4 Best Practices to Promote Your Image As A Great Place To Work

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One of the most frequent topics for discussion at recruiting conferences is employer branding. Employers large and small have come to understand that their employer brand is separate from their business-to-consumer, business-to-business, or business-to-government brands. And for organizations with multiple products or services, each of those brands is separate from their employer brands as well.

Every employer wants to be known as a “great” place to work. Not every employer is. If you aren’t, don’t try to pretend you are as you’ll do more harm than good as now you’ll be known for lying in addition to whatever other negative issues may exist. So fix whatever problems you have until you truly are a great place to work and then promote that image to the students and recent graduates you most want to hire.

NACE’s 2012 Student Survey offers four excellent suggestions for how you can boost your recruiting according to the preferences of the college students your organization is recruiting: Continue Reading

Top 50 Employers on LinkedIn

Last Wednesday through Friday I had the complete pleasure of attending LinkedIn’s Talent Connect 2012 conference along with 1,200 other clients and partners of LinkedIn. Although the social media career site for professionals is only four years old, they’ve quickly become a household word and a must-have tool for many corporate and third party recruiters. I attended to help our team better understand the tools and functionality offered by LinkedIn, why and how employers use LinkedIn, and to meet face-to-face with as many of our wonderful partnership points of contact as possible. By the conclusion of the third day, I could say with conviction: mission accomplished!

One of the interesting tidbits of information at the conference was the release by LinkedIn of the world’s most sought-after, top employers based upon the interactions on LinkedIn by its 175 million global members, of which approximately 20 million are college and university students both within the U.S. and abroad. The top 50 are: Continue Reading

83% of Employers Offer Merit Pay Increases to Improve Retention

As the job market slowly continues to open up, more employers are seeking ways to attract and retain the most valuable talent, and many are looking to rewards systems to facilitate this process.  The Compdata Surveys BenchmarkPro 2012 survey results found 82.8 percent of employers offer merit increases as one of the many systems used to reward employees. The average merit increase budget reported for 2012 was 2.7 percent, with 2.8 percent projected for 2013.

Bonuses are a popular reward option, as they are offered by 67.6 percent of employers surveyed. Nearly 40 percent of organizations use incentive pay, compared to spot incentives at 23.6 percent. Skill-based pay is utilized by 12.6 percent of survey respondents and key contributor rewards are used the least, 4.9 percent. Continue Reading

Are You a Mobile Enabler or a Mobile Laggard?

By Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads

September marks the start of the 2012 fall frenzy of conferences, niche conferences, un-conferences, expos, seminars, webinars, (and yes, a Colloquium or two). Not every session at every event offers deep dives but the mobile discussion has been noted everywhere this year. One conference, held in mid-September, the second mRecruitingCamp, was totally devoted to the subject. (Michael Marlatt did an excellent job on this one-day niche event.)

Practitioners offering solid case study insights on mobile technology and recruiting included Matt Lavery [UPS], Chris Hoyt [PepsiCo] and Heather Tinguely [Microsoft]. We encourage you to look for their videos. Bottom line, a rapidly increasing percentage of prospects in their pipelines (prospects who are eventually hired) are engaged and in more and more cases applying through mobile devices. Continue Reading

$300 Cash Contest for Best Short Video on Voter ID Law

The Coalition for Voting MN (CoVM) is seeking videos to educate, move, engage, enrage, and motivate voters to oppose the proposed amendment of Minnesota’s constitution to require voters to present government-issued photo identification to a Minnesota election official.

CoVM is looking for videos that contain a strong emotional appeal and/or fact based messages to counter the overblown/false anxieties about voter fraud. Don’t tell us who may be disenfranchised by Voter ID – show us. Funny is good. Reference to the cost to implement voter ID is good. Information on the integrity of current voting system is good (why fix something that isn’t broken?). Submissions outside of Twin Cities metro are especially sought so send this to your friends who live outstate. Continue Reading

STEM Scholarships Awarded Total $4.2 Million

A huge investment in STEM scholarships may be a sign that these career fields will represent the jobs of the future.

The Buick Achievers Scholarship Program, funded by the General Motors Foundation, yesterday announced scholarships totaling approximately $4.2 million to 1,100 recipients during the NBC News Education Nation Summit in New York City.

The students, who come from all 50 states, were honored for excelling in the classroom and the community. They will receive financial resources to pursue a college degree within the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), or other related fields of study. Continue Reading

Top Employers for Business and Engineering Students

Which are the world’s best employers according to Universum’s 2012 survey of 144,000 business and engineering students from the world’s 12 largest economies?

In business, Google placed as the most attractive employer in the world for the fourth consecutive year. KPMG maintained its 2011 second place finish, while Procter & Gamble reached a new high as the third most attractive employer in the world in 2012. “The Google fever is still hot!” comments Universum’s CEO Petter Nylander. “Students are still attracted to Google’s relaxed and creative work environment, international atmosphere and innovative products. Google lets the students know that they offer great benefits that are hard for other companies to match.” In engineering, Google takes first place for the fourth consecutive year in a row. IBM and Microsoft nabbed second and third place, respectively. “The giants in the software industry are seen as great places for the launch of an engineering or IT career,” said Nylander. “They offer training, networking and future career possibilities.”

The rankings reveal dramatic trends: Continue Reading

Colleges Implementing Technology on Campus

Earlier this year, some colleges were honored for being innovators at their respective campuses.  These schools have implemented technologies that are making life better for the college community.  Learn more in the following infographic. Continue Reading

Grants Given to Nine States for Building a Better Educated Nursing Workforce

For future nurses in certain states, more money is coming to improve the quality of their educations and better prepare them for nursing careers.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) recently announced nine states that have been chosen to receive two-year, $300,000 grants through its new program, Academic Progression in Nursing (APIN). APIN will advance state and regional strategies aimed at creating a more highly educated, diverse nursing workforce. It is run by the American Organization of Nurse Executives (AONE) on behalf of the Tri-Council for Nursing, consisting of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the National League for Nursing, American Nurses Association, and AONE, which is leading the $4.3 million, Phase I two-year initiative.  RWJF will support an additional two years of work at the close of Phase I, to help states that have met or exceeded their benchmarks continue to make progress. Continue Reading

How to be a Cool School

According to a 2010 Princeton Review report, 64% of prospective college students take a university’s commitment to environmental issues into consideration when deciding where to apply and enroll. Students care deeply about green issues and are attracted to institutions that are working hard to solve environmental problems.

Recently, Sierra magazine released its 6^th annual Cool School rankings – a salute to the schools around the country that are making a difference for the planet.

So, exactly what does it take to be a cool school?  Find out the number one ranked university’s vision of this idea. Continue Reading