How Diverse Is Your Early-Career Talent Pipeline?

An early-career talent pipeline is invaluable for helping you to create a pathway for the ongoing hiring of fresh-new talent. It enables you to tap into a continuous supply of your brand’s relationship with diverse student groups and other college and university programs.

Nearly every corporation is reimagining its relationship with community interests because collaboration makes it easier to create job openings that appeal to highly talented graduates. A strong rapport between community and your organization will enable you to capture the best, brightest talent before they even enter the job market. By expressing an interest in students before they graduate, you can help your organization meet staffing demands now—and in the future.

Filling Your Pipeline With Early-Career Winners

Unfortunately, 46% of new hires underperform. With today’s rush to fill job openings, more than 50% of recruiters regret their hiring decisions. If you can relate to this sentiment, you need to re-examine your hiring pipeline. One way to do this is by hiring diverse interns. This way, you can prime your early-career talent pipeline with potential talent that can expand your organization’s breadth of knowledge and insight. Internships also give you a chance to assess potential job candidates in action, and to extend a full-time position to them if they perform well while simultaneously training them for a full-time role.

Before developing your internship program, re-familiarize yourself with your company’s goals. Make sure your intern hiring choices should align with your company’s long-term staffing needs and are made with diversity and inclusion in mind. It also helps to collaborate with project managers who spearhead initiatives intended to meet future organizational demands. Project management change-leaders can help you better understand the future needs of your organization so that you can make internship hiring decisions accordingly—and fill your pipeline with top, diverse early-career talent.

Creating the Right Brand Image to Attract Quality New Hires

89% of entry-level professionals believe that companies who practice social responsibility offer a better work environment. At the same time, 92% of employers believe they have a brand image problem when it comes to campus recruiting. Many companies do attempt to address their brand image by appealing to the social consciousness of upcoming Gen Z professionals. A lot of companies do focus attention on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), but not enough on diverse student clubs at all universities. To fill your early-talent pipeline and attract quality new hires, you need to expand the scope of your company’s recruiting efforts to connect with a more diverse pool of job candidates.

Today, college students look beyond job recruiting fairs, word-of-mouth and online job boards to find out information about potential employment opportunities. Students find out a lot about companies through social media and other digital channels. Thus, you must develop both online and offline initiatives that align with student associations—and showcase your positive brand image. By showing your support for diverse student organizations on social media and beyond, you can position your company as an attractive career prospect to Gen Z and a diverse talent pool.

Accordingly, you should build relationships with a broad range of student organizations. You can begin by meeting with college and university representatives to learn more about different kinds of active student groups. Such fact-finding sessions can also help you better prepare to develop branding initiatives that resonate with potential hires during college recruitment fairs and digital strategizing.

Partnering for Recruitment Success

Beyond student groups, it also helps to work with colleges and universities to overcome barriers to diversity in recruiting. University partnerships are more than something that’s nice to do; they are a mission-critical tactic for long-term thriving. Furthermore, it’s a win-win situation. Universities need you to tell them your staffing needs, and you need universities to develop curriculums that prepare students for the future and to help connect you with top talent.

More than 50% of surveyed U.S. executives express that their organizations have trouble hiring diverse leaders. Among the group, only 7% of executives say that they develop fast-track leadership programs geared toward entry-level hires with varying backgrounds. If you’re not sure where to begin to develop such a program, an experienced third-party consultant can save you time and frustration. For instance, The Whether partners with diverse student clubs around the nation. The firm is also passionate about facilitating corporate-university sponsorships to help companies develop a diverse talent pool of leadership candidates.

It’s advisable to build rapport with academic partners who champion corporate sponsorship. Advocates for your entry-level recruitment efforts can help you develop a relationship that will satisfy the needs of your organization and the university. Furthermore, it’s essential to ensure that all stakeholders benefit from your entry-level hiring practices: your organization, graduates, and learning institutions. The latter want to stay relevant, while graduates hope for a great career and you need ongoing access to skilled talent.

From sponsoring engaging job fairs to developing presentations that resonate with various student groups and support a positive image for your company, you can come up with creative ways to keep diverse early-career talent flowing through your recruitment pipeline.