Early Career Program Manager

XL Construction • Milpitas, CA

1d

About The Position

XL Industries is seeking an Early Career Program Manager to lead and scale the company's University and Early Career Recruiting Program. This role will be responsible for building a consistent and proactive pipeline of emerging talent across universities, technical schools, community colleges, and high schools. The Early Career Program Manager will own the full early-career program lifecycle, including recruiting strategy, school partnerships, internship and co-op programming, candidate experience, program operations, and conversion strategy. This individual will partner closely with Talent Acquisition, Human Resources, business leaders, School Champions, and People Operations to ensure XL Industries is attracting, engaging, developing, and converting early-career talent aligned to future workforce needs.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
• 5-7+ years of experience in university recruiting, early-career programs, campus recruiting, talent acquisition program management, or a related field.
• Experience building, managing, or scaling internship, co-op, or early-career development programs.
• Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to partner across Talent Acquisition, HR, business leaders, schools, and external partners.
• Strong relationship-building skills with experience managing school, faculty, career center, or community partnerships.
• Ability to manage multiple recruiting cycles, events, timelines, and priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong data, reporting, presentation, and communication skills.
• Experience using applicant tracking systems, recruiting tools, spreadsheets, and reporting dashboards.

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting early-career hiring in construction, engineering, architecture, real estate, manufacturing, skilled trades, or a project-based environment.
• Experience developing school partnership strategies across universities, technical schools, community colleges, or high school pathway programs.
• Experience building diversity-focused early-career recruiting strategies.
• Experience partnering with business leaders to align early-career hiring with workforce planning.

Responsibilities

• Build and manage the annual early-career recruiting strategy and recruiting calendar.
• Lead fall, spring, and summer recruiting cycles across universities, technical schools, community colleges, and high schools.
• Develop program goals, hiring targets, conversion expectations, and success metrics.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition leadership and business leaders to align early-career pipelines with workforce planning needs.
• Identify priority schools, programs, student organizations, and talent pools aligned to XL Industries' business and growth priorities.
• Partner with Marketing and Communications teams to develop recruiting materials, presentations, social media content, and employer branding initiatives.
• Support creation and maintenance of campus recruiting collateral and university-facing communications.
• Own and manage relationships with priority schools, faculty, career centers, student organizations, and community partners.
• Build a structured campus engagement approach, including career fairs, classroom presentations, student events, information sessions, and networking opportunities.
• Partner with internal School Champions and business leaders to strengthen XL Industries' presence and credibility with early-career talent.
• Represent XL Industries externally as a strong employer brand ambassador for students, educators, and early-career candidates.
• Assist with planning and logistics for intern and early-career programs, including onboarding coordination and event and logistics scheduling.
• Support and coordinate local and regional events which may include hotel logistics and food ordering.
• Lead the design, execution, and continuous improvement of internship and co-op programs.
• Partner with business leaders to define intern and co-op roles, expectations, learning outcomes, and project assignments.
• Create consistent onboarding, engagement, development, and offboarding experiences for early-career program participants.
• Build conversion strategies to support intern-to-hire and co-op-to-hire outcomes.
• Track program effectiveness and recommend improvements based on feedback, outcomes, and business needs.
• Ensure a strong candidate experience across all early-career recruiting touchpoints.
• Partner with Talent Acquisition and hiring teams to ensure timely communication, interview coordination, selection alignment, and offer support.
• Serve as a primary point of contact for students, schools, internal stakeholders, and business leaders involved in early-career hiring.
• Provide guidance to hiring managers on early-career talent assessment, engagement, and conversion best practices.
• Coordinate offer creation, acceptance tracking, onboarding activities, and pre-employment requirements for interns and early-career hires.
• Own early-career reporting, including pipeline strength, school performance, event ROI, diversity outcomes, hiring results, and conversion rates.
• Develop dashboards/executive-level reporting on hiring plan progress, event effectiveness, intern conversion rates, and recruiting outcomes.
• Prepare updates and presentations for HR, Talent Acquisition, and business leadership.
• Maintain accurate program documentation, calendars, event tracking, and stakeholder communication.
• Support reporting and tracking of campus recruiting metrics, including event participation, pipeline status, and conversion outcomes.

Benefits

• The anticipated compensation range for this role is $122,400 - $153,000 annually. Final compensation will be determined based on experience, skills, qualifications, internal equity, and business needs.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level