College Recruiting in Large Organizations: Practice, Evaluation, and Research Implications.

Directors of college recruiting for Fortune 1000 corporations were surveyed regarding a broad set of college recruiting practices and college recruiting effectiveness measures. Descriptive results suggested that most college recruiting programs diverge from normative prescriptions (e.g., little recruiter training, limited data collection, and almost no empirical evaluation of recruiting outcomes). Stepwise regression revealed several statistically significant relationships between organizational characteristics, recruiting practices, and perceived recruiting effectiveness. Some of these findings were consistent with conventional wisdom (e.g., positive relationships between perceived effectiveness and recruiter information, recruiter selection criteria, and recorded information about new hires) while others were not (e.g., negative associations between perceived effectiveness, personalization of rejection notices, training recruiters in a broad range of content areas, and the existence of a human resource information system). Methodological limitations are noted, and suggestions are offered for future practical recruitment improvements and theoretical research.

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