New Grad Campus Recruitment Cycle

September is in 6 days! In my line of work as a Career Consultant at a university, that means life is about to be BUSY! As planning for fall recruitment continues, I realized that more often than not, I meet with students who have missed the campus new grad recruitment deadlines and now have to play catch up! So, I would like to outline what those timelines look like!

[This week’s blog comes from Ibiyemi Balogun, a career consultant at Ryerson University and former talent manager at Career Edge.]

Show of hands, how many students think you should start your job search right after graduation? Write a comment below if this was your initial thought. Although it can be done, it’s truly not the best strategy. Waiting until graduation means applying for jobs during the summer which is notoriously the slowest time for recruitment – with recruiters and hiring managers on vacation the process can tend to drag out not to mention many large organizations will be welcoming their summer students/interns.

So, what is the actual cycle?!

1.    It starts in September, one year before graduation and you might think “woah that’s really early”, but it actually makes perfect sense because of the high-volume nature of new grad hiring (hiring approximately 200 new grads is a HARD JOB)

2.    Jobs are posted in late July & early August and close in September, and they are usually posted on your university’s internal job board, through your career centre or on the company campus pages, so you don’t want to miss out on it.

3.    Then, you have the most crucial step which is On Campus Events and this happens in Sep & Oct. Let me quickly shed some light on the logistics of hiring 200 new grads. To do this, you have to interview all 200 of them BUT every recruiter knows that to hire 1 person you have to interview at least 6 people, to get 6 people your shortlist should be at least 20 resumes which requires you to have a candidate pool of 150- 200 resume. If you are doing the math, that number is growing exponentially, and recruiters try to mitigate this by coming on campus to see faces and NOT just resumes.

4.    Next up is Interviews, which happen in October and right after that is the offer and acceptance phase for a start date of the following summer or fall. You could theoretically, have a job by the first semester of your last year, finish up your degree spend the summer travelling or taking a break and starting your job in September.

So how do you prepare? You spend the summer before working on updating your resume and cover letter, doing a summer internship, upgrading your skills through bootcamps and working on your networking and interviewing skills!

If you are a new grad and have missed this cycle, DO NOT worry there is always help! Check out your university’s student job board. ( At Ryerson it is Magnet). There are also great organizations like Career Edge and Talent Egg that work with new grads to find meaningful work experiences.

So there you have it! The new grad recruitment cycle basically starts 1.5 years before you graduate from university, so stay informed!

If you are a campus recruiter, please feel free to comment below to add more tips on how students can get prepared for your respective new grad programs.