Recruitment merchandise: ideas to attract candidates and make an impression

The audience at a recruitment fair is young, mobile and heavily solicited. The product must therefore be immediately useful to them, slip into a bag and carry an employer message, not just a logo: the address of your careers page, a phrase that sums up your culture, or a QR code to your vacancies.

If you print a QR code, check its legibility on the mock-up, at the actual size of the marking area: a code that is too small or too fine becomes illegible when printed. Once the person has been recruited, it is another matter: welcoming new employees has its own page, the employee welcome kit. This guide stops at the signature.

Also adapt the product to the role you are recruiting for: an engineering school, an apprenticeship fair in construction or a business school forum do not attract the same profiles, and a product that speaks to the future job shows that you know this audience. For experienced profiles, met at a specialist show, favour a more understated and durable product than at a student fair.

At a fair, you hand out a lot, to people you will not all see again. The challenge is to find compact products that the student will keep.

• The tote bag: visitors collect brochures and job offers from stand to stand. The bag that carries them parades your logo down every aisle throughout the day. See our shopping bags and tote bags.
• The charging cable: a student’s phone is rarely charged at the end of the day. Explore our chargers and cables.
• The pen and small notebook, useful for noting the name of a contact or the reference of a vacancy.
• The keyring, small, light and attached to the student’s keys that very evening.

For organising the stand itself, our promotional products for trade shows page gives pointers that also apply to a fair. At a large fair, products go quickly: plan two levels, a light product handed out widely and a higher-quality product reserved for students with whom you have had a real conversation.

A candidate who travels for an interview gives you their time, often out of their own leave. A small gesture on arrival or departure changes how this meeting is perceived, whatever the outcome.

• A sweet treat in the waiting room: sweets or chocolates in a marked box ease the atmosphere before the interview. Browse our confectionery family.
• A quality notebook handed over at the end of the interview, which leaves an impression of care.
• A water bottle or a mug for candidates shortlisted for the final round, while they wait for the decision.

Give the same product to unsuccessful candidates: they talk about their experience to those around them, and a rejection accompanied by a thoughtful gesture leaves the image of a respectful employer.

Interns and apprentices regularly go back to their school. If they wear your colours there, they promote you to the next year group far better than a brochure.

Clothing is the most effective idea here: an embroidered hoodie or a light jacket, in a cut people happily wear outside work, with a logo understated enough not to look like workwear. Explore our sweatshirts and jackets; embroidery suits thick textiles and withstands repeated washing. A discreetly marked laptop backpack plays the same role, every day, in the corridors of the campus.

Employee referral, that is, recruitment on the recommendation of an employee, works all the better when the effort of recommending is recognised. A well-chosen product shows that the company notices this initiative.

Two stages are often distinguished: a small product at the time of the recommendation, to say thank you without waiting for the outcome, then a higher-quality gift when the recommended person is hired. For the latter, think of wireless headphones or earbuds, an engraved vacuum flask or a sports bag. These products are personal and seen every day, which reminds other employees that the scheme exists.

If your referral programme already includes a bonus, the product does not replace it: it makes the recognition visible within the teams.

Students come across your company at a fair, find it again on a professional network, then discover it at interview. The products must tell the same story at every stage: same colours, same employer tagline, same tone.

In practical terms, prepare a one-colour version of your logo, suited to small marking areas, and a short phrase that sums up what you offer your recruits. Use them on all the products of the recruitment season, from fair giveaways to the referral gift. Providing a vector file from the outset simplifies each order and guarantees an identical result from one product to another. The choice of marking follows the same logic: bright screen printing on a fair tote bag, more understated embroidery on the apprentices’ sweatshirt, engraving on the referral gift. The processes change, the identity stays the same.