You’ve sent out your offer letters, and recruiting season is coming to an end when the dreaded “I’m sorry, I won’t be joining the team anymore” email comes in.

And then another. And another.

The following year, the cycle repeats. You’re starting from scratch, building connections with the next batch of applicants, running through cycle after cycle.

It’s exhausting.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Most companies frame reneges as a late-stage problem. They’re not. They’re a relationship problem. And the answer to that? Building a year-round relationship pipeline that works.

This article covers what a year-round recruiting partnership actually looks like, why most partnerships fall short, and how consistent engagement reduces reneges and keeps your pipeline warm.

What Is a Year-Round Recruiting Partnership?

A year-round recruiting partnership is an ongoing relationship between your company and a talent community, built through consistent touchpoints across events, mentorship, and programming throughout the calendar year. Rather than one-off events where you meet candidates once, organizations such as Rewriting the Code offer year-round opportunities that function as pipeline-building.

These events focus on building sustained relationships and keeping them warm through a multi-touch hiring experience.

Imagine access to 45,000 women (both university and early-career) from over 190 universities and schools. And 96% of those women believe that partnering with Rewriting the Code makes an organization more appealing.

A year-round partnership with our organization looks like:

  • Attending one of our flagship events, such as our Virtual Career Summit or UK & Ireland Career Summit (no travel budget required)
  • Employee engagement opportunities include mentorship and company-led workshops or education sessions
  • Welcoming RTC members to your company during one of our Tech Crawl events
  • Meeting members attending some of the top conferences at curated networking events

And those are just some of the automatically built-in features of a partnership. Our team works with yours to customize the experience around your hiring goals, and we build it together.

Why Do Most Recruiting Partnerships Underperform?

Most recruiting partnerships underperform because companies treat them as a single transaction rather than an ongoing relationship. They show up in the fall and disappear in January.

The candidates notice.

Our data from early this year show that, for one partner, the likelihood of members applying to them increased from 4 to 7.5 on a 10-point scale after just one event.

The data from our January recruiting event, TechConnect, supports this. Every single partner’s approval rating increased for those who attended TechConnect. This isn’t a one-off occurrence. Each time you engage with our community, you’re more appealing to them.

How Does Year-Round Engagement Reduce Recruiting Reneges?

Partners who engage candidates consistently throughout the year see measurably fewer reneges than those who only show up during hiring season. One of our partners shifted from treating RTC membership as a single step in the hiring process to a multi-touch approach. They kept thorough documentation of who they engaged with at events and, when an application came in from RTC, cross-referenced it to see if they had already met that candidate.

Candidates who had already met more than once were significantly less likely to renege, and increased communication from the team reinforced that further.

We see this often with partners that are less widely recognized or located outside established tech hubs. Consistent presence in our programming turns unfamiliar company names into ones candidates actively want to work for.

How Do You Maintain Candidate Relationships Outside of Hiring Season?

The most effective way to maintain candidate relationships outside of hiring season is to stay present in the spaces where candidates are already developing. RTC has been building those spaces for nearly 10 years, and each piece of our programming is designed to make that easy for partners.

For example, for our Virtual Career Summit, after you sign up, all you need to do is add anything you want members to see to the virtual booth. Other than that, we’ve got you covered. That’s the case for nearly all of our events (minus if your team is giving a talk; then you do need to prepare at least that).

We want to ensure you have the least lift possible.

Your cold pipeline problem has a solution, and it’s not a bigger event budget.

If you’re ready to stop rebuilding from zero every fall, let’s talk.