Spotlight for Career Services Professionals
Spotlight for Recruiting Professionals

A group of 14 career services practitioners have come together to write regularly for the NACE Blog on STEM recruiting. Recently, members of the group contributed “Trends in STEM Recruiting: Predictions for 2018.” Here are selected highlights from the blog.

• STEM recruiting appears to be trending toward more balance between fall and spring as more recruiters fail to meet their STEM hiring quotas in the fall, forcing organizations to increase their activity and visibility on campus throughout the year.
• Fall recruiting at colleges and universities with a STEM focus was active—perhaps the most active in years. Early indicators point to equally robust recruiting in the spring.
• Over the last three years, members of the group have seen a substantial growth in the number of intern/co-op job postings. A survey of their institutions’ recruiters found that more than 90 percent of companies are focusing on efforts to increase the retention of their STEM interns and co-ops.
• Hiring organizations see career fairs and other face-to-face efforts as their primary recruiting tools for full-time, intern, and co-op positions.
• Employers are using informal and targeted recruiting events to increase engagement with students. Small-group meals, panels for student clubs, facility tours, and informational sessions aimed at freshmen and sophomores are some examples.
• Corporate recruiting efforts across STEM campuses are breaking down silos and driving a closer relationship between career services and academic departments. Employers have identified “direct engagement through classroom presentations and workshops” as an ideal supplement to their career fair recruiting practices, the bloggers say. This requires a relationship and a connection with the career and academic departments, professors, and advisers.

Read the full blog.