Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

With annual salaries that average nearly $115,000, directors are the highest paid core position involved in college recruiting at employer organizations, according to results of a new report from NACE.

NACE’s 2016 Recruiting Compensation Benchmark Report is the first in what is intended to be an annual series of reports detailing the compensation of these core positions.

Following the salary for directors are those for managers ($90,675), recruiters ($64,339), and coordinators ($51,993). (See Figure 1.)

These base salaries increased almost uniformly across the board—by 3 percent—from last year. The one exception was the salary for recruiters, which bumped up by 2 percent. This relatively low overall increase was due primarily to the fact that recruiters in the nonprofit/government sector averaged no increase in base salary in 2016, thereby skewing overall results for the group.

In addition to their base salaries, directors, managers, and recruiters were eligible to receive bonuses. (See Figure 2.) The average bonus for directors ($17,645) is almost double that of managers ($8,832), and four times that of recruiters ($4,418).

NACE’s 2016 Recruiting Compensation Benchmark survey was conducted among NACE employer members during the summer of 2016. The survey was open from July 25, 2016, until October 17, 2016. It was sent to 945 employer organizations and responses were received from 174 member companies—an 18.4 percent response rate. The 2016 Recruiting Compensation Benchmark Report is available in MyNACE to members who participated or whose organizations participated in the survey. An executive summary of the 2016 Recruiting Compensation Benchmark Report is also available.