Spotlight for Career Services Professionals
Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

Employers are preparing for a robust recruiting season this fall, which is in line with results of recent research that highlight the growing focus on fall recruiting.

More than 99 percent of respondents to NACE’s Job Outlook 2019 Spring Update survey noted plans to participate in on-campus recruiting this fall. Of this group, nearly 83 percent will be seeking hires to fill both their full-time openings and positions in their internship/co-op programs. (See Figure 1.)

The overall percentage is up from 97.6 percent of 2018 respondents and 96.7 percent of 2017 respondents indicating plans for fall recruiting. While the percentage seeking hires for full-time openings and internships/co-ops is down 3.2 percent from last year, it is up nearly 6 percent from 2017.   

This gradual climb in fall recruiting is in line with the shift in the percentage of college recruiting that employers are planning to conduct in the fall versus spring. In the Job Outlook 2019 report, employers planned to conduct 71 percent of their college recruiting in the fall and 29 percent in spring. In 2014, results were 62 percent and 38 percent, respectively. (See Figure 2.)

The Job Outlook 2019 Spring Update survey was conducted from February 27 – March 29, 2019; the survey was sent to 921 NACE employer members; 155, or 16.8 percent responded. The survey updates hiring projections for the Class of 2019; those projections were collected from NACE employer members from August 1 – October 8, 2018, and reported in the Job Outlook 2019 survey, published in November 2018. The Job Outlook 2019 Spring Updatereport is available free to members through MyNACE.