firstly, if your vision and mission resonate with them, your company will be favored.

In addition, getting the candidates excited about working in your company will motivate them to push even harder. Having a greater understanding of your larger goals can enhance their dedication and build respect for your company.

3. Foster a Culture that Supports Professional Development

To hire talented college graduates, you need to give them some sort of enticement. Commonly, that enticement comes in the form of courses for professional development, senior-level management, and similar perks.

According to research, 86% of employees find career development and professional development very important for job satisfaction.

You will attract ambitious and hard-working individuals if your company supports professional development. A graduate that wants to progress and improve his or her capabilities is the type of person who promises a great contribution to your company.

4. Assess Their Work Ethic

Graduates’ personality isn’t the only factor that determines whether they are the right fit. You also want to consider their work ethic.

Ask the candidate about a difficult work situation they conquered, whether they have to give up something to be where they are, how they handle conflict, do they like collaborating with teams of people, etc.

You can even ask directly how they would describe their work ethic. They probably have some kind of work experience so they’ll be able to answer that question.

5. Be Flexible with Your Hiring Requirements

If you had a specific degree in mind that the candidate should have, rethink over your requirements.

There are a lot of extremely talented students who don’t have a degree from a program you typically hire from. Students can have different reasons for not attending elite colleges. Even if they come from lower-ranked colleges, they can be even more capable and talented than people from top-ranked colleges.

Overall, try to give every candidate a chance. Focus on their personality and experience, not their grades and titles.

6. Take into Consideration Their Writing Skills

Writing skills can tell you a lot about a person. Pay attention to the candidates writing skills to learn more about their abilities.

For example, grammar and spelling errors show a lack of interest and motivation. Poorly constructed sentences are connected with poor communication skills. A well-structured resume and cover letter can indicate good organizational skills.

You also want to pay attention to their ability to use technologies. Written communication is essential in the digital age, so you mustn’t overlook it.

Wrapping Up

College graduates can be of great value for pushing your company forward and embracing innovation. The hiring process is the filter that needs to identify the talent and exclude mismatched candidates. The above-mentioned tips should help you plan out and organize the recruitment to hire the right person for the job.