Recruiting Students and Graduates

In terms of finding suitable sources of students try researching some of the courses run at colleges near you [assuming you want the person to be near you] or anywhere if you are happy with a remote employee or to support their relocation. Find the ones you think give the best training in terms of what you are looking for. You can then try to get candidates through posters, the careers department and even flyers handed out to students after their lectures!. Consider the option of taking on someone doing a degree or masters on a part time basis - this gives them income and gives you a chance to keep initial costs down and you can always have 2-3 of them to provide enough resource. The chance of a job at the end can be helpful in terms of retaining and motivating them.

Another good way to attract and check out students is to run a competition - set a competition to develop something which in your opinion covers what you are looking for. This gives you a chance to see the work of people you might be interested in. If you want to only hire one person make one of the rules that entrants need to be individuals. You need to make the prize quite substantial and can say that in addition to the prize you will consider hiring the winner - but this is cheaper than running an advert and also if you set the competition parameters and rules correctly and you hire the person you can access the product they developed.

Or you can run a free weekend school on a particular topic and get applicants to apply for this. Make it clear that they will all get useful training/new skills and that you are also looking to recruit so one or more may get a job as well! This way you get to see 10-12 people for a whole weekend which helps with your selection [school leavers are very hard to judge in a traditional interview and whilst graduates are a bit easier it is hard to judge people who have no work track record]. Your application process for the weekend end school can require them to provide examples of stuff they have done.

If graduate recruitment is something you plan to do on a long term basis it can be very beneficial to build a relationship with a few key academics or teachers at the college or university that you are most interested in hiring from. This way you are likely to get access to some of the best students and positive ‘press' when students are considering working for you. You should also consider how you can help the institution by giving their students work experience, placements, vacation work and so on.