Campus recruitment often reminds people of tens of recruitment speeches in universities nationwide, thousands of copies of resumes, and over 5 rounds of job interviews, etc. However, with limited budgets few SMEs can actually afford such huge events and the workload they create.

According to the Recruitment Insider Survey launched by RMG Selection at the beginning of 2015, 94.1 percent of the nearly 500 tested enterprises state that they are going to carry out campus recruitment campaigns this year. 95.2 percent of the companies who hire more than 5000 workers have plans for campus recruitment, while the number for those who only have less than 100 employees is 93.5 percent. Now, as graduation season approaches, enterprises begin to plan a new round of campus recruitment. But what should SMEs do?

Actually the focus of campus recruitment is the same as other channels. That is to hire qualified talents and retain skilled workers. Considering brand popularity, labour force and financial strength, SMEs are mainly faced with the following challenges.

1. Hard to carry out massive publicity campaigns. SMEs are unlikely to arrange tens of recruitment speeches because resources are limited. Besides, these talks are always centralized during a certain period. Therefore even if SMEs do hold such events, it is difficult to get enough students involved.

2. Poor talent assessment. SMEs lack a set of scientific and well-targeted rules to assess candidates. They just stay on the surface by focusing on candidates’ certificates, personal impressions and experience. In this way, they lack understanding of the actual situation of the interviewed students, which increases the difficulty in spotting real talent.

3. One–way information dissemination. SMEs are not very attractive to the targeted students because by means of one-way information dissemination, students’ knowledge about the company, the industry and the position is always one-sided. Sometimes, this even causes misunderstandings.

4. Repeated breach of contract. Breach of contract is not only a common phenomenon during campus recruitment but also one of the biggest concerns of enterprises. “Finally you get the right man, but very soon he leaves the position”, this is exactly the outcome of companies’ blind recruitment of so called “most talented workers”, especially forthose who graduate from famous universities.

5. Sustaining high turnover of newcomers. A report released by 51JOB shows that 20 percent of 2014’s graduates left their positions three months after being employed. Further, quite a lot of graduates change their jobs twice a year, which undoubtedly increases the burden of HR and labour costs.

However, for SMEs, the advantages of hiring graduates are self-evident: low wage cost and great talent potential. When a global HRD from L’OREAL was asked why companies organize campus recruitment, he said, “All the efforts are worthy as long as one out of all the management trainees can be a country manager in the coming 10 years”. The problem is how can SMEs do a good job in campus recruiting? With costs, time and labour forces taken into consideration, the following suggestions for SMEs are worth trying.

1. Focus on specific needs rather than taking a macroscopic view. There is no need to go to tens of universities since SMEs tend to have relatively single and steady recruitment needs. An in-depth look into appropriate majors in some specific schools will do. To be more specific, SMEs don’t have to do campus recruiting in the nation’s top universities since students there are probably unwilling to join them. Also, if the majors in some universities have nothing to do with the company’s main business, or if its education quality generally can’t meet the company’s requirements, a SME should not waste its time there.

2. Take early actions to spot talent. Several intern positions (applied for junior students or postgraduates in the first grade) can always be offered in order to approach potential students. Knowledge from observation during internship is more reliable than that from an interview. Meanwhile, it is a process of two-way communication which allows students to experience company culture, learn working procedures and consequently increase their trust in the company.

3. Use online and social platforms to get in touch with talent. Display introductions to employers, business coverage, social responsibility, working environment, and career development, etc. on various platforms. Organize online activities on SNS platforms (Weibo, Wechat, and App, etc.) to interact with students.

4. Figure out the biggest attraction. For graduates, nothing in SMEs is more attractive than a platform where they can grow quickly. The promotion rate in SMEs and the profits brought out by companies’ growth are something that large companies cannot compete with. So fully publicize this selling point and choose candidates who really need it. By doing so, SMEs won’t always suffer from brain-drain. Do remember the saying, “The person who needs you is the one you need”.

Be it large companies or SMEs, campus recruitment is a powerful guarantee for long-term development. Good and on-going campus recruitment will not only boost a company’s talent pool but also increase its popularity.