The purpose of your recruitment strategies is to help identify ways to cultivate relationships, leverage professional networks and create talent pathways. The goal is to go beyond the Jobs at UW site while utilizing equitable practices to ultimately return a diverse and robust applicant pool.
Your recruitment strategy should include active outreach efforts such as advertising on external or industry-specific job boards, referrals, social media campaigns, and targeted job/career fairs. Referrals and word of mouth advertising are the most common ways candidates learn about, apply to, and eventually accept jobs on campus.
Consider the following when creating a recruitment strategy:
Thoughtful engagement
Thoughtfully engage with search and screen members, the hiring unit, the division/school/college, and discuss the position, the position’s and organizational needs, and subsequently determine meaningful ways to leverage personal and professional networks.
Learn about industry
Consider spending time researching the industry, related professional organizations or community groups to proactively reach potential applicants.
Cultivate relationships
Relationships are the cornerstone to a strong recruitment strategy. Consider ways to meet new people across campus and in the community. This can include active participation in job/career fairs, connecting with colleagues in similar or related industries/fields, and one-on-one conversations to discuss the school/college/division/unit and open position.
Ongoing Strategies
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Offline Sourcing
- Attend or sponsor face-to-face recruitment events.
- Attend or sponsor job or industry-specific conferences or meet-ups.
- Hold individual meetings/meet-ups with potential candidates to discuss the position.
- Utilize informal touchpoints (e.g. social gatherings, sporting events) to engage with potential candidates.
- Encourage Employees to foster relationships in their professional organizations.
- Ongoing engagement with past applicants
- Host in-house career fair or open house event.
Messaging and Organizational Culture
- Identify and refine your message to potential candidates.
- Communicate the purpose of the unit to potential candidates.
- Messages should speak to your audience. Personalize messages with relevant information about them and how it aligns with the organization.
- Seek information on the perception of our organization to tailor messaging appropriately and provide insight to areas of improvement in our organization.
- Provide positive and/or transparent organization brand messaging to potential future candidates.
- Promote UW or unit on social media: Use your social media accounts to spread news or information of interest to your networks in order to build interest to work at UW.
Programming
- Identify opportunities to create programs to mentor or develop current employees or students.
- Job rotation programs
- Mentoring programs
- Succession plans/planning
- Internship programs
- Student associations
- Identify opportunities for potential candidates to learn about the organization and to bridge learning gaps
- Participate in job fairs with local organizations in the community.
Social Media
Recruitment on social media allows you to reach passive candidates and find talent who are passionate about the work they do and the ideas they have. UW Jobs has integration/scraping agreements with the following vendors: LinkedIn, Indeed, Higher Education Recruitment Consortium (HERC), and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Beyond this, we recommend partnering with HR to develop your own unique social media recruitment strategy to actively create connections with prospective candidates. Consider these tangible steps to get you started while adhering to UW–Madison’s social media policy.
Review the Recruit on Social Media resource to get started.
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LinkedIn allows recruiters to share jobs with targeted audiences for a more streamlined process.
Target Audience
- Working professionals
- Working with HR to use their LinkedIn Recruiter license to actively reach out to active and passive candidates.
Recruitment Strategies:
- Sharing with your personal network
- Searching individuals with transferable skills and experience and reaching out to them
Facebook is a huge opportunity to gain a following and attract attention to your department or division.
Target Audience
- Personal networks and groups
- Division followers
Recruitment Strategies:
- Sharing postings to your following
- Answering any questions or comments
X, formerly known as Twitter
X, formerly known as Twitter
This platform can help showcase your department and/or division brand and share opportunities with followers.
Target Audience
- Personal networks
- Division followers
Recruitment Strategies:
- Sending job postings to your HR specialists to share on the Jobs@UW account
- Posting jobs to a unit-specific account
Handshake
Handshake
Handshake is a platform where recruiters can connect with students and alumni to share jobs and events.
Target Audience
- Students/Early career professionals
- Active job seekers
Recruitment Strategies:
- Hosting information sessions
- Filtering students/alumni by major and graduation year to share job postings with a target audience
- Posting jobs for applicants to apply to