Campus Recruiting Software: Smart Graduate Screening with Willo

Hiring graduates is a long-term play. 

Done right, your organization builds a talent pipeline shaped by your culture, values, and goals. They don’t have to unlearn old habits. And they tend to stay longer.

But finding that perfect match is tough.

You’re constantly balancing reach and precision in your search. Cast too wide a net, and you’re flooded with low-quality applications. Too narrow, you miss hidden gems. Either way, you might be overwhelmed.

And traditional pre-screening tools are rarely helpful in graduate hiring. 

• CV parsing software can't read beyond the lines of resumes. 
• Text-based assessments rarely capture potential beyond grades. 
• Fully automated AI screening speeds things up, but it often misses the human side—and can even reinforce bias.

So how do you make campus recruiting — the process of hiring college students and recent graduates for internships and entry-level roles— faster, fairer, and more inclusive?

How do you spot ambition, creativity, and trustworthiness in candidates with no track record?

In this guide, we’ll show how Willo balances smart tech and human insight— so you can find promising college talents in a sea of applications.

You’ll learn how Willo helps you:

• Expand your talent pool through multiple sourcing channels for better hiring success
• Attract top candidates with tools that showcase your employer brand
• Discover emerging talent through assessments that reveal true potential
• Blend AI efficiency with human judgment to screen faster—without bias

1. Increase hiring success by expanding your talent pool with multiple sourcing techniques

Willo makes it easy to reach a large pool of graduate talents without travel expenses, attracting the wrong applicants, or wasting time on manual outreach. 

Here’s how it works:

Share job links on University job boards or niche communities

Willo lets you invite college students by posting your job link in curated sources. That includes college job boards and role-specific communities. 

Through that link, interested candidates can complete their pre-screening assessment from any location, time, and device— no app download or web sign-up is required. 

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Bulk invite up to 20,000 applicants via spreadsheet

If you’ve already engaged with students through events like career fairs or webinars, you can easily move them into your recruitment funnel by uploading their info via a spreadsheet. 

This process gives you a head start with candidates who already know your brand and are open to hearing from you.

You can also manually invite pre-vetted candidates—like those recommended by professors, student groups, or employee referrals. 

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EDF’s 9-member recruiting team hires 400 early-career employees per cycle. When their original solution proved costly and inefficient, they switched to Willo—screening 17,000+ applicants and cutting recruiter admin time by 50%. [Read their story.]

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2. Attract top candidates with tools that showcase your employer brand 

Purpose, value alignment, and a work culture that encourages career growth rank high on graduates’ checklists when picking an employer. Willo lets you demonstrate those values from the start of the recruitment process.

During the initial assessment setup process, you can customize your job description landing page to include:

• Your brand logo and color scheme
• An introductory video explaining your brand vision, values, and mission. 
• A website link candidates can visit to learn more about your brand before and after the assessment.

In your interview welcome page including an introductory video in the pre-screening assessment can be particularly helpful when hiring college students or recent graduates. 

Not only does it make the process feel more human for your candidates, you can also provide applicants with additional context about the role. You can clarify technical terms or expectations that might not be familiar to those entering the workforce for the first time. And, you can share more about what to expect during the application and interviewing process.

This small step can boost the applicant’s confidence and create a more positive experience for early-career talent.

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Lastly, you can add the salary amount. Many early-career candidates filter out jobs that don’t list pay or benefits upfront. Transparency goes a long way in attracting top talent. 

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With that foundation in place, your assessments can now do what they’re meant to—give candidates the space to showcase skills that often get overlooked.

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3. Discover emerging talent through assessments that reveal true potential

Aside from the fact that CV parsing tools often miss important details, students also use AI to optimize their resumes with keywords to stand out and even pass ATS filters. This makes it nearly impossible to spot the subtle skills and qualities that define early career potential. 

Willo replaces this guesswork with structured assessments that reveal how candidates think, communicate, and solve problems—helping you spot authentic strengths that a polished CV could never show.

Here’s how that works:

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Uncover applicants’ true capabilities with various response formats

With Willo, you can use varied assessment response formats to test all aspects of each graduate's talents. For example, you can assess:

• Assess presentation skills, passion for the role, and confidence via video responses

• Use written responses to test writing, grammar, and communication ability

• Confirm verbal communication and language proficiency with audio responses
• Test industry knowledge level with multiple-choice assessment

This format gives you a well-rounded view of each student’s capability. Equally, it allows candidates to display their unique strengths across different areas. 

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Let candidates upload documents that showcase unconventional experiences that are easy to miss

In addition to a resume, you can ask applicants to upload documents like capstone projects, passion tasks, and hackathon certificates. 

These and other practical experiences say a lot about a graduate’s potential. However, they’re rarely captured on resumes.

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Use anti-cheat guardrails to weed out inauthentic applications

With AI tools now widely used in job applications, it's easier than ever for students to mass-apply or generate responses automatically. This makes it increasingly difficult to tell who’s genuinely completing and engaging with your assessment.

17% of the HR leaders we’ve spoken to say that’s one of the reasons they’re drowning in applications but struggling to find real, qualified talent.

Willo prevents this by offering built-in anti-cheat protection tools. It flags scripted or AI-generated answers and spots signs of outside help. Additionally, you run ID checks in Willo to confirm an applicant is who they claim to be.

That means you can confidently hire early-career talent who grow with your company and strengthen your future workforce.

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Prevent drop-offs with a frictionless candidate experience

Graduates and college students often apply to multiple roles at the same time. They’re likely to abandon assessments at the slightest technical difficulty or discomfort. 

Willo prevents this in various ways:

Flexible assessment process

Candidates can record their responses at their convenience—using any smartphone or computer—with no software downloads required. The interview page also features an introductory video, helping applicants understand the role and prepare for the process. 

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Applicants can warm and test their device with practice questions

Before taking the assessment, they can practice a few questions to ease off the pressure and test their setup. This way, they approach the assessment ready to perform at their best.

Confidently answer questions with sufficient thinking time

Willo allows you to set a recommended time limit for answering each question without locking candidates out. 

It helps reveal how early-career applicants might solve real-world problems under pressure while preserving a fair, low-stress experience that encourages authentic responses.

Opportunity for retakes 

In addition to thinking time, you can also set the number of times an applicant can retake a question. 

Aside from the fact that most applicants might not get the answer right away, the graduate talent pool is often filled with neurodiverse candidates who may benefit from extra retakes to perform at their best.

Ability to switch device mid-test 

Should applicants experience internet troubles or power issues, they can switch to another device mid-test and pick up exactly where they left off. Otherwise, they can contact Willo’s 24/7 available support team.

Self-schedule interview availability

When busy students and graduates complete a pre-screening exercise, they can select availability windows for follow-up interviews, preventing scheduling conflicts.

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This smooth and flexible candidate experience has resulted in higher assessment completion rates and more engaged applicants for many campus recruiting companies.

WillowTree receives over 17,000 applications from university student interns and new graduates every year. With Willo’s ease of use and integration, they now successfully manage this high volume across 4 offices [Read their story].

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4. Blend AI efficiency with human judgment to screen faster, without bias

Although AI systems speed up the recruitment process, they can introduce bias. As for humans, our background, culture, and experiences can make us unconsciously prejudiced for or against certain people, groups, or traits.

Willo provides the best of both worlds. It speeds up the manual screening process, allowing hiring teams to have more time to evaluate applications collaboratively.

Here’s how that works:

Accept or reject applicants in bulk

If you’ve set knock-out questions, you can mass-select candidates who don’t meet the basic requirements and accept or reject them with one click. That way, you don’t have to waste hours reviewing poor-fit applicants. 

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Assess candidates more deeply, using AI-generated summaries

Willo’s AI-generated summaries speed up your screening process while ensuring every candidate is assessed fairly and consistently. It automatically reviews and provides a searchable summary that highlights things that matter when hiring college graduates, such as:

• Current understanding of the industry
• Evidence provided to support the experience level
• Potential strengths and areas you’ll need to help them develop
• Some follow-up questions you can use to dig deeper into the thinking behind their responses

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Shortlist qualified candidates faster with AI prompts

Willo Intelligence has over 100 prompts that help you quickly shortlist candidates who match your success criteria. 

Let’s say you’re hiring a front-end developer for a SaaS company. You can prompt the AI system to generate a shortlist of candidates with strong React experience. That way, you can spend more time moving the right candidates forward, and faster.

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Eliminate screening bias with collaborative scorecards

Reviewers bring valuable judgment to the hiring process. However, their decision can be influenced by others’ opinions or unconscious bias. Willo helps keep candidate screening fair and focused.

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With Willo’s role-specific scorecards, reviewers rate candidates based on clearly defined skills and traits. The scoring scale runs from a strong yes to a strong no. 

A middle score like 3 out of 5 doesn’t mean “I’m unsure”. It implies that the reviewer needs more information before making a call. 

This helps hiring teams spot which candidates need a second look, rather than dismissing them based on vague impressions.

Willo: Find Your Next Graduate Talent With Ease

Graduate CVs often look similar, with limited work experience to differentiate them. But behind those CVs are individuals full of fresh perspectives, raw potential, and a strong drive to grow. 

With Willo, you can move fast and make confident decisions without compromising on quality or fairness.

From a single platform, you can administer assessments that reveal a candidate’s full potential, build a shortlist of the best talents, and easily collaborate with your recruiting team. 

Ready to find top talent without the hassle? Explore how Willo can streamline your campus recruiting process today.