To build a campus rep program you will need to determine your ideal student/hire, your ideal timeframe for the campaign, and your ideal message. Each company may have unique needs, but answering those three main questions is a great start when learning how to build a campus rep program. Let’s consider each part of the solution in more detail below.
Who is your ideal student?
It’s not every student. What does your ideal student look like? What year in school are they? What is their major? What are their interests? Are they located in a certain area?
For example, let’s say you represent a suit company. Your ideal student might be a freshman and/or sophomore. These students likely need to upgrade their suit from high school prom and turn it into a suit for their on campus career fair. When you reach junior and senior level you likely have already bought a suit and likely aren’t purchasing multiple suits for your closet.
We can take this even deeper and say they are a business major. Business majors will likely buy more suits throughout their lifetime when compared with other majors for a better long term return on investment. If we have a brick and mortar location we would identify students in an ideal location within a few miles of the store(s).
What is your ideal timeframe?
What is the best time to talk to your ideal student for the greatest return on investment? Let’s stick with the suit company example. Your ideal timeframe would be the weeks leading up to a Career Fair on campus – when students are thinking about this purchase. They are also more open to hearing from you at this time. Can you imagine a suit company using campus reps to pass out coupons in the month of Spring Break!? Most student ambassador programs make a mistake by thinking they need a semester or year-long campus rep program. You may have an ideal timeframe and you need to own it!
What is your ideal message?
Once you have students’ attention what are your campus reps going to say? Think of being on the show, Shark Tank and only having a few seconds to grab their attention and keep it. Students likely don’t know much about dressing for success. We make this assumption based on the number of sessions from Career Services on campus that educate on this topic.
Columbia University puts tips on how to put your best suit forward directly on the Career Services section of their website.
Your ideal message could go by many different names, such as:
How do I dress for success?
How to put your best suit forward!
Strong Suit. Strong Impression.
To test how well your message is received, you can survey students using tools like the Go Commando App or Google Surveys, or even asking a group of interns if your internship programs represent a good sample size. There is no magic number for sample size. The more you can get, the better, to ensure some level of accuracy.
As a suit company, you are in a perfect position to own this topic at a time students are interested in hearing about it. You can further push the topic by letting students touch and feel the professional clothing you are selling. These presentations can be given by your campus reps either independent of or along with Career Services’ presentations. Your value to Career Services is bringing in multiple examples of professional clothing for students to touch and feel. Answer these 3 questions and you are well on your way to building a successful campus rep program. For more ideas or a personalized plan for your business, contact Campus Commandos.
