Every campus programme underfills eventually. What separates good teams is which recovery lever they reach for first.
First: widen geography, not standards
Sourcing the same requirement from additional cities preserves your bar and usually closes the gap on its own. It is the cheapest lever and the one most often skipped in favour of the most expensive.
Second: revisit the must-haves
Requirements accumulate criteria that nobody would actually reject over. An honest audit of the must-have list frequently reopens a substantial part of the pool at no real cost.
Third: adjacent hire and train
For scarce categories, hiring strong adjacent candidates with a training commitment beats waiting. It requires a budgeted programme, which is why it must be decided early rather than in a panic.
Last: lower the bar
This is the option that shows up in retention numbers a year later. If you reach it, do so knowingly and with an onboarding plan that acknowledges what you have taken on.
Key takeaways
- Widen geography first — it preserves your bar and is the cheapest lever.
- Audit the must-have list honestly; it usually reopens the pool.
- Adjacent hiring with training works but must be budgeted in advance.
- Lowering the bar is a last resort that surfaces in retention a year later.
Questions
When should we accept an underfill?+
When the alternative is hires who will not retain. A short cohort is recoverable next cycle; a cohort of mis-hires costs a year of management attention.
How early can we detect an underfill?+
At the sourcing stage, if you sized the pool first. Programmes that discover it at offer stage skipped the supply-mapping step.