The California State University

Three standout metrics

23

campuses unified

Multiple

talent pipelines built from scratch

One

end-to-end recruitment system

The voice of the customer

“For some roles, like our cohort of campus police, CSU was competing for talent against local police and sheriff’s departments. Many sworn officers didn’t realize that roles like this existed at CSU.”

CSU Central HR Team

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What wasn’t working

California State University operates one of the largest university systems in the United States, spanning 23 campuses and 7 off-campus centers across 800 miles. With over 56,000 faculty and staff across the group, each campus maintains independent HR operations under a decentralized model. But as higher education hiring became increasingly competitive (PageUp data showed a 34% increase in advertised roles but an 8% drop in applications submitted nationwide), this approach created significant talent acquisition challenges:

Internal competition between campuses for the same talent pool;
Inconsistent candidate experiences across the CSU brand;
Difficulty streamlining recruitment while preserving unique campus cultures.

The turning point

CSU’s central HR team conducted comprehensive interviews across all 23 campus HR departments to understand each campus’ individual hiring challenges. It was important to reassure each campus team that a proposed move to centralized hiring wouldn’t take away from each campus’ unique culture. A drive to recruit campus police became the testing ground for CSU’s new, ‘shared-services’ approach to recruitment.

The shift began in three phases:

Pilot program launch

Recruiting campus police offered the ideal pilot program. The aim was to share qualified candidate pools across multiple campuses instead of limiting hires to single locations.
Building organization-wide talent pipelines

The central HR team implemented PageUp Recruitment Marketing alongside CSU’s existing PageUp ATS to create shared candidate pools.
Unified employer brand

The team created a consistent CSU employer brand presentation, while empowering individual campuses to showcase their unique cultures and employee value propositions.

The solution in action

CSU overcame their previous talent acquisition challenges by implementing a centralized recruitment model, using PageUp Recruitment Marketing paired with their existing PageUp ATS.

Key initiatives included:

Centralized awareness campaigns

Targeted, candidate-centric recruitment marketing campaigns helped jobseekers discover university-based career opportunities they previously didn’t know existed.
Shared talent pipeline creation

Qualified ‘silver medalist’ candidates from Campus A could be shared with Campuses B, C, and beyond, eliminating duplication of hiring efforts and internal competition for top talent.
Campus-specific employee value propositions

Each campus maintained the ability to showcase its unique culture through ‘day-in-the-life’ stories while operating under unified CSU brand standards.
Standardized application processes

Consistent position descriptions and application experiences reduced complexity for the central and campus HR teams as well as improving the candidate journey.
Candidate-centric location ranking

Applicants could rank preferred campus locations, improving placement satisfaction while reducing time-to-hire across the system.

The impact

Hard ROI

23 campuses unified under centralized talent acquisition approach
Multiple shared talent pools created from scratch
One overarching employer brand
One end-to-end talent attraction and acquisition system

Soft ROI

Maintained campus autonomy while achieving system-wide efficiency gains.
Improved time-to-hire through streamlined, centralized processes.
Enhanced talent’s awareness of university-based career opportunities.
Reduced internal competition through candidate pool sharing.

What surprisedsurprized us the most

“During the campus police pilot, we discovered that sharing qualified candidate pools across campuses could solve hiring challenges that each campus faced individually.”

CSU Central HR Team