The local ‘war for talent’ – recruitment of recent tertiary education graduates from a regional perspective: some evidence from the German case

Abstract

We analyse recruitment of recent tertiary education graduates drawing on a rich set of interviews with human resource managers of 46 large- and medium-sized firms in different regions across Germany. Specifically, we address the question of which higher education institutions' managers choose for campus recruiting and which criteria managers use to select recruitment institutions. We find that a substantial share of institutions is located close to the firm seeking to recruit and that the major criterion for selection is geographic proximity to campus. Notably, quality- and performance-related criteria are hardly mentioned. This result is robust for firms in different regional settings, of different size and popularity. We further elaborate on the reasons behind this finding and conclude that the firms' regional orientation is driven by the interplay between three major factors: enhancing recruitment success and retention probability of graduates, avoiding competition with other employers and dealing with imperfect information.