Benefits and Drawbacks of Single vs. Pooled Campus Events

Today the recruitment scenario is not what it used to be a few years ago. With the increase in competition for fresh and skilled candidates for a particular job role, recruiters are considering new and innovative ways to conduct campus recruitment drives. With cost, time and efficiency is an important factor in campus recruitment, companies are constantly looking for innovative ways to conduct their recruitment with ease. The recent argument has however been whether companies should stick to the traditional method of recruitment, that is to recruit from a single college, or to hold pooled campus drives. Before we explain the benefits and drawbacks of these methods, let us understand what exactly do these two terms mean.

Single campus recruitment event, as the name suggests, is a regular campus recruitment drive where the HR of a company visits a single college to recruit talented and skilled students through a series of assessments and interview rounds. It is a traditional method of recruiting candidates that companies have followed for a long time.

In pooled campus recruitment events, a company visits a single college (called the host college) in a given region and invites nearby colleges to come to the host college to participate in the drive. This way, the recruiters can hire a large number of promising candidates for various job roles. It is a new and innovative method that recent recruiters are trying.

With this background, let us understand the pros and cons of conducting single and pooled campus drives and draw out a conclusion as to which method yields better results for a company.

Advantages of a Single Campus Event

Here are the key advantages of conducting a single campus event in a college:

• Useful when hiring fewer candidates: Visiting a single campus is a good idea when you wish to hire only a few good candidates for a particular job profile. You can focus on creating assessments and conducting interviews for specific skill sets.
• Top candidates get hired: If you focus on visiting a single campus, all top talent from that college can be recruited into your company since you will have to evaluate only a few hundred candidates and shortlist the best among them.
• Easy to conduct recruitment drive: Because of the small pool of candidates, which more often than not is only a few hundred, it is easier to conduct a campus recruitment drive in a single campus when compared to pooled campus events. Recruiters can evaluate better and hire top performers.

Disadvantages of a Single Campus Event

Listed below are the main disadvantages of conducting a single campus event in a college.

• Time-consuming process: Conducting a single campus event is a time-consuming process since you have to visit multiple campuses, and you may not get the opportunity to evaluate all good students in a single day. Travelling to different college campuses takes time since the campuses may be located far off from your organization.  
• Less diversity in candidates: Visiting a single campus and hiring all candidates from there will lead to a lack of diversity among them. That is, the candidates may come from the same educational background or ethnicity and may not be able to provide a different or fresh perspective.
• Lack of interaction with employees: When all candidates are hired from the same college, they tend to stay together in a single group and not interact much with other employees. This may not go well with the company culture and also not help these fresh candidates to grow into better individuals.
• Involves a lot of cost, time and effort: Conducting a single campus event involves a lot of expenses (travel, etc.), time (to prepare for the drive) and effort (screening colleges and candidates, organizing the drive, etc.) since many colleges will have to be tapped to meet the targeted number of candidates for the job profile.
• Compromise on the quality of hire: Since you, as recruiters visit only a few campuses, you have access to a limited talent pool and therefore may compromise on the quality of hire to meet your numbers as you can travel only to a select number of campuses to conduct recruitment drives.
• Hiring targets may not be met: The recruiters may not be able to meet the hiring numbers as the size of the target group is very small. Also, when evaluating the candidates, the average performers are filtered out leaving behind only a few good candidates who can be hired.

Advantages of Pooled Campus Events

Given below are the advantages of conducting a pooled campus event in a college.

• Large talent pool can be created: Pooled campus events pave way for creating larger talent pool since recruiters have the option of shortlisting candidates from different colleges instead of one, and have enough number of options to choose from as and when required.
• Higher chances of recruiting top talent: There are higher chances for recruiters to hire top candidates from different colleges in one visit itself when they conduct a pooled campus event. This is because a lot of students from different colleges participate in the recruitment and this allows the HR to evaluate them before they shortlist the top performers for hire.
• Helps in bringing diversity: Since pooled campuses encourage the participation of a number of colleges and students, the HR will be able to hire diverse candidates from different cultural, educational, and ethnic backgrounds. This will also help in improving the diversity of the company as a whole.
• Helps in quick closure: Pooled campus events lead to hiring a large number of candidates from several colleges which means the HR is able to achieve the hiring target and make a quick closure of the drive.

Disadvantages of Pooled Campus Events

Following are a few disadvantages of conducting pooled campus events at colleges:

• Manage a large number of students: Pooled campus events have a large number of colleges and students participating and the HR has to manage this huge crowd in an efficient way.
• Detailed planning and precision required: Managing a large crowd is not an easy job and the recruiters have to plan their campus drive in an efficient way such that the company is able to hire good candidates successfully.
• Difficulty in deciding the host campus: The HR will face some difficulty in selecting the host campus and inviting other campuses to the host campus when planning a pooled campus drive since they will have to get approval from the colleges and also manage a large crowd.
• Students from other campuses may not wish to travel: Not all students prefer to travel to other locations because of the distance or simply inconvenience. Therefore, pooled campus drives can be conducted successfully in only a few select colleges that are ready to host the drive and other colleges that are ready to bring their students to the host college.

Conclusion

As recruiters, meeting your target numbers and onboarding the right candidates into the company is extremely important to you. In such cases, where the quality, as well as the number, are a priority, you can organize a pooled campus placement since both the requirements can be met, as is the current trend in the recruitment scenario. In case you are unsure of the outcomes of a pooled recruitment process, you can visit different campuses in the traditional way to hire candidates for your organization. Alternatively, you can take advantage of our services by visiting us at https://pod.ai/employers to conduct a smooth recruitment drive and hire the best students in your firm.