Video: How to Get a Job After College Graduation

I recently was interviewed via Skype by Jordie Kern of 1 Degree Hire, which is a resource for first-time job seekers. More specifically, 1 Degree Hire is a 21-day step-by-step program designed to make recent graduates more marketable, better understand what employers want, and give those grads an edge over others who are competing for the same jobs.

The 1 Degree Hire system includes 21 days of intense preparation through a series of eBooks and MP3 audio downloads. Members also enjoy a personal consultation, resume and portfolio critique, e-mail support, and weekly webinars. In addition, they get insider access to an extensive video library of interviews with some of the nation’s most powerful CEOs and human resource professionals, who reveal what they look for in a candidate and what key questions they typically ask in an interview.

Jordie and I talked about CollegeRecruiter.com and what recent college graduates should do in order to increase their chances of being hired. Listen in: Continue Reading

Is your social media strategy focused on the channels that matter?

With so many young people involved with social media today, it may be wise for college recruiters to use the method for attracting prospective students to their schools.  The following post offers recruiters information on how they can benefit from recruiting with social media.

Read this article:

Is your social media strategy focused on the channels that matter?

How Social Media Can Influence College Admissions

Prospective college students might think that their applications are the only factor in determining admission into college.  However, their social media profiles could also influence whether or not they will be accepted into the schools they have applied for.  Learn more in the following infographic. Continue Reading

Companies Expect to Invest More in Social Media; Facebook Tops the List

It looks like many companies are valuing the power of social media.  As a result, they are willing to spend more money to increase their online presence.

We all want to be liked, but a majority of businesses may be willing to pay more for the distinction, a new survey by The Creative Group suggests. More than half (53 percent) of advertising and marketing executives interviewed said they expect companies to increase their investment in Facebook this year. Respondents also anticipate more marketing dollars will be channeled toward Twitter (43 percent), Google+ (41 percent), LinkedIn (38 percent) and YouTube (36 percent). Continue Reading

Average Employee Wastes 12% of Day On Facebook, Twitter

A direct correlation between tracking employee time and an increase in productivity has been observed after analyzing data about how people typically spend their time at work. This information was compiled by DeskTime through its analysis of over one million of work hours.

The study shows that the average employee will spend 12 percent of the working day using what DeskTime considered to be the unproductive applications of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.. This amounts to 65 hours a month, which have not been used productively. Only 59 percent of the day is spent using applications, which DeskTime deemed to be  productive.

The data demonstrated that after a month of using a time tracking system and sharing that data with the employees, the productivity of those employees increased by 15 percent. The statistics also showed that the typical employee used a high number of different desktop applications, web sites, and other applications. That indicates that they did a lot of link-jumping at work. Though this may be a good indicator for, for example public relations employees, it might not be the best result for, say, programmers.

In summary, the results of the analysis demonstrate that access to employee time tracking statistics are beneficial both for employees to self-manage an increase in their own productivity, as well as for managers to understand the working habits of their employees.

5 Steps for Using Social Media in a Job Search

To get a job today, it is imperative for job seekers to create a purposeful and professional web presence. But, despite this clear directive, many job hunters still find it distressing, due to privacy concerns, or lack of confidence in—or comfort using—the social media tools, and decide to opt-out of social media altogether. According to Laura Labovich, Founder of Aspire! Empower! Career Strategy Group, a Washington, D.C.-based career firm, “Companies are turning to social media sites to look for candidates at a breakneck pace, and to catch the attention of prospective employers, and to be viewed favorably when stacked up against the competition, job search must be paired with a proactive social presence.”

In a recent article entitled “No More Resumes, Some Firms Say,” the Wall Street Journal showcased the recruiting protocol of Union Square Ventures, a New York venture-capital firm that recently posted a position for an investment analyst. “Instead of asking for resumes,” the V.C. firm asked applicants to “send links representing their web presence.” Continue Reading

Employers Should Promote Rather Than Hide Their Recruitment Videos

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, how many pictures is a video worth? Probably 1,000 so that means that a video is worth 1,000,000 words. If a typical job posting ad is about 500 words, that would mean that a recruitment video is worth about about 2,000 job posting ads. We can quibble over the exact numbers, but I think that few would argue that a recruitment video is going to be far, far more powerful that a job posting ad. So why is it that so few employers seem to push their videos out as far and as wide as they can?

You’d think that employers who sometimes spend hundreds but far more often spend thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on their recruitment videos would want as many candidates to see them as possible, but some employers seem to feel that their recruitment videos should be well kept secrets. I won’t name the employer but think major contractor to the U.S. federal government. They hire hundreds of highly skilled college students and recent graduates a year. I went to their web site this weekend to see if they had recruitment videos targeted to students and graduates and they had a bunch. I tried to grab the embed code for the videos so that I could then copy that code, click over to our site, and in a minute or two have those videos running on our site. But the videos running on the employer’s web site had no sharing mechanism. You couldn’t even send a link out through Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media sites.

I then hopped over to YouTube and pulled up the employer’s channel, which is where all of their videos are housed. They had dozens of videos, many of which were targeted at their customers and other such stakeholders but a number of which were targeted at potential employees. Those videos were easily shareable on social media sites but they had disabled the embed feature so you couldn’t copy the embed code and paste it onto your web page and have the videos run for free on your site. I was really shocked. Why wouldn’t they want their recruitment videos running on other sites? What’s wrong with a little free publicity?

CollegeRecruiter.com re-launched a month ago and part of the new site re-design makes it very, very easy for employers or others to upload their recruitment videos. Those videos are then accessible to everyone who uses CollegeRecruiter.com. How much do we charge? Nothing. We could charge hundreds or even thousands of dollars and it would still be worthwhile to our clients to upload their videos but we made the decision to give away a lot of nickels like this because we know that more and better videos means more and better content means more and better candidates means more and better employer clients means more and better videos.

Want a couple of examples of employers who understand that posting their videos on CollegeRecruiter.com and other sites helps their recruiting efforts? Look no further than our friends at Sodexo and Nestle Purina. Want another example? Upload your recruitment videos and then post a comment below. Hint, hint.