Are you wasting millions on your on-campus recruiting approach? It’s possible.

Ted Bauer is a contributing author to College Recruiter

By Ted Bauer, contributing author to College Recruiter

This headline from October 2015 in Harvard Business Review says it all: “Firms are wasting millions recruiting on only a few college campuses.”

We’ve seen this for years, especially among the EPS companies across investment banks, management consulting firms, and law firms. There are “target” campuses and then there’s “everyone else.” While you might get some amazingly high-quality people (good!), overall the process has a lot of waste, financially and in terms of potential burnout for your recruiting team.

There’s a better way. Ever seen the stat that it took 35 years to construct the federal highway system, but Facebook reached 500 million users in six years? It’s an obvious stat, sure — but it speaks to the amazing power of digital to both connect and scale.

No matter how you approach digital vs. in-person, your goal should be to maximize your ROI from your college recruiting efforts. To do that, you might need to move around some budget buckets: less on-campus and more interactive/digital/social/job board work.