Resources for Finding College Job Seekers

By T.J. Ripley

The start of the school year is a time of new beginnings. So this fall make a fresh start and explore resources that can help you find and attract college students.

There are lots of ways to reach college students, ranging from traditional strategies, such as scheduling on campus interviews, to creative approaches, such as sponsoring campus events. Regardless of the strategy you want to adopt, you should plan and execute it in conjunction with the school's career services office. They can help you make the most of your efforts on campus and offer advice about what approaches have proven effective in past years.

To find the career services portion of a college's Web site you can hunt and peck through the site, but there's an easier way. JobWeb's Career Offices and Home Pages index (http://www.jobweb.org/catapult/homepage.htm) has assembled links to the career placement offices of almost 500 schools. Simply select the region where the college is located (north, south, Midwest or west) and you'll get links to the career offices of schools in that region, alphabetically by college name.

Beyond attending job fairs and scheduling on-campus interviews, an approach that career offices may suggest is to advertise in the college newspaper. Many major universities have weekly papers that are distributed on campus and many others have online publications; both of which accept advertising. These provide great venues for getting your firm's name in front of students. Here are two resources you can use to locate college newspapers:

- NewsCentral (http://www.all-links.com/newscentral/college/) maintains links to over 300 college newspapers across the country. All the links appear on one page, but some are listed by the name of the paper and others are listed by school name. Therefore, you may need to do a bit of digging to find the paper you're interested in.

- NewsDirectory organizes its links to college newspapers into 51 different pages (one for each state and another for the District of Columbia). From the NewsDirectory College Locator page (http://www.newsdirectory.com/college/press) select a state and a list of links appears -- ordered by city. Here there are nearly 500 college papers listed.

- If you're looking for an intern, consider checking out Virtualintern.com (http://www.virtualintern.com). The site has resumes for hundreds of students who are looking for internships. You can post opportunities at the site, search for candidates in the database and take advantage of automated search techniques.

There are plenty of other approaches worth exploring. Some pay sites you might want to try include JOBTRAK, JobDirect and CollegeRecruiter.

JOBTRAK (http://www.jobtrak.com) enables employers to recruit students and alumni via the Internet. Its partnerships with over 1,000 college and university career centers means JOBTRAK covers a lot of ground. In fact, 100% of the Fortune 500 companies use JOBTRAK. Each day 50,000 students and alumni access the site. And 500,000 students have registered their resumes on the site in the past year.

JobDirect (http://www.jobdirect.com) is another site you can use when looking to fill entry-level positions. Its database is composed of student and recent graduate resumes from over 4,000 colleges and universities nationwide. Last year the site helped employers reach nearly half-a-million students. You get access to an extensive database and the ability to post job openings. And when you post a job, the database automatically searches for candidates whose skills match your search criteria.

Finally, CollegeRecruiter (http://www.collegerecruiter.com) is another site you may want to explore. It provides two models -- one for people who want to search through a resume bank and another for people who prefer posting positions and waiting for responses.

See what these resources have to offer and start making connections. You're sure to receive an education in the process.

-- This article is part of a series from AIRS, a global leader in Internet recruitment, tools, news and information. Copyright 1999-2001 Hanover Capital Management, Inc. AIRS teaches recruiters and high-growth companies to find passive candidates hidden inside directories, databases, archives and the public Web servers of over 400,000 companies and organizations on the Net. For more information about their cutting edge training seminars, publications, or web applications, please go to http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com/pages/airs.php.