Early-career hiring at scale is harder than it looks. You post a role, get buried in applications from people who aren’t close to a fit, and somehow the candidates you actually want never find you. Or your team leans on a handful of campus relationships that only scratch the surface of the talent you need.
If you’re responsible for filling internships and entry-level roles, none of this is news. The real question is what you do differently.
Here’s how WayUp’s Virtual Info Sessions give employers a direct line to motivated early-career candidates and why that matters heading into 2026.
Campus recruiting has always been relationship-heavy. Career fairs, on-site visits, university partnerships — they take real time, real budget, and real coordination. And they tend to cycle through the same schools year after year.
Job boards cast a wider net, but they weren’t built for this audience. A college junior isn’t browsing Indeed the way a mid-career professional does. They want to know what it’s actually like to work somewhere before they bother applying.
The gap (between posting a job and building genuine candidate interest) is where most early-career recruiting programs lose traction.
Virtual Info Sessions are live recruiting events hosted directly on WayUp. Your recruiters and hiring managers connect with early-career candidates in a structured, conversational format — no travel required, no campus room to book.
Think of it as the company info session you’d run on campus, but open to candidates across the country and not tied to any single school’s student body.
Candidates join to hear about your company, your culture, open roles, and what you’re looking for. Your team gets to talk directly with people who showed up because they’re genuinely interested. That’s a different quality of interaction than sorting through cold applications.
The format is built around access and efficiency. Here’s what it looks like from your side:
Before the session: Your team sets up the event on WayUp. Candidates across the platform can discover and register based on their interests and career goals.
During the session: Recruiters and hiring managers present, take questions, and engage directly with candidates. You’re not filtering resumes — you’re having real conversations with people who came to you.
After the session: You’ve built brand awareness with a relevant audience and have a pool of engaged candidates ready to follow up with.
This is proactive recruiting. You’re not waiting for the right person to stumble across your job posting. You’re putting your team in front of candidates who are already paying attention.
The reach here is real. WayUp has 7 million users and 5.1 million sourceable candidates across 7,300 institutions and schools — not a single-campus network or a regional talent pool. It spans four-year universities, community colleges, and nontraditional pathways.
For employers focused on building diverse early-career pipelines, that breadth matters. You’re not limited to the schools where you already have relationships. You can reach candidates from institutions you’ve never recruited from before.
And because WayUp is purpose-built for early-career hiring, the people on the platform are there for a reason. They’re not passive professionals who might glance at a job alert. They’re actively looking for internships and entry-level roles.
A job posting is static. A Virtual Info Session is a conversation.
When candidates hear directly from your team, they get answers to the questions that actually move them to apply: What’s the culture like? What does a typical intern day look like? What do you look for in someone who doesn’t have much experience yet?
None of that fits in a job description. But it’s exactly what a junior or senior in college needs to feel confident enough to hit apply.
There’s a brand-building dimension here too. Even candidates who don’t apply right away walk away with a real impression of your company. That matters for your long-term pipeline, especially if you’re hiring across multiple cohorts each year.
CVS Health, L’Oréal, and HSBC are among the employers actively using WayUp’s Virtual Info Sessions to connect with early-career candidates.
When organizations at that level build something into their recruiting process, it’s usually because it works. Virtual Info Sessions are a repeatable way to build candidate relationships before the application stage even begins.
It helps to understand where Virtual Info Sessions fit in the broader landscape.
Handshake has deep university and career-center relationships, which makes it effective for on-campus recruiting. But that model is tied to the campus ecosystem. If you want to reach candidates beyond your existing school partnerships, it has real limits.
RippleMatch focuses on AI-driven matching based on skills and interests — useful for filtering, but there’s no live recruiting experience built in. Your team can’t actually talk to candidates before they apply.
Yello is built for enterprise campus operations and event management. It’s a strong tool for structured, large-scale campus programs, but it’s heavier-weight and less suited to the direct candidate-employer relationship that a Virtual Info Session creates.
LinkedIn and Indeed are generalist platforms. They weren’t designed for the early-career experience, and neither offers anything close to a live, structured recruiting event within the platform itself.
WayUp’s advantage is the combination: a large multi-institution candidate database, the ability to proactively reach out to candidates directly, and Virtual Info Sessions as a native recruiting experience. Those three things together are hard to find anywhere else.
What is a Virtual Info Session on WayUp? A Virtual Info Session is a live recruiting event hosted on WayUp where employers connect directly with early-career candidates. Recruiters and hiring managers share information about their company, open roles, and culture, and candidates can ask questions in real time.
Who can attend a Virtual Info Session? Any candidate registered on WayUp can discover and sign up for sessions based on their interests and career goals. With 7 million users across 7,300 institutions, sessions reach candidates from a wide range of schools and backgrounds.
Which companies use WayUp’s Virtual Info Sessions? CVS Health, L’Oréal, and HSBC are confirmed participants. WayUp also hosts recruiting activity from companies including PayPal, NBCUniversal, and Lockheed Martin.
How is a Virtual Info Session different from posting a job? A job posting is one-directional. A Virtual Info Session lets your team have real conversations with candidates before they apply — which builds genuine interest and helps candidates self-select based on an actual understanding of your company.
Does WayUp only reach candidates from large universities? No. WayUp’s candidate database spans 7,300 institutions, including community colleges and nontraditional pathways — not just four-year universities. That makes it useful for employers who want to build diverse pipelines beyond their existing campus relationships.
How does WayUp’s employer model work? Employers start with Basic Platform Access and build from there through custom plans. Pricing isn’t publicly listed, so the best way to find out what’s available for your team is to request a demo.
How does WayUp compare to Handshake for employer recruiting? Handshake’s strength is its university and career-center relationships — great for on-campus recruiting. WayUp’s strength is broader off-campus candidate discovery paired with the Virtual Info Session format, which lets employers build real candidate relationships before anyone fills out an application.
If early-career hiring is a real priority for your team in 2026, the experience you offer candidates matters just as much as the roles you post. Virtual Info Sessions give you a direct, human way to reach motivated candidates at scale, without being boxed in by the schools you already know.
The format works because it gives candidates something a job posting never can: an actual conversation with the people they’d be working for.
Ready to see how it fits your hiring program? Learn more at wayup.com.
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