The Recruiting Blogswap is starting to really take off. The number of articles published last week was up 50 percent over the previous week and would have been much higher had all of the articles been published as soon as they were received.

Want more traffic to your recruiting blog or career site? Submit an article to the Recruiting Blogswap. It is free. Your article will run on other recruiting blogs and that will both generate traffic directly from the readers of those blogs and improve your search engine positioning for all of the pages on your site because your article will include a link to your site in your byline in close proximity to your description of your site, in which you should include the keywords that people use most in order to find your site.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 30, 2007 at 6:12 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

We've found time-and-time again that when we offer anything for free that the only organizations that take us up on the offer are those who:

1. Would never purchase anything so they're actually more akin to expenses than clients and not too many organizations want more expenses. We get calls every day from headhunters asking for free trials of our resume bank even though we offer a free demo that allows them to search and view as many resumes as they want but blocks out the contact information for the candidates. When we offer that instead, those asking for the free trials tend to disappear. Why? Because they weren't really interested in the trial. They were just interested in the free.

2. Those who intend to purchase something but because they've made no investment in the free trial, they end up not investing their time either so the trial is doomed to fail. These are typically corporate recruiters. If they spend even $350 with us for a month of resume searching, they need to show results to their managers. But if they spend $0 with us, their managers often aren't even aware that the recruiter has signed up so there's no pressure to use the package. If they don't invest their time, they don't get results. If they don't get results, they don't buy at the end of the trial period.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 27, 2007 at 5:35 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

1. Take stock - (Know Yourself)

If you know your strengths and weaknesses and what you want in a career, then you have a much better chance of finding your perfect job. Finding that dream position starts with understanding your personality, values and what drives you. Taking a career and personality assessment is a huge first step towards optimizing your personal career path. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment is the most widely used personality instrument. More than 2 million worldwide assessments are performed each year by job seekers, professionals, and organizations, including 89 of the Fortune 100. Take a Free Personality Test now to find out what motivates you and find the perfect job today.

2. Networking - (Know others)

Many jobs are obtained through networking. It is a very important tool for job seekers and is an extremely fast and effective way to find your next job or career. While many employers advertise open positions on internet job boards like CollegeRecruiter.com, you should find out about the hidden job market by talking to as many people as possible and letting them know you are looking for a job.

3. Accomplishment oriented resume - (Know how to write it well)

The purpose of a resume is not to get you a job, but to land an interview. An organized, industry-specific and accomplishment-oriented resume will get employers to take notice. In todays hyper-competitive job market, you simply cannot afford to send out a resume that is less than perfect.

Two Common Yet Easily-Avoidable Resume Mistakes:

1. Always use a professional email address on your resume. While footballfan@aol.com may be fine for conversing with friends, it will give employers a negative perception of your level of professionalism and commitment to your job search. If you don't have one, get a free professional email address today.

2. If your resume includes an objective statement, it should be geared to both your personal goals as well as the goals of the company. Describing how you can add value to the company will give potential employers the impression that your goal is to provide a long-term commitment.

Get the attention of decision-makers at a company through a job proposal. It's a one or two page mini-business plan that is intended to get you an interview with the decision-maker of a targeted prospective employer. While a resume tells someone what you have done in the past, a job proposal shows in some detail what you are going to do for the company down the road. Specifically, it lays out how you will help them achieve their vision of success. It generally explains the vision you have for a new product or service, how to enhance an existing program, or why to implement a new process. It may also outline your plan to increase company sales or improve accounts receivable. When you challenge the relevance of traditional job search strategies and begin utilizing tools and techniques that clearly distinguish you from the pack, most anything is possible, including winning a dream job with a great company during a down economy.

5. Industry Knowledge - (Know your market)

During your job search, it is imperative to show initiative and drive while continually looking to improve your industry knowledge. In today's competitive job market, staying up-to-date on your industry is crucial to your future success. To be a truly outstanding business professional, you must not only understand trends and developments in your own industry, but the trends and developments in an average consumer's industry. Free trade magazines are available through CollegeRecruiter.com.

6. Research - (Know the players)

There is no substitute for hard work and research. Knowing which companies are hiring in your area is only half the battle. Take your search to another level by getting access to key contacts, decision makers, and hiring managers. Check out sites like Hoovers.com to gain access to these types of lists. You can get a basic, free career consultation at CollegeRecruiter.com.

7. Interviewing - (Know how to communicate)

The biggest mistake in interviewing is not being fully prepared. It is crucial for job-seekers to use every conceivable means possible to prepare for an interview and to allow ample time to fully prepare. Understand that interviewing is a skill; as with all skills, preparation and practice enhance the quality of that skill. Preparation can make the difference between getting an offer and getting rejected.

Practice Answering These Commonly-Asked Interview Questions:

1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Where do you expect to be in five years?
3. Describe a work-related problem you had to face recently. What did you do to deal with it?
4. What are your strengths? Weaknesses?

An interactive marketing portfolio of yourself pulls together your accomplishments, education, experience and awards in one place. It is a highly-effective job-hunting tool that you develop that gives employers a complete picture of who you are - your experience, your education, your accomplishments, your skill sets, and what you have the potential to become - much more than just a cover letter and resume can provide. You can use your career portfolio in job interviews to showcase a point, to illustrate the depth of your skills and experience, or to use as a tool to get a second interview. Dont forget to setup your free personal career portfolio at CollegeRecruiter.com. The best kinds of portfolios can be built and distributed to employers through the internet.

9. Background Check - (Know your history)

With thousands of resumes to choose from, employers often select from pre-screened candidates first, as these job seekers appear more serious in their job quest and commitment. Pre-screening by the job seeker saves the employer valuable time and money, and places pre-screened candidates ahead of the competition. You can get a inexpensive background check on yourself at CollegeRecruiter.com.

10. Learning never ends - (Know more)

The investment of time and money in continuing your education sends a powerful message to prospective employers that you are serious about improving your skills and abilities. Employers are more likely to hire candidates that show the desire and commitment for lifelong learning. Whether it's a certificate program, associates, bachelors, or masters degree, there is a program to fit your lifestyle, schedule and budget. To find a school that fits your needs, browse our index of over 200 schools or try out our free School Finder matching program.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 27, 2007 at 10:58 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Joe Grimm, recruiting and development editor of the Detroit Free Press, recently wrote that it is never enough to give two week's notice to an employer that you're quitting. To be fair, Joe's blog article made it clear that he feels that two week's notice is standard and is a fair compromise between the needs and wants of the employer and those of the employee. But his "never enough" point is worth pondering: if it takes far longer than two weeks to find a replacement, is two week's notice sufficient?

I agree with Joe that two week's notice for most jobs is sufficient and has become the standard. Few people are in positions that require longer notice periods and virtually no college student or recent graduate would be employed in such a position. Yet many of us have been in positions where we've given two week's notice and seen the look of despair on the faces of our managers. They don't need to tell us that our work will be missed, we may not be easy to replace, and until they replace us they will be less productive and therefore profitability will suffer.

Yet the needs and wants of the employer are only half of the equation. There are also the needs and wants of the employee. People need to be able to leave a place of employment when a better opportunity arises or even just when they get fed up or tired of doing the same thing day-after-day.

The longest notice period that I've ever been asked to give is two weeks. I'd love to hear stories of people who have been asked for longer notice periods and why the employer thought that longer period was justified.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 26, 2007 at 4:29 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the eighth in an eight part series of blog articles. To read the series from the beginning, start at Part I or download our free best practices white paper.

Conclusion

When considering a potential employer, the stereotypical Generation Y job applicant wants to know, “Can I have it all, and can I have it right now?” Organizations whose employment practices are designed to accommodate the needs and wants of Baby Boomers are typically taken aback by this attitude. Yet employers who understand and embrace the different priorities of Gen Y understand that for them to survive, and even thrive, they must do everything in their power to oblige these in-demand employees. Deloitte & Touche, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Honeywell are shining examples of employers who are morphing their organizations to meet the demands of a workforce that is growing by leaps and bounds.

Work-life balance, regular feedback, good salaries, and challenging work are just some of the demands that need to be met by employers seeking to keep their twenty-something new hires around for more than one or two years. These hard working, civic minded individuals care about the organizations for which they work, and the organizations that are willing to listen to Gen Y and make the necessary changes to accommodate them, are more likely to succeed in retaining their Gen Y employees for the long term.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 25, 2007 at 4:29 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the seventh in an eight part series of blog articles. To read the series from the beginning, start at Part I or download our free best practices white paper.

Listen to Me

With the rapidly increasing popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, employers are starting to incorporate blogging into their communication network. Honeywell is one of the few organizations using blogging to help it speed into the future.

Accessible through a prominent link off of its main career page, Honeywell’s career blog offers employees an opportunity to write about their work at Honeywell, including their likes and dislikes. This shows an amazing amount of trust in their employees as well as an incredible amount of confidence in Honeywell and its culture. Students researching Honeywell as a potential employer can not only read the blogs posted on the site, but they can add comments, too. This remarkable level of transparency is very important to Gen Y. An open forum for employee discussion will help Honeywell in its efforts to recruit Gen Y employees and also facilitate its efforts to attract quality interns.

To understand why employer supported or sanctioned blogging helps an employer retain Gen Y employees, let’s imagine that you work for an organization that trusts you enough to blog on their corporate site. Let’s also imagine that a competitor offers you a position which is moderately more attractive than your current position. It is quite likely that you will ask that competitor if you will be allowed to blog about your work experience on their corporate Web site if you were to accept their offer of employment. Because so few employers support or even sanction employee blogging, that employer will probably say no. They won’t say it, but the reason is that they don’t trust their employees enough to allow that and you’ll understand that. Faced with the choice of continuing to work for your current organization that demonstrates its trust in you by allowing you to blog on its corporate site and a potential organization that demonstrates its distrust by refusing to allow you to blog on its site, which would you pick? That’s why employer-sanctioned blogging is great for retention.

Gen Y employees are high maintenance, according Baker. They want to have it all right here, right now, and they can’t see any reason why that shouldn’t be possible. The upside of this demanding, high maintenance generation of employees is that they are willing work hard and be great sources of the innovation that keeps organizations growing and changing with the times.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 25, 2007 at 4:27 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the sixth in an eight part series of blog articles. To read the series from the beginning, start at Part I or download our free best practices white paper.

Talk to Me

Deborah Loffredo of the college relations department at Pepsi Bottling Group said that one quality of Gen Y employees that stands out for her is their need for feedback-oriented leadership. They want to know regularly how they are doing. They want “to make an immediate impact,” Loffredo said. The best way for them to gauge the effect of their work is through frequent feedback sessions. Career counselor Baker concurs. According to Baker, Millennials want to know quickly that their work is valued and how it has made an impact.

Direct feedback is important, said Baker. For Millennials, it is not at all excessive to have a meeting once a month with their managers to not only receive feedback but to give their own input, too. To a Baby Boomer, this may seem like time poorly spent but this investment is very important to Millennials and helps to maximize their productivity. People who don’t feel good about their jobs or their employers tend to spend more time griping than working and, during their off time, they’re looking for other jobs. Baker suggests that feedback sessions should be one-on-one, face-to-face, and supervisor initiated. According to Baker, 75 percent of employers recruit interns for entry level employees. Based on those numbers, the internship period is the perfect time for employers to practice on their most promising candidates the necessary behaviors to keep those candidates within the company for years.

Because of their college and internship experiences, Gen Y employees crave mentoring. Conversely, they also like to mentor. One way to utilize this need is by inviting Gen Y employees to serve as mentors to interns. It satisfies the mentoring need of the new hires and plants a seed of aspiration in the minds of the interns. What better way to attract new, promising candidates while holding on to promising new employees?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 25, 2007 at 4:25 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the fifth in an eight part series of blog articles. To read the series from the beginning, start at Part I or download our free best practices white paper.

Grad School Anyone?

Many recent college graduates want to go to graduate school. Organizations which offer tuition reimbursement plans are more likely to retain new hires than those that don’t. Rising education costs and higher corporate demands for knowledge and experience put Millennials in a difficult position. As a result, many young workers stay with an organization for one or two years, then leave to attend graduate school full time. Others, like graduate school student Rosolowski, take jobs simply to finance their education, even if those jobs are outside their skill set.

Because Millennials have an insatiable appetite for learning and professional growth, the employer who caters to this need helps himself as well as his younger employees. Many employers are reluctant to provide tuition reimbursement plans because they’re afraid that their investment will be wasted on someone who has no intention of making a long-term commitment to the organization, yet such thinking is counter-productive. Employees who are allowed to increase their knowledge are more valuable, and if they know their employer is willing to pay for their education, then they also feel valued and are more likely to stay.

Employers are more demanding because the pool of potential candidates is becoming increasingly saturated. For career counselor Baker, there’s nothing wrong with a recent college graduate working at a job for only a year or two in order to expand his skill set, then moving on. By expanding his skill set, the graduate becomes more valuable to what is, for him, a more desirable employer. For this reason, it is in an employer’s best interest to find a way to persuade new hires to stay for more than one or two years by offering them work environments that are dynamic rather than stagnant. Deloitte & Touche boasts that the job is always changing in their organization. If so, then boredom is not an option at Deloitte & Touche.

“They want to try new things,” said Baker, “so no matter where they work, they will want to move to different departments or become an overall expert in the department where they are.” That sounds like a pretty tall order, but employers who are willing to find a way to oblige this desire are the employers who will have new hires willing to commit beyond the putative three to five year standard. They will stay because they will have found an organization that can provide job satisfaction as well as a competitive salary.

CMU second-year graduate student Steve Hanneke seeks an organization that funds travel to conferences where he can meet and collaborate with others in the research end of computer science, his major. Those conferences are important to Hanneke. He is a typical Millennial who wants to continually grow and learn in his chosen field, artificial intelligence research. He’s also typical in that he anticipates changing jobs frequently; Hanneke wants to keep himself constantly surrounded by the best and brightest people in the industry. “There’s a lot of movement in computer science,” Hanneke said.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 25, 2007 at 4:23 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the fourth in an eight part series of blog articles. To read the series from the beginning, start at Part I or download our free best practices white paper.

Work-Life Balancing Act

Sharon Jayson, in an article for USA Today, wrote that employers need to make changes in order to accommodate their Gen Y employees. According to Jayson, the average Millennial employee expects to leave his first full-time job in under three years.

Lack of work-life balance accounts for a large part of the job hopping. Millennials want work that is team oriented, challenging, and interesting. They also want work that allows them to maintain an active social life. Some of the forerunners of change are Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Deloitte & Touche, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). All three of these organizations have made significant changes in their policies and procedures to accommodate their Millennial employees. Close to 25 percent of Enterprise’s management team both domestically and overseas are mid-20s or younger, according to Jayson.

Because they understand the Gen Y need for flexibility and life outside of work, PwC encourages its client service teams to discuss everyone's work/life commitments at the beginning of each engagement. In addition, the Firm promotes flexibility through a variety of programs, including flexible work arrangements, "Flexible Fridays," where staff can take some partial or full Fridays off each summer after working their standard hours, and by encouraging the use of the Firm's generous vacation and time off policies and programs.

Deloitte & Touche has this to say about work-life balance on their site:

Our work/life and flexibility programs have earned the organization recognition as one of the best places to work. Cutting edge programs help our people to effectively manage their personal lives while finding fulfillment in their careers.

Career services director McClenahan says that this desire for work-life balance is nothing new. “They all want to have some balance between their jobs and their private lives.” He added that students pursuing careers in law, medicine, or accounting must accept that these career fields demand long hours.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 25, 2007 at 4:19 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the third in an eight part series of blog articles. To read the series from the beginning, start at Part I or download our free best practices white paper.

Job Satisfaction vs. Salary Requirements

College tuition costs are increasing at a rapid rate at virtually every school, virtually every year. According to the Rule of 7-11 -- a rule which is well known to financial analysts around the world -- a sum of money will double in size in 11 years if it earns interest at the rate of seven percent per year. Similarly, a sum of money will double in size in seven years if it earns interest at the rate of 11 percent per year. So how does this relate to Gen Y and whether they’re community focused and not primarily motivated by money, whether they hop from job-to-job whenever the employer across the street offers them even the most modest of pay increases? If Gen Y wants to work for environmentally conscious companies that believe in transparency and they want a good work-life balance, why do they job hop? Because of the Rule of 7-11 Rapidly escalating college tuition costs have sunk many Gen Y employees deeply in debt and, consequently, forced them to choose salary over personal satisfaction.

Melissa B., an employee at CMU, is a great example of a Millennial who has attempted to have both job satisfaction and a competitive salary. Melissa became an employee of CMU because she was in a “familiar atmosphere” as an alumna of CMU. She knew the campus and its overall culture. In addition, she believed that her bachelor’s in psychology would enable to her to move up within the department and ultimately realize her dream of becoming an academic advisor. When it became apparent that this was “not necessarily the case,” Melissa decided to start casting her career net elsewhere. “I’m looking for something that is student service focused,” Melissa said. “I will hold out for that because it’s important.” In the meantime, Melissa has chosen to remain an employee of CMU because she still has bills to pay.

A different example is Emily Rosolowski, a first-year graduate student at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Rosolowski also works as an admissions assistant at CMU. The 25-year-old fine arts major took her job at CMU to help pay for graduate school, though her dream is to work in museum registration. For Rosolowski and Melissa B., although job satisfaction and a good salary are both important, their need to earn money takes precedence. “I’m more interested in trying to follow my career path,” Rosolowski said, “but I need to eat.”

James E. McClenahan, Jr., director of the career services department at Duquesne University, believes that Gen Y graduates aren’t really so different from any other generation. “They want a job that’s interesting, that pays a fair salary, and provides ample opportunity for advancement,” he said.

According to Baker, recent college graduates can earn anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 per year depending on their major and the amount of internship experience they have. “But it’s more on the lower end,” Baker said, and she advises students to do a lot of research and be educated about the organizations in which they’re interested. One way organizations can facilitate this research is by, in some way, making it clear on their Web sites that new hires don’t start out earning high-end salaries. If this can be done without giving specific salary amounts, it might help candidates form realistic expectations. A willingness to negotiate with promising candidates might also instill a tendency toward loyalty in new hires.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 25, 2007 at 4:16 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the second in an eight part series of blog articles. To read the series from the beginning, start at Part I or download our free best practices white paper.

Understanding the Generation Y Employee

There are more than 30 million Generation Y employees in today’s workforce. Many of them are college educated and experienced through internships and co-operative education programs. They know they have a lot to offer employers and are eager to share what they’ve learned.

Because they are the first generation to have grown up entirely with computers at their disposal, Millennials are highly computer literate and, therefore, a great resource for training older, less computer literate employees how to perform basic functions. This is a task that they have probably performed in the past with their parents and grandparents. Employers can satisfy the desire of Millennials to feel like they’re making a significant impact in their organization by giving them the responsibility of teaching computer skills to older employees. Generation Y are very civic minded and like to help out; similar to the Freedom Riders who traveled to the southern United States to participate in the Civil Rights movement, they want to do what they can to make a positive impact on the world around them.

Teamwork isn’t a problem for Generation Y. They’ve been working in teams all their lives, from junior high school through college. They work well in groups, but they also want the independence to work on their own. This sounds impossible when, in fact, it isn’t. Group projects often require one person to be in charge of one aspect of the overall project. By giving a Generation Y employee a specific task to complete while simultaneously staying within the group’s parameters for the project, two purposes are served.

Generation Y is a generation of people who will work hard to get the job done, but at the end of the day, they want to be able to relax with friends or make it home in time to have dinner with their families. Millennials work to live rather than live to work like the stereotypical Baby Boomers. Work-life balance is important to Gen Y employees and any organization that is unwilling to accommodate this should expect a fairly high turn over in their Gen Y workforce.

Gen Y employees anticipate changing jobs several times before age 30, said Erin Baker, a career counseling intern at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh. One reason for the frequent changes could be lack of job satisfaction. Responsibility and flexibility are important to Millennials, said Baker. She added that they “like to have impact across departments.” While this trait is admirable, it may not be practical in every organization. Where such cross training is possible, take advantage of the opportunity in small doses so that neither valuable human resources nor limited budgets are overextended.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 25, 2007 at 4:14 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Today’s new employees are clearly a new generation. Often referred to as Generation Y, Millennials and Echo Boomers (all three of these terms will be used interchangeably throughout this series of blog articles), this rapidly growing group of workers comes to employers not only with high expectations, but with high performance capabilities as well. These new employees are the children of Baby Boomers – those born right after World War II. The term Echo Boomers stems from the large of number of children born between the years 1977 and 1998 – an echo of the large number of children born between the years of 1946 and 1964. These Echo Boomers are eager to learn and impatient to gain levels of responsibility that in the eras of Baby Boomers and Generation X would have taken either several years or hundreds of hours of dedicated hard work to achieve.

Too often, Generation Y employees find themselves making career choices based on how much they owe on student loans, rather than what best matches their skills and education. Finding jobs that are compatible with their personal lives is another desire of Millennial employees. They’re not only interested in having time off for leisure, but for community service activities, too.

Purpose

The purpose of this series of eight blog entries and accompanying free best practices white paper is to help employers understand this dichotomous workforce that is teamwork oriented yet independent. They have positive, can-do attitudes and a level of institutional thrust that can be parlayed into employer loyalty with the right mix of discipline and autonomy.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 25, 2007 at 4:10 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I love it when I hear so-called experts failing to practice what they preach. Whether they're religious leaders, politicians, or CEO's, we have all have moments of hypocrisy. This one crossed my desk earlier today.

One of our college job board competitors correctly preaches all of the time that employers need to pay their interns and pay them well in order to hire the best and brightest. Well, when you offer highly sought after information technology students $8 per hour, you're likely to get what you deserve.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 24, 2007 at 10:00 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A tip of the hat to Bryan Baldwin for alerting me a story about the NCAA moving towards prohibiting or restricting college athletic coaches from contacting potential recruits by sending recruitment advertising text messages to the cell phones (SMS) of the potential recruits. The NCAA already imposes restrictions on phone calls, faxes, emails, letters and other communications so this new restriction would be consistent and would close a loophole.

One of the stated goals of potential new policy is to reduce the cell phone bills of the recruits. Apparently, some of the college coaches have been getting carried away with the number of messages they're sending and I would imagine that the most highly sought after candidates are being deluged by the messages even if each coach is only contacting them once or twice.

Could cell phone text messaging from employers face similar problems? Most job seekers should be so lucky to have employers proactively contacting them and most of those job seekers receive so few contacts that virtually all of the contacts are welcomed. Yet there are always exceptions to the rule and even if 1,000 people welcome your recruitment message, all that will matter to the one who didn't want to receive it is that they didn't want to receive it.

Minimize the chance of annoying or even offending your potential candidates by paying close attention to the medium, message, and targeting. If the candidates that you want to reach have opted in to receive messages to their cell phones or via email, then you should feel more comfortable in sending your message to their cell phones or email addresses. Be sure that your message speaks to their needs and wants rather than those of the employer. And be very careful about the targeting. If you're trying to hire diverse accounting graduates in Brooklyn, don't send your message to all business students in the State of New York. Send it only to the people that you want to hire. If your list or the list you rent doesn't allow you to drill down, don't use that list. Use one that allows you to specifically target the candidates that you want and only those candidates.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 23, 2007 at 11:08 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

As I look ahead to the world of college hiring a decade from now, I envision a significant increase in the number of candidates that employers will be in touch with not because those employers will have a greater number of openings and not because a great number of candidates will be applying to job openings, but because the hiring cycle will greatly increase. I envision that the interaction between employers and college students and recent graduates will occur primarily months and even years ahead of their offer date rather than days or weeks. We’re already seeing employers and candidates using technologies such as blogs, podcasts, and social networking to brand and position themselves in the marketplace. As the labor market continues to tighten due to the retiring Baby Boomers and as technology makes it less expensive for employers to interact with more and more candidates in shorter and shorter periods of time, there will be increased willingness and ability by employers and candidates to truly network with each other well before they are willing or able to actually work together. More employers will find it economically feasible to mentor high school students who demonstrate the competencies, interests, and values desired by those employers so that years later some of those high school students and their friends will want to consummate the relationship with those employers by going to work for them. Rather than virtually all employers first coming into contact with virtually all of their candidates as a result of on-campus interviews, job postings, and other such methods, most employers will first come into contact with many of their candidates months or even years before the employers are in a position to hire those candidates or the candidates are willing to work for the employers.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 21, 2007 at 2:41 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Mike Palmquist, our National Account Executive, and I had a great conversation today with a potential client. They're interested in hiring college seniors and recent graduates and wanted to know whether they should run ads in major daily newspapers, college newspapers, employment papers, magazines, billboards, posters, banner ads, job postings, targeted emails, cell phone text messaging, social networking, etc. They weren't so much looking for suggestions as to where they could advertise but instead where they should advertise.

To make a short story long, there is no easy answer. If you are looking to reach 100 well qualified, interested candidates so that perhaps 10 apply so that you interview a few so that you hire one then you need to keep in mind that you're trying to reach 100 people and each of those people have different needs and wants and those needs and wants change day-to-day and even hour-to-hour. What will be well received by a large number of candidates one day will not be well received by them a day later. Employers in Virginia were probably a lot more attractive to students a week ago than they are this week. Students who have opted in, and especially double opted in, to receive recruitment ads via targeted emails and cell phone text messages (SMS) with employment offers are going to be much more receptive to those messages than students who are spammed. Students who receive targeted emails and cell phone text messages which are well targeted to their interests are going to be much more receptive to those who receive poorly targeted messages.

We're all different. Treat us differently. Baby Boomers shouldn't pretend or think that they understand the mindset of a 22 year old member of Gen Y. And even if you are a member of Gen Y, you don't speak for all members of Gen Y nor are your interests going to be representative of most or probably even a sizeable minority of Gen Y.

So what media should you use? As many as you can. Don't put all of your eggs into one basket. Use some media like banner ads and cell phone text messaging for branding. Use other media like targeted emails and job postings to drive responses. But always, always speak to the needs and wants of those who you are targeting and use the media that they use. If the candidates you are trying to reach read the Wall Street Journal, then advertise in the Journal. If they get their employment information from job boards, then advertise on the job boards. If they use their cell phones to text as often as they breath, then reach them through a text message campaign to their cell phones -- but be sure that they've opted in to receive the message and be sure that your message is being delivered to the right target market.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 20, 2007 at 4:57 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

An corporate recruiter recently posted a question to discussion list in which he expressed concern that it may be too late in the school year for him to recruit college seniors who are completing their civil engineering program. Is it?

Even in the red hot employment years of 1999 and 2000, most college students graduated without employment. For some it wasn't their choice as they weren't looking hard enough or in the right places or right ways. For others it was their choice as they were confident that the credentials they brought to the table would allow them to find a great job when they were ready to look. The situation now is similar, although the market is hot yet not quite as red hot.

It is probably too late to try to schedule on-campus interviews, but it is never too late to find them in other ways. Network through social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Use the college and engineering job boards, especially those which are used by recent graduates and not primarily those who are currently enrolled. The college job boards which have a higher percentage of graduates include sites such as AfterCollege and CollegeRecruiter.com.

Finally, don't make the mistake that too many recruiters make by only posting a job or searching the resume bank of the job boards you use. Talk with them about newer, far more effective products such as targeted email campaigns.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 19, 2007 at 7:43 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Just when we thought we've seen it all, just when we thought nothing worse could happen, something does. Before it was Columbine. This time it was Virginia Tech.

I hope that there isn't a next time, but I'm realistic enough to know that there will be. I can only hope that it won't be as horrendous as Columbine or Virginia Tech.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 18, 2007 at 5:02 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I received an email earlier today from a college career service office professional asking for advice about what to do about the huge number of job postings she's receiving from organizations that help U.S. college students teach English abroad. The positions are typically in Asian countries, but not always. Her concern is that there are so many of these organizations and so many of them are new that it isn't feasible for her small staff to determine which ones are legitimate, which ones are scams, and which ones are somewhere in between.

I recommended that she stop trying to determine whether a legitimate job posting ad is going to be of interest to her students. If the organization posting the ad has a valid phone number that matches with the address information they've provided and their email address matches with their domain name, then it is quite unlikely that the organization is going to try to scam anyone. We use litmus tests such as those when we screen jobs being posted to CollegeRecruiter.com so why shouldn't a college career service office do the same? Also, these are adults that we're talking about, not 12 year olds, so they need to take responsibility for their own job search efforts and part of that is evaluating to whom they're sending their information. A little due diligence is in order, so I recommended to the career service office professional that she stop spending so much time evaluating the quality of the offers being posted by legitimate organizations and instead spend that time educating her students on how to evaluate the offers themselves. If she and her staff continue to do that work for the students, then when they graduate they will not have that very important skill.

I'm sure that there are some other great solutions out there to this very real, very serious problem. Let's hear them! Please post your suggestions as comments to this blog entry and I'll be happy to publish them so that we can all share our best practices.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 18, 2007 at 4:21 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

To anyone who has ever had discussions with friends or family about how much they like or dislike their work, it should come as no surprise that the Conference Board found in a survey of 5,000 U.S. households that many Americans dislike their work. The group that disliked their work the most? Gen Y, with more than 60 percent indicating that they are dissatisfied with their current jobs. That low level of satisfaction was the lowest level ever recorded in the nearly 20-year history of the survey.

The low level of job satisfaction in the under 25 year old segment began in 1995 when 55.7 percent indicated that they were satisfied with their jobs. By 2000, that level dropped to 50 percent and by 2005 it dropped even further to 49.2 percent. By 2006, the level had dropped to 38.6 percent. By comparison, between 50.3 and 55.3 percent of those over the age of 25 report being dissatisfied in their jobs.

The Conference Board did not attempt to explain why Gen Y is so much less happy with their jobs than Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers, but I have to believe that it has much to do with their conflicting desire to do interesting work and better the world with their need to pay down the crushing debt loads inflicted upon them by rapidly escalating college tuition costs.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 17, 2007 at 7:04 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

Being interviewed for radio talk shows is always fun, but they're even more fun when the interviews occur during the workday. This morning I had the, ahem, pleasure of waking up at 5am so that I could be interviewed for the Radio Rita show about the strong job market for college students who are searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Although the Ritas jokingly poked fun at all the names given to this generation of college students (Gen Y, Millenials, and Echo Boomers), they were rightfully excited to hear that the vast majority of this generation are having little difficulty finding a job but shared my concern that those jobs are often not in the chosen career path for the candidate or don't pay enough to allow the students to pay back their student loans.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 17, 2007 at 5:41 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Job seekers and employers are often looking for some objective advice as to which are the best job boards for their needs, industry and position.

A new site, Job Board Reviews, was designed to help solve this problem by offering important information about job boards such as number of resumes, number of jobs, and traffic stats on job boards in an easy to use way all in one place. Want to see information about all of the major college job boards? Go to their college section. Neat.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 16, 2007 at 6:01 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Just spoke with an employer-client who was pretty frustrated by an on-campus interview with a high achieving student at a respected school. The employer is a big accounting firm. The student thought they were investment bankers. Wrong.

Job interview tip: do some research. Know who you're going to be interviewing with. Know who their vendors (suppliers) and clients (customers) are. Know about their industry. Be able to speak intelligently. Don't worry that you aren't as knowledgeable about the firm or the industry as the person interviewing you. It would be pretty bad for you to know more about them than they do. But you've got to know a lot more than the investment banking wanna be who went into his job interview sorely unprepared.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 16, 2007 at 5:51 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've written before about the phenomenon of helicopter parents, but what makes someone a helicopter parent and who are these people? Well, most of them are mothers but it takes a lot more than being a mother to be helicopter parent.

Advocacy group College Parents of America and their partner Student Advantage surveyed parents to try to get to the bottom of this issue. Of the 1,727 who chose to respond, a whopping 81.5 percent were mothers, 17.7 percent were fathers, and the remaining 0.8 percent were grandparents, uncles, aunts, friends, and other adults who were actively involved in the lives of these college students.

The term helicopter parents refers to parents who are too involved in the lives of their children -- the involvement can be so continual that the parents are often described as hovering over their children. Although many people think nothing of parents who hover over their infants and even toddlers, few parents of Baby Boomers or Gen X'ers would have dreamt of hovering over their children once they left for college. Yet one-third of the mothers who responded to the survey admitted to communicating with their college student child at least once a day. By comparison, only one-fifth of fathers admitted to the same level of involvement. Similarly, 45 parents of the mothers admitted talking with their student child "very frequently" via cell phone while only 32 percent of fathers admitted to the same level of contact. Some 70 percent communicate with their student children two to three times per week, more than 80 percent said cell phone discussions are very frequently or frequently the method of communication used, and more than 80 percent acknowledge that they are much more or more involved in the lives of their student children than were their own parents.

I've heard some parents defending themselves by claiming that their children want this level of contact. Yet when asked how often the parent initiated the communication, 56.5 percent indicated that they initiated the contact 50 percent of the time and 26.1 percent indicated that they initiated the contact 75 percent of the time.

So what are these communications about? Ten percent of the respondents indicated that money is very frequently discussed and an additional 23 percent indicated that it is frequently discused. Three percent said that career issues are very frequently discussed and an additional 13 percent said that careers are frequently discussed.

Parents: back off. You're not going to be around to protect Johnny and Sally from lifes tribulations forever. You need to allow them to lives their own lives and to make their own mistakes. It is their lives that they're living and not yours. Do not impose your value system on them. If they don't want to take full advantage of their potential, that's their choice and not yours. If they could do better in some of their classes, so be it. Do you do you best at everything that you do every day? Of course not. So don't expect the same of them.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 16, 2007 at 7:07 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

What does it take to be the "ideal" job candidate? Employers have a tall order, but communication skills are at the top of their list in what they look for in potential employees, according to a report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

Employers responding to NACE's Job Outlook 2007 survey named communication skills and honesty/integrity as a job seeker's most important skills and qualities. "Communication skills have topped the list for eight years, and honesty and integrity have tied for the top spot for the last three years," says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director.

But the ideal candidate needs to be more than an articulate straight arrow, according to the survey results. Employers also cited strong interpersonal skills, motivation and initiative, the ability to work well with others, and a strong work ethic as key attributes. (Each earned a rating of 4.5 or better on a 5-point scale, where 1 is not important and 5 is extremely important.)

"Certainly, having the requisite skill set to perform the duties of the job is critical, but much of what employers prize can't be taught in the classroom," says Mackes. "As a result, they look for evidence beyond grades that the candidate has these 'soft skills' and attributes. This is one reason why employers look for new college graduates who have gained some kind of relevant work experience, typically performed through an internship or cooperative education program." In fact, nearly three-quarters of employers responding to the Job Outlook 2007 survey indicated they prefer to hire new college graduates who have gained relevant work experience.

So, is the candidate with killer "soft skills" and relevant work experience a shoo-in for the job? Not if the candidate's grades don't cut it. Nearly two-thirds of responding employers said they screen new college graduate job candidates on their grade point average (GPA). The biggest group—58 percent—reported that they use a GPA of 3.0 (on a 4-point scale) as their cutoff. "Grades do count," says Mackes.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 14, 2007 at 8:25 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

In this day and age of helicopter parents, more and more organizations are understanding that in order to successfully recruit a college student as your next employee, you also need to woo the parents of that student. While many Gen X'ers and Baby Boomer recruiters and hiring managers cringe and even fight against the trend of increased parental involvement in the workplace, others are beginning to understand that they are not likely to win this battle and that it isn't a battle worth fighting. These employers are adopting the attitude that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Examples of employers which are wooing the parents in order to recruit the student are:

• U.S. Army - Who hasn't seen their commercials in which the kid tells the parent that they want to enlist, the parent expresses their concern, and the kid respectfully but forcefully explains how the Army will help them achieve their career goals?
  
• Merrill Lynch & Co. - Invites parents of some of its summer interns to visit the firm's offices so the parents can become more familiar and comfortable with the firm and the career options that it offers.
  
• Ernst & Young - Hands out to students packets of information which are designed to be read through by their parents.
  
• Vanguard Group Inc. - Sends letters to the parents of its Gen Y recruits and runs ads in the parent sections fo college web sites.
  

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 13, 2007 at 8:39 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Great article today about Facebook by Julian Seery Gude of inov8ion.com. It seems that some of their earlier site re-designs were not well received by their users. Rather than pointing fingers, the folks at Facebook looked in the mirror and resolved to not only listen, but also to hear. And hear they did. They solicited the feedback of 100,000 users on some additional planned site changes and then tweaked those changes to better fit with the needs and wants of their users.

How many of us who are immersed in the world of recruiting really listen and hear our stakeholders? How many really listen to the needs and wants of the hiring managers and the candidates so we can best match up our hiring managers with the best possible candidates. I can't imagine that the number of those who actually do this day in and day out can ever be high enough.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 12, 2007 at 2:33 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Since the commercial birth of the Internet a decade ago, virtually all employers have confined themselves to on-line versions of traditional recruitment advertising vehicles. Rather than posting classified ads in newspapers, they post job openings. Rather than running display ads in magazines, they run banner ads. Both methods deliver a high quantity of responses but the quality tends to be quite low. Many third party recruiters and some corporate recruiters use resume searching because the quality tends to be quite high, but resume searching is so time consuming that the quantity tends to be too low. Two great solutions are targeted email and cell phone text messaging (SMS) campaigns as they combine the high quantity delivered by job postings with the high quality delivered by resume searching at a cost per hire that is comparable to both.

If your organization is considering using targeted email or cell phone text messaging campaigns as part of your recruitment process, then you'll want to participate in this interactive, humorous audio teleseminar that I'll be doing on Thursday, April 12th at 1pm ET / 10am PT with the folks at Kennedy Information.

In part because the college students and recent graduates who use CollegeRecruiter.com are more receptive to newer technologies, CollegeRecruiter.com is a recognized leader in the fields of targeted emails and cell phone text messaging with clients ranging from the military to intelligence agencies to restaurant chains to retailers to consulting companies.

In this session, you'll learn:

• The attitudes and trends toward email and text messaging;
  
• The rules of engagement and how to build and buy your own lists;
  
• How to execute the campaign and develop a relevant recruiting message;
  
• The importance of these steps and nuts-and-bolts methods for implementing them;
  The many components that make up great targeted email and cell phone text messaging recruiting programs; and
  
• How you can get started building your own.

  Want more information? Want to sign-up? Go to:

  http://www.kennedyinformation.com/corporate/recruiting/events/audio/conference/retention/detail/20015?C=ZpjcGxdyQDYhYpdf

  Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 11, 2007 at 7:48 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the good fortune of speaking earlier today in Phoenix at Brainstorm Consulting's Campus Recruiting Forum 2007 event. Graham Donald, the CEO of Brainstorm, puts on a good conference. The attendees were from high quality firms and were quite interactive, which made for a great learning experience for all.

One of the most interesting presentations was by Camille Sautner of Universum Communications. She presented a ton of data on who this generation is, what they want in an employer, what they bring to employers, etc. Great stuff.

One of the Camille's slides showed how many Gen Y / Millenials students and entry level job seekers consider themselves to be diverse candidates and, if so, why. Camille's slide showed that many of the candidates answered that they are diverse because they have body modifications such as tattoos and piercing. Wow. I had no idea that anyone would consider themselves to be diverse because they have "mother" tattooed on their arm.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 10, 2007 at 4:29 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

We just updated and moved our MySpace traffic generation page to http://www.myspace.com/entryleveljobs . If you're on MySpace, please feel free to link to us as a "friend." We'll be happy to link back!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 9, 2007 at 6:47 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

The U.S. Department of Labor just reported that employers added 180,000 jobs to payrolls last month, up from 113,000 in February. Economists had predicted a gain of 120,000 to 135,000 so the 180,000 kind of knocked the cover off the ball.

The national unemployment rate dropped 0.1 percent to 4.4 percent -- the lowest since October 2006. The consensus of the economists was an unemployment rate of 4.6 percent. The last time the unemployment rate was this low was May 2001, which was just before the labor market tanked. If you're thinking that 4.4 percent is therefore pretty great news for job seekers, and it is, then consider this: the unemployment rate for college graduates is down to 1.8 percent.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 6, 2007 at 10:14 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

In addition to the incredible student loan debt and other financial burdens being imposed upon older members of Gen Y by the rapidly escalating costs to attend college, now word is coming out that the younger members are struggling just to get into their colleges they most desire.

Students with perfect SAT scores and 4.0 grade point averages are being rejected:

• Harvard turned down 1,100 student applicants with perfect 800 scores on the SAT math exam;
  
• Yale rejected several applicants with perfect 2,400 scores on the three-part SAT;
  
• Princeton turned away thousands of high school applicants with perfect 4.0 grade point averages.
  

1. The demographic bulge of the children of the baby boomers means that students are graduating from high school in record numbers. About 3.1 million will graduate from high school this year, up from 3.1 million last year and 2.4 million in 1993. The peak will be in 2008.
   
2. More high school students are going to college right away. In the lost decade of the 1970's (nothing good came out of that decade), fewer than half went directly to college. Today it is more than 60 percent.
   
3. The average college applicant applies to many more colleges than in past decades. In the 1960's, fewer than two percent applied to six or more colleges. In 2006, more than two percent report having applied to 11 or more.
   

Source: New York Times

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 5, 2007 at 10:23 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

This year's college seniors may have far too much student loan debt, but at least they're making more money so they're better able to make the payments on that debt. Employers are planning to hire 17.4 percent more college graduates for entry level jobs and other career opportunities and almost 80 percent are planning to increase the salaries they pay to those new hires. The average expected increase is 4.6 percent, up substantially from the 3.9 percent increase received by 2005-06 graduating seniors. So who are the big winners and losers?

College seniors who are majoring in marketing should see their average salaries increase by a whopping 14 percent to $41,323. Graduates in other business disciplines saw more modest increases and decreases, including a 1.8 percent decrease to $43,294 for logistics/materials management majors and a 9.2 percent increase to $43,523 for business administration majors.

Accounting is still hot thanks in large part to the Sarbanes-Oxley securities regulation legislation but accounting majors should see average salary increases of just 1.7 percent to $46,508. Accounting graduates are, however, the most in demand by employers and those who accept offers from accounting services employers should see average salaries of $47,728.

Economics majors should see average salaries of $51,631. Finance majors should see average salaries of $47,905. In past years, these were tracked together so no average increase is available.

Computer science majors are looking at two percent increases to $51,070, which those in software design and development coming in even higher at $53,989.

Chemical engineering graduates have big smiles on their faces as their average offers are expected to increase by 7.4 percent to $60,054. Civil engineers are also happy, although not as quite as their chemical engineering brethren. Civil engineers should see increases of 4.8 percent to $47,145. Electrical engineers should see 3.2 percent increases to $54,599. Mechanical engineers should see a 7.7 percent increase to $54,587.

Liberal arts graduates may be disappointed with an expected decrease of 1.1 percent after last year's 6.1 percent increase.

Source: NACE

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 4, 2007 at 11:48 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

We've invested a lot of time and other resources over the past few years into building our brand and relationships with our clients. A good brand and strong relationships help our sales efforts when we contact employers to see how we can help them recruit college students for internships and recent graduates for entry level jobs and other career opportunities. Those efforts have been paying off well, but never as well as today.

This morning we had our second biggest sale ever. By mid-afternoon, that sale became our third largest ever because we had our biggest sale ever. As nice as it was to put a big smile on the faces of our CPA's and bankers, it was even better to listen to the excitement in the voices of these long-term clients because they knew that over the next year their large purchase are going to excellent investments. They'll receive quantity and quality. And when there are problems, they know that we stand behind our products so strongly that they will emerge from those problems better off than if there had been no problems at all.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 3, 2007 at 8:09 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

The great retention failure in world history? Hint: it occurred thousands of years ago. Hint: it involved frogs, locusts, and skin disease. Hint: it occurred in north Africa. Drum roll please.

Still no clue? Read about the exodus of hundreds of thousands of essential workers from what was then the world's superpower.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 2, 2007 at 4:56 PM | Leave a Comment (0)