2. Colleges

Russell urged all attendees to pick one or at most two colleges in their local areas and develop fantastic relationships with the professors in key departments so that they’ll help identify and steer the most promising graduates to your company.

“Don’t just show up on career day and think you’re going to cherry-pick the best people,” Russell said.

Janice Newton, chief operating officer at Novacoast, has developed a pipeline of potential employees through a paid internship program available to UC-Santa Barbara students.

Russell also said that solution providers should report statistics back to the school about how many graduates end up landing a job with their companies.