> What would be the most effective way for my company to recruit at WUSTL

As a recent (Spring 2012) graduate of the WUSTL School of Engineering, I would highly recommend that you contact the Career Center[0] for opportunities to participate in career fairs and register as an employer on CareerLink[1], WUSTL's career website. The Career Center pushes CareerLink hard with students, so if you post jobs on there, there's a good chance you'll get some bites.

I attended a career fair just this spring, and it was packed with students - there were sometimes lines up to 10 people deep just to talk with industry representatives. Don't give up so quickly on direct-to-school recruiting.

You should also look into offering summer internships for current students. IIRC, WUSTL will match whatever you pay interns, making it less of a financial burden for you, while still making it worth the student's while. This is another way to grow your "reputation" on campus.

Finally, the students may find it easier to connect with an alum - get your WUSTL grads involved in the recruiting process.

0: http://careercenter.wustl.edu/

1: http://careercenter.wustl.edu/tools/careerlink/Pages/default...

For engineering, Michael Chapin [1] is who you want to speak with at the WU career center.

[1] http://careercenter.wustl.edu/people/Pages/mchapin.aspx

I think that srunni's answer is probably a good start, but I'd also add another approach. Until recently, the Wash U CS program was run with a heavy focus toward academics rather than industry. As a result, most of the really talented students weren't really going to career fairs, they were instead looking for interesting research positions. It's possible that things have changed since I left (there's a new dean and department head), but I'd guess it's still about the same.

If that's the case, you really need a way to reach those top tier students. Do you have any positions that would seem intellectually rigorous and interesting? If so, I'd find a professor with relevant interests and shoot them an email saying you're looking for a top-tier intern and that you have some really cool problems for them to work on. Some professors are obviously more industry-friendly than others, but in my experience, there are at least a few who would probably be willing to help.

Another option would be to host an event at Wash U. I'm not entirely sure how this works from a logistical standpoint, but it's common at Wash U for companies to reserve rooms for different types of recruiting events. Some companies might host hack-a-thons. Some might do giveaways. EA did a presentation on how video games get made. Those events generally get a lot more attention from the top tier students than the career fair booths, and professors often promote them at the end of class. I'd guess that contacting the Career Center would be your first step if you want to set something like that up.

Hope that helps.

The best programmers I've worked with at WashU come out of the operations research classes in the Systems Engineering department (disclaimer: I'm a SSE senior there). The classes emphasize algorithms, programming, and math, and the graduates get swallowed up by consulting firms. I love going from a verbal problem to the chalkboard where it's described in perfect mathematical set theory to MATLAB / GAMS / Python as we formulate a solution.

My favorite OR classes are when we come in and reverse engineer a popular internet service (e.g. starting with Google Maps, and spending a week going from integer programming to linear programming to heuristics as we iterate through better methods).

I don't know anything about WUSTL, but I had similar issues with my local University, which has a great CS department, but we found the normal channels too complex.

We contacted the University ACM chapter and threw them a party -- pizza, wings, XBox, music, etc. Told them to bring resumes and had enough of our engineers around to answer questions. It was fun and we got our hire.

I detailed WUTE [1] in my last comment, but it is one of the best tools for direct recruiting. Stan, the President, does a great job of keeping the correct type of members and managing company requests.

[1] http://wute.wustl.edu