16 reasons why employers need to hire candidates who are early in their human resources careers

There are important short- and long-term benefits for employers to hire students, recent graduates, and others early in their careers for human resources roles. We reached out to 16 hiring experts to get their thoughts:

• Build Lasting University Partnerships
• Create Structured HR Apprenticeship Programs
• Launch Cohort-Based Management Trainee Program
• Implement Experiential Recruitment Strategies
• Develop Integrated Career Pipeline
• Set Up Hands-On HR Lab Simulations
• Leverage Campus Connections for Bulk Hiring
• Establish Project-Based Hiring Partnerships
• Design Rotational Internship Programs
• Conduct Virtual Panel Interviews
• Focus on Robust Training Programs
• Create Structured Internship-to-Hire Pipeline
• Build Practical Assessment-Based Hiring Funnel
• Foster University Relationships for Experiential Internships
• Record Screens During Interview Process
• Partner with Universities for Talent Development

Build Lasting University Partnerships

When it comes to hiring dozens or even hundreds of early career professionals into HR roles, one of the most effective strategies I’ve used is creating a structured early talent program in partnership with universities. However, the key isn’t just showing up once at a career fair. It’s about building consistent, meaningful relationships over time.

We observed that the best hires didn’t always come from polished resumes. They came from people who had already connected with our mission and culture. So we launched what we called the “HR Starter Track.” It began with guest speaking at local colleges, hosting resume and interview workshops, and sponsoring student HR groups. These were simple ways to show up and support without expecting anything in return.

Over time, students began to associate our name with opportunity. We followed up by offering short-term paid internships, shadowing opportunities, and project-based work. These candidates weren’t just learning what HR was; they were learning how we conducted HR. When full-time roles opened, we already had a warm pool of candidates who understood our values, our work style, and where they could grow.

We hired over 50 early career HR professionals through this program. The impact was significant. They ramped up faster, stayed longer, and brought fresh energy into our teams. We didn’t need to spend months sourcing or guessing if someone was a good fit. We already knew them, and they knew us.

If you’re considering implementing something similar, my biggest advice is to make it personal and consistent. Don’t rely solely on job boards. Show up on campus. Offer something valuable, even if it’s just your time. Create a name for your program so people remember it. And give early talent a real taste of what it’s like to be part of your team.

People want more than a job. They want to feel like they’re starting something meaningful. When you take the time to invest in them before they apply, you create a pipeline that’s not just full, but full of the right people.

Brittney Simpson, HR Consultant, Savvy HR Partner

Create Structured HR Apprenticeship Programs

Develop structured HR apprenticeship programs that combine practical experience with professional certification pathways — this approach creates sustainable talent pipelines while addressing the unique challenge that HR roles require both interpersonal skills and regulatory knowledge.

I’ve observed that volume HR hiring faces a distinct challenge: entry-level candidates often lack the business context and legal knowledge that HR work requires, yet they need practical experience to develop these competencies.

The most effective strategy involves partnering with local universities and community colleges to create rotational programs where early career candidates gain exposure to different HR functions — recruiting, employee relations, benefits administration, and compliance — while pursuing relevant certifications like PHR or SHRM credentials.

Structure these programs with clear advancement milestones that combine on-the-job experience with formal learning objectives. This approach attracts ambitious candidates who see genuine career development rather than just data entry or administrative work. Many organizations successfully hire 20-50 HR professionals annually through these structured development programs.

The key insight is positioning entry-level HR roles as professional foundation building rather than just job filling. When candidates understand they’re developing expertise in employee relations, labor law, and organizational development, they approach the work with greater engagement and long-term commitment.

Combine experience with education for sustainable HR hiring — when you create structured learning paths that blend practical work with professional development, you attract motivated candidates while building internal HR expertise.

Friddy Hoegener, Co-Founder | Head of Recruiting, SCOPE Recruiting

Launch Cohort-Based Management Trainee Program

When you need to hire dozens or hundreds of early-career candidates into HR roles, a cohort-based recruiting strategy is incredibly effective. Instead of filling positions one by one, I recommend creating a formal management trainee program or leadership academy. Employers can partner with a few universities to recruit a batch of dozens of graduates into a year-long rotational program. These candidates can cycle through key departments, get mentorship from seasoned managers, and build a tight network among themselves.

Ivana Radevska, HR & Wellbeing Author, Shortlister

Implement Experiential Recruitment Strategies

One recruiting strategy I recommend to employers looking to hire dozens — or even hundreds — of early career candidates into HR roles is to embed experiential recruitment into their university and college engagement efforts. Instead of relying solely on job boards or campus career fairs, organizations should build immersive, educational partnerships with institutions to create a pipeline that is both skills-aligned and values-driven.

Many early career candidates are eager but uncertain about what HR roles truly entail beyond the theoretical classroom frameworks. That’s why employers can benefit greatly from launching branded micro-internships, project-based case competitions, or semester-long HR bootcamps hosted in partnership with career development offices. These allow students to get hands-on experience in core HR functions — like talent acquisition, DEI strategy, or HR analytics — while showcasing their capabilities in real time to prospective employers.

One compelling example of this approach is what IBM did with its “P-TECH” model. While not limited to HR, the model illustrates how a company can co-design curriculum with schools and embed work-based learning into the student journey. Similarly, companies like PepsiCo and Accenture have run virtual simulations and “HR Day in the Life” challenges, where students work on real-world problems and receive feedback from internal hiring teams. These initiatives often lead directly to internship or full-time offers.

Supporting this approach is a growing body of research that highlights the value of experiential hiring. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), candidates who participated in internships or co-op programs with a company were far more likely to receive full-time offers from that same employer — often at a higher starting salary. Moreover, a McKinsey report on early career hiring emphasized that practical skill exposure is a stronger predictor of job success than GPA or degree pedigree, especially in dynamic functions like human resources.

In conclusion, for employers aiming to scale early career hiring in HR, the most sustainable and high-impact strategy is to stop treating recruitment as a transactional event and start investing in education-to-employment bridges. By integrating real work into learning environments, organizations not only hire better — they build better futures for the talent they hope to attract.

Miriam Groom, CEO, Mindful Career Inc., Mindful Career Counselling

Develop Integrated Career Pipeline

That volume of candidates requires a cohesive career pipeline — one that begins in university programs, continues through integrated internships, and is supported by a strong mentoring structure. While demand is high, successful execution depends on segmenting new hires into cohorts and taking the time to train them on HRIS platforms, company-specific protocols, and available resources for problem solving.

Jeremy Golan SHRM-CP, CPHR, Bachelor of Management, HR Manager, Virtual HR Hub

Set Up Hands-On HR Lab Simulations

Forget standard job boards for a moment. If you want to hire dozens or even hundreds of entry-level HR professionals, consider setting up a rotating “HR Lab” series at local community colleges and trade schools. Invite 10 to 15 students at a time for two-hour simulations that include real cases, actual paperwork, industry-standard software, and authentic fire drills with compliance checklists. Skip the theoretical material. Give them a taste of what an HR day actually feels like. This approach allows you to observe who can keep up, who panics, who collaborates, and who quietly gets the job done. After three months, you will have screened 120 to 180 candidates and know exactly who fits, who learns quickly, and who thrives under pressure.

The magic here is how this method enables you to recruit based on performance, not just interview skills. Anyone can rehearse for an interview or fake a personality test. However, very few can spot a payroll error or catch a compliance risk on the fly, in front of five strangers, under time pressure. Suddenly, you are not hiring on a hunch. You are bringing in people who have demonstrated (on your turf, with your technology) that they can handle the work. The drop-off rate from hire to actual productive HR staff decreases by half when you use a pipeline like this. That translates to money saved and stress avoided.

Guillermo Triana, Founder and CEO, PEO-Marketplace.com

Leverage Campus Connections for Bulk Hiring

Recruiting a bunch of HR folks doesn’t have to be hard. Here’s our cheat code: we go where they are already hanging out. Like, literally.

1. College Hunting Grounds: Instead of stalking LinkedIn one-by-one (ugh), we hit up business schools and psych departments. It’s like shopping at Costco — bulk candidates, baby!

2. Befriend Career Centers: These people live to match students with jobs. We crash their career fairs, dump our job postings in their system, and get first dibs on grads.

3. Internship Tryouts: Basically a 3-month interview where they pay us (wait no, other way around). Best part? Good interns bring their smart friends.

4. Classroom Takeovers: Professors love when we come rant about “real world HR.” Students eat it up, especially when we bring free pizza. (Pro tip: Always bring pizza.)

5. The Golden Pipeline: Set this up once and it keeps delivering fresh grads every year like clockwork. Like a HR vending machine.

6. “We’ll Teach You” Angle: New grads are terrified they’re “not ready.” So we’re like, “Lol nobody is — we’ll show you the ropes.” Instant applicant boost.

Why This Works So Stupid Well:

• Fish where the fish are.
• Students are already hyped about HR.
• Build relationships that pay off for years.
• Way cheaper than fighting over experienced hires.

It is basically dating…meet people where they are comfortable, show you’re cool, then reel ’em in. But with less ghosting.

Jan Lutz, Director HR | Co-Founder, Quantum Jobs USA

Establish Project-Based Hiring Partnerships

One recruiting strategy that has worked well for us when hiring early-career candidates in HR is building our own project-based hiring pipeline with smaller colleges and certification programs.

We don’t just post jobs; we build partnerships. We connect with lesser-known schools that have strong HR programs and offer real, paid short-term projects — not internships in name only. These projects are tied to actual needs on our People Ops team, such as refining onboarding flows, rewriting outdated policies, or improving internal feedback systems.

Each candidate is paired with a team member, not to shadow, but to deliver something useful. This way, we’re able to see how they handle ownership, deadlines, and communication before offering a long-term role.

Most early-career applicants haven’t seen HR done well. So we spend time guiding them through what good HR practices look like. That part is just as important as screening. By the time we scale hiring, we already have a pool of people we’ve worked with and trust.

It’s slower than mass interviews at first. But it pays off when you’re hiring at scale without compromising on quality.

Vikrant Bhalodia, Head of Marketing & People Ops, WeblineIndia

Design Rotational Internship Programs

One recruiting strategy I would recommend to employers who want to hire dozens or even hundreds of early career candidates into human resources roles is to design structured internship programs that offer rotational exposure across various HR functions, such as talent acquisition, employee relations, compensation, benefits, talent management, and HR analytics. These internships — typically 8 to 12 weeks — should include mentorship, executive engagement, performance evaluations, and meaningful project work to provide early talent with both hands-on experience and insight into the organization.

For more strategic HR roles, consider designing a 12-24 month rotational program to serve as a pipeline for talent. In addition to program inclusions mentioned above for less strategic roles, the exposure for this type of program would include rotational exposure across various business functions to develop acumen and build relationships with business operating leaders. Top-performing interns can then be offered full-time roles through a formal internship-to-hire conversion process, streamlining future hiring needs.

Kristin Bell, Managing Partner, CEEID HR Consulting

Conduct Virtual Panel Interviews

If an employer needs to hire dozens or even hundreds of early-career candidates, I recommend that they partner with universities for job fairs. This approach allows them to speak with hundreds of candidates in HR, business, or related degree programs and potentially hire them.

If partnering with universities is not an option, employers can conduct virtual panel interviews with multiple candidates simultaneously. They can then gather the opinions of relevant interviewers before making offers.

Susan Snipes, Head of People, Remote People

Focus on Robust Training Programs

Focus on robust training programs. 

Even if you hire the most qualified candidates, your turnover may be high since early-career candidates are new to workplace environments and HR roles. So I recommend curating a training course which properly introduces them to this new space.

Rotational training programs are a good way to make such candidates comfortable and confident, especially in HR-based roles. A training period that shifts primary role every month (e.g., talent management, payroll, etc.) helps early-career candidates adapt to holistic roles like those in HR departments. 

Himanshu Agarwal, Co-Founder, Zenius.co

Create Structured Internship-to-Hire Pipeline

One solid strategy for hiring dozens of early-career HR candidates is launching a structured internship program with clear progression to full-time roles. Instead of bringing in candidates and hoping they’re the right fit, you give them real exposure to the HR world while evaluating both their technical skills and their fit within your company culture.

In my experience of over three decades in HR, having interns rotate through key HR functions (like recruitment, employee relations, and compensation) offers both parties a chance to assess long-term compatibility. For years, we’ve been seeing success with this model, as interns could test their interests and abilities while we observed their work ethic, adaptability, and communication skills in real-world settings. This gave us a pool of ready-to-go candidates for full-time roles, which was a huge time-saver in a high-volume hiring environment.

Susan Andrews, HR Consultant, KIS Finance

Build Practical Assessment-Based Hiring Funnel

If you need to hire dozens or even hundreds of early-career candidates into HR roles, you should focus on building a structured, scalable hiring funnel that combines education with evaluation. These candidates often don’t have much hands-on experience yet, so your process should help them show potential — not just read it through a resume.

One really good and effective strategy is to create a short, practical assessment or some kind of simulation that mirrors real HR tasks. For example, reviewing a basic CV, drafting a job ad, or responding to a fictional employee scenario. Don’t overcomplicate it and focus on how they think and communicate. This way, you can spot candidates who are curious, thoughtful, and proactive.

Another tip: invest in branding on the platforms potential new talents actually use — think TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. Nowadays, early-career candidates (read: Gen Z) are drawn to authenticity, so creating content that shows what working for your company really looks like without the corporate polish can make quite an impact.

My advice in short: Make your process clear, practical, and most importantly human. Help candidates picture themselves in the role and give them a chance to prove that they’re ready — even without years of experience.

Tetiana Hnatiuk, Head of HR, Skylum

Foster University Relationships for Experiential Internships

One successful method is to establish close relationships with universities and HR vocational programs that offer experiential internships that result in full-time jobs. This approach allows employers to test candidates’ potential in action and give early-career professionals a defined career path for growth, enhancing both retention and motivation.

George Fironov, Co-Founder & CEO, Talmatic

Record Screens During Interview Process

Record the screen during interviews. You might be surprised by how often people cheat, using laptops or mobile phones to search for answers. However, when there’s a video call and screen recording, the chances of cheating decrease significantly.

We’ve encountered multiple instances when hiring developers. You wouldn’t expect a developer to cheat during a test assignment, but it happens. These unfortunate experiences taught us two valuable lessons: always record meetings, including screens, and never share copies of test assignments.

Alina Moskalova, Partnerships and Email Outreach, LinkedHelper

Partner with Universities for Talent Development

One of the successful solutions is the partnership with universities and HR certification programs. Future early-career HR professionals are typically searching for companies that will offer real experience alongside a clear professional development model. When college events, internships, and mentorship programs are jointly built, they provide a great base of talent pre-acquainted with your culture at the moment of employment.

And, no less importantly, highlighting the importance of appropriate formalized onboarding and frequent learning is paramount. These new HR professionals are looking to be invested in because they are growing. By giving them early exposure to development and mentorship, they are drawn into your business, yet they stay longer because they are growing with your business.

Tamsin Gable, Ambassador, Comfax