Why Society Sponsorship is the Most Underrated Recruitment Tactic

As a student at a world-leading university studying in a highly in-demand field, Computer Science, there is no shortage of companies who would like to hire me and my peers. In fact, there are so many cold emails and LinkedIn InMails that it can be quite overwhelming to know what to pay attention to and what to filter out. So how do you make your company stand out from the noise of an oversaturated and confusing playing field, and how do you ensure you attract the brightest and most desirable students to come work for your company?

Traditional methods of reaching out to students have not changed for many years. A company might pay the university a sum of money to attend a campus-wide careers fair, or might post their positions on a job board. The problem with these approaches are several-fold — firstly, university careers fairs are not as effective as one might think. Students of all disciplines and academic backgrounds are typically admitted into these events, and will typically spend some time at lots of different stalls to prospect potential employers. These fairs are usually crowded, noisy, and a terrible location for networking. If you are a technology company, then you're probably looking for Computer Science students, business majors, and so on. So why waste time with students not relevant to your positions? Job boards suffer from a similar problem, but they are also oversaturated and, again, difficult to distinguish your posting from the hundreds of others.

An approach which companies are slowly starting to realise is an effective and comparatively cheap option to recruit top talent is by sponsoring a student society.

Drastically Increase Brand Awareness

If you are a large company like Facebook or Microsoft, the chances are that students have already heard of you, and for those companies, they are in the lucky position that students will want to apply to them anyway. But if you are a smaller or less well-known company, how do you get your name and your brand into the minds of students? How do you make students think of you specifically when they start applying for jobs?

Sponsoring a student society can do wonders for your image and brand perception.

"The fact a company sponsors [a society] tells me they value our student experience."

By developing a healthy relationship with a student society, you can get your brand on display to students in ways that would otherwise be impossible. For example, your logo can be displayed on the society's web page, displayed on their t-shirts (worn all around campus!), and displayed in areas of campus that would otherwise be off-limits, such as computer laboratories, common rooms, or lecture theatres.

Believe it or not, just having your logo placed in prominent places can help students think of your company when they start making their employment decisions.

"It has definitely influenced my opinion on who I applied to for graduate roles."

In a recent survey performed on the members of a society I manage, 61% of respondents were not aware of one of our sponsors before they sponsored us. That's a huge pool of untapped potential that you can unlock by engaging with a society.

The Best Talent is Already Filtered

Students who are actively involved with student societies tend to be the kind of individual to go above and beyond in their studies.

If a student regularly attends sponsored events, reads society emails, and plays and active role in aspects of the society, they are likely to possess skills that are desirable for your company.

At my society, a staggering 36% of members who went on to do internships did so at one of our 15 sponsors. In a field with 1000's of potential employers, this is a pretty impressive statistic. Some of our individual sponsors were contacted by at least 37% of our members surveyed, owing to their involvement with our society.

We also hold our own version of a careers fair, as do many other societies. The difference between our careers fair and a university-wide careers fair is quite drastic. We only admit students from our society — not only does this filter out those who are not a relevant fit for our sponsors, but it also creates a more focused atmosphere and allows our sponsors to have more direct and informative conversations with our members, and vice-versa.

Talk To Students Directly

By sponsoring a student society, you are likely to get access to various unique opportunities not usually available to corporate entities. For example, you might be able to deliver a talk on campus in a lecture theatre in the evening, or host a workshop to engage with interested students and teach them about your company at the same time. This is a fantastic experience for companies to educate students about their company culture, what they do, and allow for a two-way conversation if students have questions or want to know more about what you do.

"It's much more fun to get to mingle with a company's engineers directly."

Student societies may also offer access to normally inaccessible student mailing lists and social media platforms. For example, my society sends weekly newsletter emails to all members, and offers a mail shot service to send targeted emails to members you care about. We also have active social media channels with 1000's of followers and likes which can be used to post information about sponsors' job opportunities, events, and other information. For many companies, it's more likely that a student is engaged with their student society on social media than your particular accounts.

We also hold frequent networking evenings over drinks where employers can come to campus and talk to our students in a more casual setting. Many other societies offer similar services — all you have to do is enquire about it.

1000 is Better Than 1

Many companies these days are trying to infiltrate campuses using so-called 'brand ambassadors'. These are students who apply to a company to promote them on campus – usually at no cost – presumably to improve their job prospects later on.

The problem with ambassadors is that they are often a mixed bag, and it highly depends on their individual performance whether you will see much benefit. With society sponsorship, you will often have a dedicated team of 10–15 committee members devoted to promoting their sponsors' opportunities and events. This allows for more engagement on a personal level between society members, and will drive up involvement with your company.

A survey carried out by Collegefeed, shows that most students in university these days now discover companies through their friends (i.e. word-of-mouth), on campus, and through social media. These are all things that sponsoring a society can assist with greatly.

To conclude, there are many ways in which student societies can help your plans for campus recruitment and allow you to meet your recruitment goals. The great thing about societies is that there are often very eager to get companies on board, and more than happy to work together with you to develop an arrangement that works in both you and the society's favour. Almost always, the cost of these sponsorships is far, far less than the yearly salary of just one graduate employee, so you can hire some of the top talent for a fraction of the cost of recruitment agencies which often take hefty commissions, while also resonating well with students and having an extremely positive influence on your own brand perception.

I encourage you to think strongly about experimenting with this emerging recruitment method, and see if works for your company. Find a good, active society, and open up a dialogue to explore the options. You might just be surprised.

I am the Vice President of Imperial College London's Computing Society, DoCSoc, and involved in acquiring sponsors and arranging corporate partnerships. Our society is still looking for sponsors at various levels. Please visit docsoc.co.uk if you would like to learn more.

Quotes and statistics in this article are taken from a survey sent to all DoCSoc members in April 2017.