3 Indisputable Benefits of Nurturing Relationships with College Career Counselors

Networking and building mutually beneficial relationships are essential steps to growing your brand awareness and reputation. Your company likely has partnerships and possibly integrations depending on your product or service. You’ve leaned into these connections to streamline your marketing efforts, but also to reach more people with whom you can share your solutions.?

Another critical process of growth for your organization is acquiring the best employees. This is where nurturing relationships with college career counselors benefit your talent acquisition team, but also the communities from which you source new graduate candidates. Let’s discuss a few of the ways creating meaningful connections with colleges and universities improve your business success:

Establish mutual trust and respect?

To grow your business, you need two important things: employees and customers. College graduates have the potential to satisfy both of these critical needs. Students turn to college career counselors for guidance on their education journey so they are a valuable touchpoint to build brand awareness to fill your talent funnel.

Establishing meaningful connections with college career counselors requires more effort than keeping them informed of job openings or business developments. You need to create specific opportunities for students to develop skills and experience with your organization, and grow their referral network. Going the extra mile to enrich college students' experiences will help you earn college career counselors' trust and respect.

Similarly, spending time collaborating with college career counselors to create new programs with students helps your team gain confidence in internship and mentorship programs.

Fill your talent funnel with innovative talent

Staying ahead of your competition can be tricky, especially in a candidates' market. Candidate expectations are high. You can learn from interns and college career counselors how approaching graduates perceive the workforce and what they are looking for in terms of workplace culture and compensation. Your company can learn about hiring trends before they are trending, keeping you ahead of competitors when vying for top talent.

Not only can you learn ways to improve your culture and policies to attract the very best talent, but also you get first draft picks of graduates you've been networking with through college career counselor services. Your talent funnel is consistently filled with fresh, innovative talent you can trust and have the skills and experience you're looking for.?

Keep a pulse on graduates’ skills and experience

Nurturing relations with college career counselors also keeps your hiring decision-makers up-to-date on college courses and extracurricular activities students have access to. This can vary from one institution to another. Some students may round out their classes and college experiences on their academic journey in a way that makes them a strong fit for certain roles.?

College career counselors can offer unique insights into how student education paths can make them the best fit for different roles. You can gain strong recommendations from college career counselors for high-potential hires you may not have qualified as highly on paper. It's beneficial to your team to pull from the insight of college career counselors when making entry-level hires from your college talent pool.?

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Check out these tips for filling your talent pool .