Advice for Employers and Recruiters
Top 10 ways to build a strong employer brand with students and recent grads
If you rely on students and recent grads to fuel your future talent pipeline, your reputation as an employer is no longer a nice extra. It is the strategy. When people search your company name, read your job ads, or talk with your interns, they are building a story about what it feels like to work for you. That story is your employer brand.
For this audience, employer branding students care about is very different from what worked twenty years ago. Gen Z has grown up online. They see through vague marketing language. They expect clarity about values, growth, and flexibility. When your employer brand Gen Z strategy is strong, you find it much easier to attract, engage, and keep early career talent. When it is weak, your jobs sit open longer, your cost per hire climbs, and your managers wonder why they never see the candidates they want.
The good news is that you do not need a giant budget to improve how students and recent grads see you. You do need a thoughtful plan and the discipline to follow through. These ten ideas will help you understand how to attract recent grads, strengthen your pipeline, and use platforms like College Recruiter and your own channels to showcase what makes your company a great place to start a career.
1. Treat Your Employer Brand as a Core Talent Strategy
Many organizations talk about employer branding as if it is a side project. Someone updates a career page once a year and calls it good. That approach may have worked when you could rely on a stack of paper resumes and a weaker labor market. It does not work now.
If students and recent grads do not recognize your brand, or if they recognize it and associate it with outdated practices, you have already made their decision harder. A strong employer brand tells them why people join, why they stay, and what they can grow into. It gives them a reason to click on your posting instead of the ten other postings that look almost the same.
For early career hiring, your employer brand should sit alongside workforce planning and campus recruiting as a core strategy. When you review your pipeline health, ask the same questions that you would for a consumer brand. Do students know who we are. Do they understand what we stand for. Can they repeat those messages in plain language. If the answer is no, you have an employer branding students challenge that will show up in every stage of your pipeline.
2. Start With a Clear, Student Focused Value Proposition
Your early career value proposition is simply the answer to this question. Why should a student or recent grad choose you over another employer that pays about the same. If your answer is a long list of clichés about competitive pay and a dynamic environment, they will tune out.
Students want to understand what the first year will feel like. How they will learn. Who will support them. What kind of projects or customers they will work with. They want to know what your track record looks like with people like them. Do your interns receive real work or only busy work. Do your entry level hires make progress into new roles over time.
Gather stories from current early career employees. Ask them what surprised them in a good way. Use their words in your job ads, on your career site, and in your interviews. Make sure your employer brand Gen Z message does not sound like it was written for their parents. Focus on concrete examples and honest expectations. That clarity builds trust, which is the foundation of a strong employer brand.
3. Make Every Job Posting a Branding Asset
For many students, your first impression is a single job posting, often seen on a site like College Recruiter. It is tempting to treat that posting as a legal description and nothing more. That is a mistake. Every posting is a branding asset.
When you post entry level jobs on College Recruiter, think about the story your ad tells. Does it speak directly to students and recent grads. Does it explain what they will learn and how they will be supported. Does it use plain language instead of long lists of requirements that you do not really enforce.
If your posting reads like you copied and pasted a generic document from five years ago, candidates will notice. If it reads like you wrote it for them, in this year, with clear language, they will notice that as well. Within your postings on College Recruiter, you can also reference your employer solutions pages and your virtual or recorded events. That internal linking is more than an SEO tactic. It gives interested candidates a path to learn more about you and to deepen their engagement with your brand.
4. Use Your Employer Solutions and Career Pages as a Hub
Your employer solutions pages and your main career site should act as the central hub of your employer branding strategy. Everything else can point back here. Campus presentations, job ads, LinkedIn posts, and even manager outreach can all send students to one place where the story is clear and consistent.
On those pages, make it easy for early career candidates to find the content that speaks to them. That might include a student and recent grad section, video stories from interns and new hires, and simple explainers of your hiring process. If you host branding related webinars with College Recruiter, this is a great place to feature them.
Think about the questions students ask again and again. What do you look for in an intern. How does someone grow after their first role. How flexible is your work environment. Answer those questions directly on your site. When you invest in employer branding students do not have to search ten different places to understand who you are. They can get a clear picture in a few clicks, and that makes it more likely that they will apply and stay engaged.
5. Bring Real Voices to the Front
Students and recent grads believe real people more than polished slogans. One of the fastest ways to improve your employer brand is to bring real voices to the front of your story. That means interns, new hires, and even candidates who had a positive experience but did not receive an offer.
Short videos and written profiles work very well here. Ask early career employees to talk about what surprised them, how their manager supports them, and what they have learned in their first year. Keep the tone honest. If there are challenges, acknowledge them and explain what support exists. Gen Z does not expect perfection. They expect transparency.
Share this content on your website, on your social channels, and through College Recruiter branding solutions. When a student sees someone who looks like them or who studied something similar, talking about their real experience, it makes your brand feel more approachable. It also sends a strong signal that you actually invest in early career talent, rather than treating them as disposable labor.
6. Align Campus Events With Your Brand Story
Career fairs, information sessions, classroom visits, and student organization events are not just recruiting tactics. They are powerful branding opportunities. The way your team shows up on campus sends a loud message about your culture and priorities.
Coach your recruiters and hiring managers to tell a consistent story. They should be able to explain your early career value proposition in a few sentences, and that explanation should match what students see online. If your career site emphasizes growth and mentorship but your representatives talk only about starting pay, there is a disconnect.
Bring along recent grads who now work for you. Let them answer questions directly. Consider promoting events or webinars with College Recruiter‘s EventsThatScale product to attract recent grads to your organization and how you support their development. The more you show up where students already are, with a clear and authentic message, the stronger your employer brand becomes over time.
7. Deliver a Candidate Experience That Matches Your Marketing
A great marketing message will attract attention. A poor candidate experience will undo that work very quickly. One of the most important ways to build a strong employer brand with students and recent grads is to deliver on the promises you make.
That starts with a clear, simple application process. If your system takes forty minutes and demands information that is already on the resume, many candidates will drop out. Once they do apply, keep them informed. Send realistic timelines. Respond when you say you will. Be honest if there are delays.
During interviews, treat every candidate with respect, even if you know they will not move forward. This group talks to each other. They share stories on social media and in group chats. If you build a reputation for being respectful and transparent, you will see that reflected in your pipeline. If you gain a reputation for ghosting or for surprise assessments, that will also show up in your pipeline health. Employer branding students will trust starts with a consistent, humane candidate journey.
8. Connect Your Brand to Learning, Growth, and Wellbeing
When Gen Z describes what they want from work, themes like learning, growth, and wellbeing show up again and again. Pay matters, but it is not the only factor. Your employer brand should make it easy to see how someone will grow with you and how you take care of your people.
Show the real structure of your early career programs. If you provide formal training, mentorship, or rotation opportunities, explain them in plain language. If you support tuition assistance, professional certifications, or stretch assignments, make that part of your brand story. Candidates want to see that they can build skills with you, not just collect a paycheck.
Talk openly about wellbeing as well. That does not mean promising that work will never be stressful. It means showing how you respond when employees are under pressure. Do managers receive training on coaching and mental health conversations. Do you respect time off. Are there employee resource groups or peer communities that early career staff can join. When you connect your employer brand Gen Z message to real support for growth and wellbeing, you stand out in a crowded market.
9. Use Data and Feedback to Continuously Improve
Strong brands are built on listening. If you want to know how to attract recent grads more effectively, ask them. Use surveys, focus groups, and informal conversations to gather feedback from current interns, new hires, and even candidates who turned down your offers.
Ask questions such as. How did you first hear about us. What almost kept you from applying. What did you think our culture would be like before you joined. What surprised you after you started. Look for patterns in their answers. If students consistently say that your process feels slow, that your pay is unclear, or that they cannot picture people like them in your organization, those are branding signals.
Combine this feedback with data from your recruiting funnel. Where do candidates drop out. Which schools or programs respond well to your message. Where does your time to fill remain high. Use these insights to refine your messaging, your processes, and even the way you partner with platforms like College Recruiter. Branding is not a one time campaign. It is an ongoing practice of testing, learning, and adjusting.
10. Partner With Platforms That Amplify Your Brand
You do not have to build your employer brand alone. Partnering with platforms that specialize in students and recent grads can dramatically expand your reach and reinforce your message. This is where a site like College Recruiter can be a force multiplier.
Through College Recruiter, you can do more than post jobs. You can run branding campaigns that highlight your early career stories, feature your videos, and drive students to your employer solutions pages. You can promote branding related webinars that position your team as thought leaders on topics that matter to this audience, such as how to succeed in a first job or how to navigate virtual interviews.
When you align your internal efforts with external partners, you create a consistent experience for candidates. They see your message at the point of job search, in educational content, and on your own site. That repetition builds familiarity and trust, which translates into more qualified applicants and stronger long term pipelines.
Bring Your Employer Brand to Life With Students and Grads
Building a strong employer brand with students and recent grads is not about winning an award or producing a single viral video. It is about the day to day choices you make in how you describe your opportunities, how you treat candidates, and how you support early career employees after they join.
When you view employer branding students and recent grads as a central talent strategy, everything else becomes easier. Your job ads get more engagement. Your campus events are better attended. Your conversion from intern to full time hire improves. Your managers spend less time wondering why they never see the right candidates and more time developing the people they already have.
You do not need to be perfect to make progress. Pick a few of these ten strategies and start there. Rewrite your next job posting with a clear student focused message. Add a section for early career stories on your employer solutions pages. Record a simple branding webinar with College Recruiter that answers common questions from your target audience.
Most important, commit to telling the truth about who you are and who you want to be for early career talent. That honesty will draw in the students and recent grads who are most likely to thrive with you.
Showcase your employer brand to millions of students and grads through College Recruiter.
