Howdy, I'm coming to the brains of the job board because my company is having a contest of sorts to try to find creative recruiting ideas. I've submitted a couple of my own, but figured y'all would probably have some really good ones. From the internal email:

"We are looking for innovative ideas that are out of the norm, and distinct from what we do now (posting to job boards, career fairs, sourcing LinkedIn, etc.). "

They're offering rewards of up to $500 if the idea is tested and/or implemented, which I of course would be obliged to split with you.

It's a Fortune 300 defense, science, and engineering company with over 30k employees worldwide. This is specifically for our Civil Group, which is focused on energy, engineering, environment, aviation, transportation, and IT infrastructure.

At any rate, I'd appreciate any ideas y'all can come up with, and I'll submit them through the company portal and see what happens.

I just re-engaged in campus recruiting and things have changed quite a bit.

Virtual interviewing seems to be what companies are doing ahead of hires where students just film themselves answering questions vs go in front of interviewers. In terms of innovative recruiting, hard to give you an idea not understanding your industry but it seems like most companies are focused heavy on 2 concepts: gameification and finding ways to sell themselves in a short amount of time. Keep those 2 things in minds and build from there.

what is the goal? is the group looking for more candidates, better candidates, specialized skill sets, more diversity, etc? one size doesn't fit all.

ATM9000, virtual interviewing and gameification are really good tips. I can work with those concepts. Thanks.

cjo03, frankly, I have no idea. I'm an environmental scientist and this just came in a mass email from corporate. If I had to guess based on the circumstances, I'd say that HR/hiring managers are falling short in most, if not all, of those categories... otherwise, they wouldn't be attempting to crowd-source ideas from the rest of us.

I just thought it was worth submitting a few spitball ideas in hopes of getting a little bonus to put toward family vacation. I appreciate the input.

We offer a $2000 bonus for a referral. It helps maintain the culture when you bring in people that you already know about.

We have referral bonuses as well, though ours varies by the level of the employee you're referring. I think you'd have to refer somebody pretty important to get $2k at my company (more typically in the $500-1000 range).

Have you (meaning the HR/TA team) ever thought about having a quick sit down with new hires, and not necessarily on day one but may be after a few days, to run through a list of local open positions and get referrals? We recently implemented the program and have gotten some new hires this way. This coupled with the referral program was kind of "outside the box."

You could take a page from Big Law. Institute a competitive summer internship program this would be a fast track to a full time position post graduation.

Host a happy hour for employees requesting them to bring referrals. Cheaper than paying the referral bonus and much more likely you get referrals.