Registration + Continental Breakfast

Welcome Remarks

Don't Underestimate Your Influence: What Forward-Leaning UR Teams Are Doing Differently.

Application volume has tripled. Cheating attempts on entry-level assessments have quadrupled in 18 months. AI is reshaping how applications are written and read. And UR teams are rethinking proxies like school name and GPA as the data evolves.
This keynote walks through what's shifting and what the most forward-leaning UR teams are doing differently. We'll cover assessment design for an AI-native workforce, building integrity into the process from the start, and using skills data to reset conversations with hiring managers and university partners.
Attendees will leave with five concrete actions for the next UR cycle, and a clearer sense of the influence their seat actually carries.

The Campus Recruiting Experience: What Students Really Think

Campus recruiting is more competitive than ever, but most teams are operating without a clear view of what students actually experience and expect. Abode's 2026 Campus Recruiting Experience Report, based on a survey of 900 college students, uncovered a striking gap: 91% expect follow-up within 48 hours of meeting a recruiter, yet most employers take days. In this session, Abode shares the data behind the gap, joined by Spectrum's early-career team for a look at how they're putting the findings into practice. We'll cover what makes students stop at a booth, how to automate personalized follow-up at scale, and the nurture strategies that turn early conversations into accepted offers.

Bridging the Gap: Effective Management of a Multi-Model Global Internship

Global internship programs don't scale themselves—and you're not alone in figuring that out. Join CrowdStrike's Emerging Talent team, a leader in Cybersecurity, as we discuss what it takes to build, manage, and grow a program across 13+ countries, covering various technical and non-technical functions and multiple work formats (hybrid, in-office, and remote). We'll share the frameworks that actually work and key ingredients for success.

Great Tech Isn’t Just in Tech: Winning Early Talent Beyond Big Tech

Early career talent often has a narrow view of where meaningful technical work happens. But some of the most interesting engineering, product, and design challenges are happening in industries like finance, aerospace, manufacturing, and beyond ~ where companies are building complex, high-impact systems that often go overlooked. This session explores how organizations outside traditional tech are reframing their narrative to attract early-career engineers and technical talent. We’ll dive into what messaging actually resonates, how to make technical work visible and compelling, and the strategies teams are using to compete for talent that doesn’t realize these opportunities exist.

The Hiring Problem AI Can’t Fix: A Mizuho x Marcy Lab School Case Study in Apprenticeship Design

This session is designed for leaders in early-career recruiting, university partnerships, and talent strategy who are rethinking how their organizations build entry-level hiring pipelines. Many in this audience are already familiar with apprenticeships and alternative pathways in theory. What is often less clear is what it actually takes to build an apprenticeship model inside a real company in a way that is practical, credible, and sustainable.
Using Mizuho’s ApprenTECH program as the anchor case study, this conversation will explore how apprenticeships can serve as a serious, business-driven hiring strategy when they are built around real workforce needs, integrated into team operations, and supported by intentional internal design.

The Referral Takeover: Preventing Informal Networks From Dominating Your Pipeline

Referrals are often treated as the gold standard of hiring, but when they become the default, they can quietly narrow your talent pool, skew evaluation, and undermine broader sourcing efforts. As referral pipelines grow, recruiters spend less time engaging new candidates, and teams risk over-indexing on familiarity over potential. This session explores how leading teams are rebalancing their approach: maintaining the strength of referrals while protecting space for diverse, high-potential talent from outside existing networks. We’ll discuss how to set clear guardrails, align stakeholders on when and how referrals should be prioritized, and design processes that ensure fairness and consistency across all candidates. Attendees will leave with practical strategies to keep referrals as a powerful input ~ not the entire pipeline.

You’re Not Losing Talent. You’re Losing Attention.

We have optimized nearly every part of early-career recruiting and onboarding except the human nervous system inside it. The result is a generation with powerful AI tools and increasingly fragmented attention. High performance paired with faster burnout. Personalized programs paired with declining retention. This is not a motivation crisis. It is an attention crisis. This session reframes attention as critical talent infrastructure. Not a soft skill, but a strategic asset. Attendees will gain a practical framework for designing early-career programs that build cognitive resilience, protect depth, and use AI as an amplifier rather than a crutch. In the AI era, retention starts with attention.

Lunch

Skills Lab: A Step-by-Step Process Toward Closing the Early Talent Skills Divide

When it comes to skills-based hiring, there’s a major disconnect in the higher-ed-to-workplace pipeline: while Forbes lists 81% of companies as currently hiring for skills, the most recent data from NACE suggests only 31% of higher education institutions require skills on their syllabi. In other words, 69% of available early talent isn’t as prepared as they could be to articulate their skills and abilities on job descriptions. This means UR professionals are positioned to take a powerful step in partnership with universities to better prepare students for the job market.

Stop Counting. Start Convincing: The Early Careers Story that Drives Impact

Early-career teams have no shortage of data; but too often it informs without influencing. For many early career teams this data resides in spreadsheet vs. being connected across data stacks. Leaders don’t need more dashboards; they need insight that connects early-career investment to business outcomes.
In this session, participants will learn how to move beyond activity-based reporting and reframe early-career metrics around what leaders care about most: growth, productivity, retention, and future workforce capability. We’ll explore which metrics matter at different stages of program maturity and how to translate them into clear, outcome-focused insights for executive audiences.
The session also addresses a common challenge: disconnected data. With insights scattered across ATS, HRIS, CRM, external & internal and program tools, we’ll share practical ways to connect the talent journey. From attraction to impact into a cohesive, compelling narrative without overwhelming stakeholders. Participants will leave with proven data storytelling techniques to drive decisions and investment, showing how to turn early-career data into strategic insight that secures buy-in, informs workforce planning, prioritizes programs, and demonstrates ROI.

AI Forward Together

10 years of community, 0 years to waste. The future didn’t wait, and neither can we. This workshop will feel like a bridge between a decade of community legacy and the next decade of AI-driven innovation.
Let's look at how far you've come to show how far AI can take you. In 2016 we did things manually; in 2026 we do them exponentially. The future didn't wait for these challenges to arrive, so we aren't waiting to solve them. Tables are tasked with building the "2026 Playbook" for a specific UR challenge.

Community Showcase

Get to know fellow attendees connect with sponsors grab a product demo or recharge with an afternoon treat and energy pick me up!

Network & Recharge!

AI in Early Talent: Shifting from Activity to Outcomes, Creating the ROI Campus Recruiting Has Been Waiting For

Beyond the Resume: Identifying AI-Ready Candidates Before the Interview

University recruiters are drowning in applications, and AI slop resumes have made the signal-to-noise problem significantly worse. Every candidate claims similar skills, lists similar projects, and uses the same language. The cost of a bad early-stage decision: wasted interview slots and new-grad hires who struggle to contribute in an AI-ready world where the baseline expectation has shifted dramatically.
This panel will discuss frameworks for predicting new-grad success in an AI-integrated workplace. Drawing on a peer-reviewed study of dozens of tech hiring managers, we'll walk through the 7 traits they most consistently associate with high-performing new graduates, and what separates AI-ready ""company hires"" (someone talented, coachable, and positioned to grow) from a candidate who will plateau quickly.
Panelists will share how companies have retrained their screening process to surface these traits before a single interview is scheduled.
Attendees will leave with specific, practical tools:
Which resume signals reliably indicate genuine project experience versus AI-assisted padding.
Screening call questions that reveal coachability and problem-solving capabilities.
How to spot the 7 hiring manager traits in a resume/conversation, and how project-based work, open source contributions, and event participation can serve as stronger proxies for potential than GPA or coursework alone.

One Recruiter, Many Pipelines: Scaling Without a Team

You're the only person doing early career recruiting at your company. You're juggling hiring, events, & program management with limited capacity. How do you prioritize without dropping everything? How do you get hiring managers and other functions invested in early career recruiting? How do you make the business case for hiring help? Hear from solo UR recruiters on what actually works: prioritization frameworks, partnership strategies, and how to advocate for growth.

Hiring for Signal in an AI-First World

As AI tools become ubiquitous, the signals we’ve historically relied on to evaluate early talent are breaking down. Polished answers are easier to generate, coding can be assisted, and traditional indicators of readiness are becoming less reliable. So what actually matters now? This session explores how hiring teams are redefining evaluation in an AI-first world ~ what skills are becoming commoditized, what’s becoming harder to fake, and how to assess for real problem-solving ability, learning velocity, and judgment. We’ll dig into how interview loops, assessments, and hiring criteria are evolving and what it takes to identify high-potential talent when the bar is constantly shifting.

Day 1 Closing - URx Awards

Cocktail Reception

Continental Breakfast

Welcome Back + Day 1 Highlights + URx Awards

The Intern Isn’t Obsolete, But Your Hiring Strategy Might Be: Why Early Career Talent Is Your Best AI Investment

Many organizations are rethinking early‑career hiring as AI reshapes how work gets done, and this session highlights why interns and grads are more important than ever. Grounded in data, workforce strategy, and TA economics, it explores how strong intern pipelines build resilience, accelerate safe and effective AI adoption, and strengthen long‑term capability. The session covers the value interns bring to present day teams, why early‑career talent is uniquely positioned to grow alongside AI‑enabled workflows, and how leading talent organizations are intentionally expanding (not contracting) their intern programs. Attendees will leave with practical metrics to confidently defend and grow intern and university graduate hiring, a modern intern‑to‑grad conversion model aligned to AI‑driven work, and clear guidance on positioning early‑career hiring as a powerful lever for revenue growth, capability building, and future‑ready talent strategy.

How Universities Are Closing the Gap Between Classroom and AI-Reshaped Careers

The tasks that once defined early-career roles — drafting, summarizing, basic research, initial coding — are increasingly handled by AI tools, compressing the number of positions available to new graduates and raising the bar for those that remain. Employers are simultaneously revising how they evaluate candidates, placing new weight on judgment, AI fluency, communication, and adaptability. This panel convenes university leaders for an honest, practical dialogue about the gap between what universities currently produce and what the workforce now requires, and about the institutional levers that can close it.

Where the Money Goes: UR Budget Decisions That Actually Move the Needle

Every recruiting team is being asked to do more with less, but not all investments deliver equal impact. From tools and events to vendor partnerships and internal capacity, where you allocate budget directly shapes your ability to attract, hire, and convert early talent. In this session, UR leaders share how they make tough budget decisions in a constrained environment ~ what they prioritize, what they’ve cut, and how they evaluate ROI across different investments. We’ll explore how to align spending with business outcomes, build a sustainable recruiting infrastructure, and ensure every dollar contributes to meaningful impact.

They Said AI Would Kill Junior Hiring. They Were Wrong

In an era of rapid AI advancement, many predicted the decline of junior hiring, but the reality is proving far more nuanced. In this session, Amanda Richardson, CEO of CoderPad, challenges the narrative that AI is replacing early career talent and instead explores how it is reshaping the way organizations identify, develop, and invest in the next generation of engineers. Drawing on industry insights and real world data, this talk will highlight why junior hiring remains essential, how companies can adapt their evaluation strategies, and what it takes to build resilient, future ready teams in an AI driven landscape.

Global Early Talent Hiring: Scaling Intern & New Grad Programs Across Borders

As companies expand globally, early talent hiring becomes increasingly complex ~ spanning different recruiting cycles, university systems, labor laws, and cultural expectations. What works in one region often doesn’t translate directly to another. This session explores how leading organizations are building and scaling global intern and new grad programs that are both consistent and locally effective. We’ll cover how to align hiring timelines across regions, navigate compliance and employment differences, partner with regional stakeholders, and design programs that maintain a strong, cohesive experience worldwide. Attendees will leave with practical frameworks for building a scalable global early talent strategy without losing local nuance.

Why First-Gen Talent Will Be Your Next Competitive Differentiator

While employer engagement strategies have become increasingly sophisticated, we often overlook the most critical data point: the authentic voice of the talent itself.
In this session, Mario Vela, Assistant Vice-Provost of Career-Engaged Learning at the University of Texas at San Antonio, moves beyond high-level theory to provide real-world insights through a live panel of first-generation alumni currently working in the Las Vegas region.
For Global Heads of Recruiting, this is a rare opportunity to bypass the dashboard and hear directly from early-career professionals about the "hidden curriculum" of the corporate world. We will explore how first-gen talent, defined by unique adaptability and navigational capital, can become a primary driver of innovation within your organization.

Welcoming with Purpose: Building Intern Belonging from the Beginning -- How Maximus Makes Memorable Moments While Measuring Metrics that Matter Most

Are you struggling to create a culture of community for Interns at your organization? Maybe you're new to early talent onboarding and confused about where to start? Or you might be wondering about ways to measure what's failing or fueling your internship program success? This workshop is for you!
Flore Dorcely-Mohr and Kristen Lopez share actionable insights from their consecutively, multi-award-winning summer internship program's remote onboarding. Get an inside view of their most popular sessions, peek inside their intern and hiring manager tool kits and peruse their survey instruments. Attendees will get real life examples from Maximus' program to steal their best ideas or be inspired to come up with their own. As URx celebrates their 10th Anniversary, Flore and Kristen will share their top 10 tips, tricks and techniques for engaging diverse intern cohorts and fostering an inclusive learning community from the very beginning.

Lunch

Beyond Volume Hiring: Building High-Signal Internship Programs

This session explores how teams are redesigning internship programs for a new reality ~ balancing rigor with experience, maintaining cohort connection at smaller scale, and positioning selectivity as a strength, not a limitation. As budgets tighten and every hire is more closely scrutinized, we’ll also examine how teams are prioritizing investments, aligning programs to business impact, and making the case for early talent in a more constrained environment. We’ll dig into how hiring criteria, program structure, and conversion strategy are evolving and what it takes to build a high-impact internship program with fewer, more intentional hires.

Closing Remarks

Community Showcase

Get to know fellow attendees connect with sponsors grab a product demo or recharge with an afternoon treat and energy pick me up!