Spotlight for Career Services Professionals
Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

It should be an active spring for college recruiting, according to results of NACE’s Job Outlook 2020 survey.

Employers responding to the survey reported conducting 68 percent of their recruiting in the fall this year, with the remaining 32 percent planned for the spring. This is the highest percentage of recruiting planned for spring since 2015. In each of the past four years, employers indicated that they will conduct at least 70 percent of their college recruiting in the fall. (See Figure 1.)

While fall clearly remains the preferred recruiting season, just 4.2 percent of respondents plan to do all of their recruiting in the fall this year, down from 15 percent last year and 13 percent two years ago.

More than 70 percent of this year’s respondents have either firm or tentative recruiting plans in place for spring 2020, up from 67.7 percent last year. (See Figure 2.)

Not surprisingly, the group of respondents that will not be on campus in spring because they completed all their recruiting in the fall has dropped from 19.2 percent last year to 14.8 this year.

Data for the Job Outlook 2020 survey were collected from August 1, 2019, through September 30, 2019. This year’s data collection not only surveyed 905 NACE employer members, but also 2,229 employer organizations that were nonmembers. A total of 150 surveys were returned; 115 were NACE members and the remaining 35 were nonmembers. The Job Outlook 2020 report is available free to members through MyNACE. Nonmembers can purchase the report through the NACE Store.

Figure 1: Percentage of College Recruiting Conducted in Fall vs. Spring, 2014-2020

Figure 2: Spring 2020 Recruiting Plans