The Truth Behind University Recruiting

As the world of sales continues to evolve and become ever more complex, companies are increasingly turning to talent as a major driver of sales performance.

It’s no surprise, then, that half of CEB members around the globe told us they were anticipating an increase in university hiring volume across the year.  Budgets for university recruiting are also up – more or less double what they were last year. 1

Here’s the problem – despite placing an increased bet in attracting the best and brightest talent coming out of our universities, we’re actually doing a TERRIBLE job of it.  Over 80% of companies we surveyed said that the students coming out of universities today do NOT arrive with the skills they need to succeed in entry level sales jobs.  Over three quarters of companies do not believe that their organization is sourcing quality university talent. 2

And that’s a troubling statement.  But why the disconnect?

Turns out, our strategy for sourcing talent from universities amounts to nothing more than rolling the dice.

What most of us do is descend on university campuses prior to graduation and interview students en masse to decide which we think are the best and brightest.  We base our decision on their GPA and an overall reputation of the school.

But we don’t know much more than that.  We don’t know anything about their professors, the curriculum they went through, the skills they have (or don’t), or a sense of whether or not they’d even be a good fit for sales or our company culture.  And we hope to figure all of that out in a series of 30-60 minute interviews.

Now let’s think about it from the student’s perspective.  They come into the interview having reviewed a job description, done a little bit of research on our website, and with what little they may know of our brand or reputation.

It all amounts to a leap of faith on both parts – the students hope they’re picking the right job/company, and we hope we’re picking a student with the right skills/fit for our organization.

But as we saw in the statistics earlier, this approach isn’t working too well.

There are, however, a group of companies and universities who are partnering very differently than most to build a better talent pipeline.

Instead of waiting until graduation to start the process, a group of companies start by partnering with universities very early in a student’s career (as early as freshman or sophomore year).

This approach really has several goals in mind:

The first goal is to simply build interest in a career in sales and screen out bad fits for the profession.  These universities work hard in the formative years of a student’s career to help them understand the realities of sales.  To help overcome students’ perception that sales is a job you do at the mall or in a car dealership lot, and to help them understand that sales is about something much bigger – helping customers achieve their goals.  They also help students understand that you shouldn’t choose this as a career if you aren’t willing to relocate.

Once you have a pool of students who are sold on the profession of sales, the next goal is to prepare them with the skills they’ll need to succeed in today’s complex world of sales.  These companies and universities partner together to create realistic curriculum based on real life situations provided by the company.  They give students access to sellers and executives to get a first-hand account of what it’s like to sell.

Finally, in the later parts of the student’s career, the goal is to give students greater exposure to different companies in an effort to help them choose jobs and corporate cultures that are the best fit  for them.   Professors, armed with a more intimate knowledge of these organizations and their cultures, can make more principled recommendations about which companies they see as being best fits for a student’s skillset and personality.

The results have been staggering.  These new hires stay longer, they’re productive faster, and save companies hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to the typical university hire.

Earlier this year, we were joined by Professor Dan Strunk from DePaul University and several folks from 3M to talk about how they structure their partnership.  CEB Sales Members, click here to learn more about how this partnership is structured and to hear them share their experiences and results. Also, click here for more tips on changing your university recruiting efforts.

1 Source: CEB Recruiting’s Recruiting Forecast, 2010–2013; CEB Recruiting Forecast Survey, Q4 2012.

2 Source: CEB Sales Leadership Council Member Poll, 2013.