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The revenues and profits that we generated in 2006 were our best ever. But yesterday we surpassed both and the year isn't quite half over yet. Interestingly and perhaps a sign of things to come, the sale that put us over the top was the largest cell phone text messaging campaign that we've ever sold and perhaps the largest ever sold by a job board.
The trend has been there for decades. More and more women have been enrolling to attend college and more and more of them were graduating. Within the past decade, women comprised the majority of incoming freshmen at most schools. There is little doubt that the vast majority of these women and the schools they attended did not regard this trend as a zero sum game. In other words, the gains being made by the women did not need to come at the expense of the men. But could it be that is exactly what is happening?
Peter Gardner of Michigan State conducts some of the best research in this area and his recent findings are startling. Although women comprise about 55 percent of college freshmen, they are now comprising about 75 percent of the graduates. So where are all of the men going? Are they being forced out by the women? Are the colleges forcing out the men through the application of hostile policies which used to be directed against women but are now directed against men? While those are possible explanations, Peter has a far more logical explanation: the men are leaving to start their own businesses.
"We've got a generation coming up that has a very different outlook on life than the one before it," said Jeffrey Cornwall, an entrepreneurship professor at Belmont University in Tennessee, to CollegeJournal.com. "They're more interested in balancing their work with their family life, and that makes entrepreneurship attractive to them."
As an entrepreneur, I see little wrong and a lot very right about the creation of more entrepreneurs. When I was in college in the 1980's, it seemed that everyone wanted to be a lawyer and society lamented how American schools were turning out more and more lawyers while Japan and other countries were turning out more and more engineers. This difference was of legitimate concern because engineers create wealth. The vast majority of work done by lawyers does not create wealth. I've heard the practice of law compared to the breaking of a window. Businesses pay lawyers and people pay to have broken windows replaced but once that money has been paid the people who paid the money are rarely left with anything better than they started with. The lawsuit is settled and the window is repaired but the money that they've spent will not generate additional wealth for them.
Entrepreneurs are much more akin to engineers than lawyers as entrepreneurs create wealth for themselves, their employees, their vendors, and their partners. So if our Millennial males are turning their backs on professions such as law and turning towards entrepreneurship, that's a good thing. If only they would stay in school so they can complete their undergraduate education and more fully develop their minds, then it would be a great thing.
There is no doubt that parents of every generation have been concerned about their children and have wanted their children to succeed. But what happens when you take probably the most career-focused generation in history – Baby Boomers – and turn them into parents? You get parents who hover over their children so continually that sociologists have begun to refer to these Boomers as helicopter parents.
As a Gen X’er, I understand but don’t condone this type of behavior. I understand that these parents have raised highly programmed, multi-tasking kids. I get that these parents are used to running their kids from one after school activity to another to another. And I even get that some of these parents have a hard time letting go when little Johnny or Jenny move away to attend a great college. But after four or five years of living away from home and hopefully entering the workforce, John and Jennifer are no longer kids. They’re adults. So you’d think that by the time John and Jennifer have chosen to go back to school for an MBA that their parents will also have grown up and realized how destructive their hovering can be. Well, you’d have figured wrong.
The MBA schools are, like employers, flabbergasted by the inability or unwillingness of these parents to let go. Parents are going to check out the MBA schools with their adult children and sometimes even without them. Parents are sitting in on the interviews. Kristin Strauss, a first year MBA student at the University of Virginia and a 25 year old Millennial, said that she watched in awe as parents helped their mid-twentysomething to thirtysomething year old children move into their dorms and apartments. “I was kind of surprised…that so many parents had driven down and were shopping at Target with the MBA students to get them set up in their apartments,” she said.
BusinessWeek wrote that some parents even show up at group orientation sessions, welcome receptions, and even sit in on classes. And will it stop there? Not likely. I’ve been hearing from employers that a small number of their Millennial employees are blaming their poor work performance on their parents because, get ready for this, the parents are completing their work assignments.
Source: Campus Career Counselor
One of the popular features on CollegeRecruiter.com is our School Finder program as it allows the candidates who use our job board to find on-line schools and traditional schools should they be interested in completing a degree, transferring, getting an MBA, etc. Candidates use the service for free and we are compensated by the schools for referring the candidates. But it is a very competitive business.
There are a lot of players in this industry, including EarnMyDegree.com. They offer on-line college degrees and university courses so do pretty much the same thing as our School Finder program. Two of the great things about EarnMyDegree.com are:
You might think that most employers would be at best ambivalent about a candidate’s decision to hire a career coach or get career counseling especially if the candidate came to the employer’s attention after they completed their career coaching or career counseling sessions. Well, if you thought that, then you’d be wrong.
Workforce Management reported that an increasing number of college seniors and recent graduates are turning to personal career coaches and getting career counseling to help them decide on an appropriate career path. While some might argue that these services are unnecessary because they’re typically offered by the college career service offices for free, others beg to differ. Some career service offices are so woefully understaffed that they simply do not have the time to offer such services to students who want more than a cursory discussion about their competencies, interests, and values. Other times the candidate doesn’t realize that they need help until after they’ve graduated and perhaps moved halfway across the country. And of course there is always going to be a wide disparity in quality in any profession so some college career service office professionals will offer exceptional career coaching and counseling while others, well, won’t.
But it isn’t just people like me who recognize that career coaching or career counseling is a wise investment for some students and recent graduates. My opinion is also shared by some highly respected business owners. Scott Testa, CEO of software company Mindbridge, is a fan. “I think if a candidate believes a job here is important enough that they want to be coached to handle the interview process, they probably take other aspects of their life and career seriously too.”
All students should receive career coaching and counseling. Preferably they get the help they need before they graduate for free from their college career service office. Many do. But there are always some who fall through the cracks no matter what the situation is and this situation is no different. For those students and recent graduates, I am thankful that there are some pretty good alternatives out there for students and recent graduates who recognize that they will be more successful and happier after working with a good career coach or career counselor.
Source: Campus Career Counselor
There’s little doubt that fewer and fewer Gen Y / Millennial candidates get their news or any other information from traditional media such as newspapers and even television. But one device that they use continuously are their cellular telephones. Because of this, organizations such as Pepsi, Nike, and Dell are increasingly turning to marketing their products, services, and employment opportunities through cell phone text messages (SMS) and cell phone video messages (MMS).
Cell phones have been popular for almost two decades and in the hands of almost every young adult for a decade. So why the sudden surge in interest and completed ad campaigns? Quite simply, the technology has caught up to its potential. Almost all phones purchased by Millennials are capable of sending and receiving text messages. They’re also web-enabled so they can be used to view web pages, videos, and other graphics.
The growth in text messaging is remarkable. A decade ago, it was virtually non-existent. Today, about 30 percent of the 217 million U.S. cell phone subscribers send at least one text message a month. Of course, that group includes grandparents who are unlikely to text so the numbers amongst Millennials is even higher. Indeed, over 55 percent of 13 to 24 year old subscribers regularly send text messages.
It’s no secret that marketers of job opportunities tend to adopt media techniques more slowly than marketers of products and services. Given the vastly smaller advertising budgets in place for most human resource than marketing departments, the slower, more conservative approach exhibited by human resource marketers makes good economic sense. When we talk with clients about cell phone text messaging, one of the most common concerns that we hear is their fear of annoying the recipients. I’m a 41 year old Gen X’er and if I were to suddenly start receiving job offers or any other commercial messages to my Crackberry, well, I’d be annoyed. But we’re not talking about texting people like me who are old to remember when cell phones didn’t exist and we’re not talking about people like me who haven’t opted in to receive such messages. Rather, we’re talking about young adults who grew up with cell phones, typically send and receive multiple messages per day, and who have opted in to receive such messages. According to research company Yankee Group, 42 percent of all cell phone subscribers would welcome receiving an advertisement to their mobile phones if that message were relevant to their interests. That percentage is surely even higher for Millennials.
How big of a deal is this? So far, pretty tiny. In 2005, all cell phone text and video messaging combined was only $45 million. Although that increased by more than three fold to $150 million in 2006, that’s still a drop in the bucket when compared to the $300 billion per year U.S. ad market and pretty comparable to the ad revenues generated from one Super Bowl broadcast. Moving forward though, the projected growth looks staggering. Yankee Group projects mobile marketing to be $2 billion by 2010 and $10 billion by 2015. While only a small portion of this is likely to be related to recruitment advertising, CollegeRecruiter.com has already delivered multiple cell phone text message campaigns on behalf of employers and about the same number on behalf of marketers of products and services.
One of the most popular forms of mobile marketing is text messaging as it allows the marketer of the employment opportunities, products, or services to engage the targeted recipients in a manner which is truly interactive. Dell, for example, used CollegeRecruiter.com’s targeted email service to deliver a graphical (HTML) message to a group of highly targeted candidates about an employment opportunity. Candidates were offered several response options, one of which was to type into their cell phones a five digit “short code” to request additional information. A short code is to cell phone text messaging what an email address is to email messaging or a postal address to direct mail: it provides the delivery instructions to the cellular phone carriers. Millennials have plenty of experience in responding to such advertising as does anyone who watches shows such as Big Brother and American Idol where votes texted in by viewers determine which contestants stay on the shows and which are relegated to the morning talk shows.
Marketers of products and services, being ahead of the marketers of employment opportunities, are using text messaging in a variety of ways. In addition to voting contestants off of reality TV shows, text messaging has been used by cable television network A&E to promote its Dog the Bounty Hunter show. Viewers who sent a message to the provided short code received text messages from the main character. Those viewers were then 62 percent more likely to watch the show again than viewers who did not send a text message. Would job seekers be more likely to apply if they regularly received text messages from the CEO, division head, or hiring manager even if the messages were sent to a large group of candidates, as were the messages from Dog the Bounty Hunter?
Some cell phone text messaging ads that are marginal in the world of marketing products and services would likely lead to litigation in the world of employment. Dove, for example, encouraged consumers to vote on whether women depicted on a billboard were “wrinkled” or “wonderful.”
Yet other campaigns were unlikely to offend anyone and should be adapted to employment advertising. American Express let members and potential members sign up to receive invitations to purchase highly sought after concert and movie tickets. Shouldn’t employers be building opt-in lists of cell phone numbers in their resume banks so they can send a text message to candidates who fit the desired characteristics for new job openings?
Another mobile marketing product that needs to be on the radar screen of those planning and purchasing recruitment advertising are wireless web ads. Those with web enabled phones can and do use the web even though the vast majority of web sites, including CollegeRecruiter.com, are not mobile web-enabled because users who go to those sites see the same site whether they are looking at it through their computer or cell phone browsers. Marketers who hope to successfully reach cell phone subscribers through wireless web ads must first build mobile web sites which are designed to be viewed through the much smaller screens of cell phones. These web pages are typically primarily textual and have far less content than traditional web pages. Whether it is because there is far less clutter or because the users of these sites differ, then is little debate that they interact with these web pages at a far higher level than do visitors to traditional web pages. A typical click rate for a banner ad on a traditional web page is 0.2 percent and we often see click through rates even lower than that. By contrast, three to five percent of visits to mobile web pages result in click on links to learn more or make a purchase. Although the media is new, there already are success stories. Embassy Suites spent about $300,000 on mobile banner ads to encourage customers to click to make a reservation. And click they did. The campaign generated 55,000 clicks and $3.2 million in revenue. Shouldn’t employers be designing mobile web pages designed to convert job seekers into job applicants?
Video Ads
Employers with recruitment videos can and should move those videos off of DVD’s and onto web pages and cell phones. Some employers are including their videos within their job postings on CollegeRecruiter.com but it appears that there has not yet been a recruitment video distributed via cell phones. Even if that’s true, there’s no reason to ignore the medium. Rather, let’s just look at what the marketers of products and services are doing as they tend to be ahead of those of us in recruitment advertising. Anheuser-Busch and American Express have both delivered their standard TV ads over cell phones. Sprint customers who subscribe to receive episodes of Prison Break delivered to their phones also received 10 second ads for the youth-oriented Toyota Yaris.
Games, Ring Tones, and Other Free Stuff
Cellular phone subscribers have long come to expect that their phones will come with games yet most are quickly bored by the pre-packaged games and some will pay $5 to download new games. Zagat’s dining guide and Progressive Insurance saw an opportunity and offered free games. The hitch? The games included ads for Zagat’s and Progressive. Why not a free game promoting employment opportunities?
Traffix offers free, ad-supported ring tones and movie clips. Free ring tones are also offered all over the web to those who agree to receive messages to their cell phones. Dunkin’ Donuts sent a coupon offering a 99 cent latte to Boston cell phone subscribers, increasing store traffic by 21 percent. Why haven’t employers offered free ring tones, cool graphics for the wallpaper that forms the background of your cell phone screen, or other such incentives in order to generate an opt-in list of highly sought after candidates? Those candidates can then receive a well spaced series of short messages about the employer’s industry, organization, department, and employment opportunities from the CEO, division head, or hiring manager.
The opportunities available to employers through interactive media are limitless. But there’s no need for employers to figure all of this out for themselves. Take advantage of the lessons which have already been learned by those who have been marketing their products and services through cell phone text messaging, cell phone video messaging, and other mobile marketing opportunities.
For recruiters and candidates who dread going to job interviews or who just want to try something new, Second Life now offers the opportunity for recruiters to meet with candidates in the popular virtual on-line world. Recruiters and job seekers create computer-generated images of themselves known as avatars and then use their computer keyboards and mice to navigate through the world to the site of the interviews. The site of these interviews was decidedly professional for a career fair recently sponsored by TMP Worldwide and attended by blue chip employers such as Hewlett-Packard Co., Microsoft Corp., Verizon Communications Inc. and Sodexho Alliance SA.
Do virtual world job interviews in sites such as Second Life spell the end of real world job interviews in, well, real world settings? Hardly. I commend these employers for trying something new when it is getting harder and harder to find highly qualified candidates. Let the other employers sit on the sidelines and complain about a lack of qualified candidates while they run the same tired job postings on the same general job boards. If I remember the adage correctly, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again even though it yields no results. HP, Microsoft, Verizon, and Sodexho are clearly not insane. But are they spending their dollars wisely?
Problems with virtual job interviews are common. If an employer is targeting an older or less tech savvy group of candidates, it is unlikely that those candidates will be found in large numbers in a virtual world. Even younger and more tech savvy candidates and recruiters can find the environment difficult to use, especially if they’re newbies or if their computers are not fast enough or don’t have enough memory. Candidates and recruiters alike start off with avatars which are clothed but in a very non-descript fashion. Talking is conducted by typing in a manner which is quite similar to instant messaging.
Some recruiters and candidates spend hour upon hour clothing their avatars, hardly a task that is likely to be as productive as attending informational interviews or otherwise networking. And once in the interview, goofs are common such as failing to sit properly in a chair, not knowing how to shake hands, pulling out of your virtual pocket a can of beer and handing it to a recruiter rather than your resume, keeping track of who is talking, and worse. A Bain & Co. partner’s avatar inexplicably slumped over in the middle of an interview, leading others in the room to assume that he was sleeping. Other avatars have been known to float around rather than standing or sitting as the real candidate surely would in a real world interview.
So given all the hassles and glitches, why bother? Because your very presence sends a powerful messages to the Millennial candidates you most want to recruit. Rather than forcing them through a recruiting process designed by and for Baby Boomers, your willingness and even eagerness to participate in a Second Life virtual career fair sends the message to the candidates that you understand that their needs and wants are different from those of Baby Boomers and that if they choose to work for your organization that you will be cognizant of these generational differences and work to make the workplace a fun and productive place for these young adults. The goof by Bain’s partner may have been embarrassing to the partner, but it was unlikely to do any damage to their brand. After all, Bain was there, not its competitors, and candidates who have just spent hours trying to figure out how to pull out a resume will understand that the partner was trying his hardest and that his heart and soul were in the right place. Perhaps not his mouse, but his heart and soul.
In addition to the powerful branding that results from participating in job interviews in virtual worlds, there are also some real world advantages. Although the cost can be in the tens of thousands of dollars, that’s often cheaper than flying out one or more recruiters to another city, putting them up in a hotel, and paying for a booth at a career fair. The recruiters can also be more productive as they can spend more time at their desks rather than in airports. Because of these time saving advantages, it is also more likely that executives will participate – hence the participation by the Bain partner.
For TMP’s virtual career fair in Second Life, 749 job seekers requested interviews, the employers granted 209 interviews, and 150 interviews were actually conducted. These are numbers which would be laughable to many real world career fair companies, but you don’t hear them laughing. They know that as technology and the skills of recruiters and candidates continue to improve, more and more employers will turn to virtual career fairs and job interviews instead of real world career fairs. But will employers abandon traditional job interviews in favor of virtual job interviews? No. As long as people are working together they will want to meet face-to-face with the people they may hire. I see virtual career fairs and job interviews as gradually replacing some but not all traditional career fairs, initial telephone interviews, and other screening interviews.
So add some memory to your computer, practice your virtual skills, put on your best virtual suit, get a gleaming virtual shoe shine, and go meet some great, real people.
One of the biggest concerns for Millennials and their (sometimes too involved) parents is the rapidly escalating and crushing cost of post-secondary education. I've written before about the high cost of college and the resulting huge student loan debts that today's students are forced to incur but fortunately there are some organizations who can help. They aren't going to solve the problem, but they can help.
One organization that I've looked at is Next Student, which offers services such as student loan consolidation. Unlike a lot of other student loan consolidation companies, Next Student offers visitors to its web site a wealth of helpful resources such as:
“How often do you bring work home?” When asked that question in a poll taken across the 15,000 niche career sites in our network, only 34.71 percent of job seekers said, “I never bring work home.” A majority responded that they bring work home either once or twice a week (23.09 percent), everyday (29.82 percent), or only on the weekend (12.38 percent).
“To remain competitive, companies need to continue to evolve their technology and service offerings,” said Rich Milgram, CEO of Beyond.com, Inc. “This effort often requires employees to be proactive and work longer hours inside and outside the office. However, professionals can still achieve a healthy work-life balance by working smarter and setting priorities and boundaries to help effectively manage their time.”
Finding the right balance can be a difficult task regardless of one’s professional level in an organization. In order to create a healthy work-life balance there are five tips each business professional should attest to:
I had the good fortune of listening to a presentation by Phil Gardner of Michigan State University earlier this week about the current trends in the college students and recent graduate labor market. Although I've been keeping a close eye on the biggest employers of college students and recent graduates, it hasn't been as easy to keep up-to-date on the types of jobs being offered to students and recent graduates. But Phil does. Oh boy, does he ever.
One of the most interesting pieces of information that he delivered was that 18 percent of the job offers made to recent college graduates in 2006 were for sales and marketing positions. So far in 2007, the percent of job offers made to recent college graduates for sales and marketing positions has jumped to 50 percent. If there was any doubt that the job market for recent college graduates is hotter this year than it has been since 2000, there should be no doubt any longer. Phil's presentation also showed the increases in salary expectations amongst undergraduates and graduate school students alike and the increases in expectations are dramatic.
Another fascinating part of Phil's presentation was the takeover of college campuses by women. The majority of enrollees are women. That's no secret and has been well reported by the media. But how many knew that even though about 45 percent of the enrollees are male that only about 25 percent of the graduates are male? Why are so many males dropping out? Phil believes that it is because this Gen Y / Millennial generation and particularly males of this generation are choosing to start their own businesses so they can have more work-life balance and the students see no significant benefit to completing a degree if they're going to work for themselves so they're dropping out rather than burden themselves with huge student loan debt and delaying their entrance into the marketplace.
One of my greatest frustrations when helping clients solve their recruiting needs relates to how some use, or should I say misuse, banner ads. Those billboard type ads that at the top right corner of virtually every interior page of CollegeRecruiter.com and in similarly prominent locations on most web sites have been around almost since Al Gore invented the Internet. But do they work? Quite frankly, they're usually a waste of the client's money.
We rarely suggest or recommend that clients purchase banner advertising because they're so ineffective for the vast majority of clients. When a client tells us that they're interested in banner advertising, we try to ask them a series of detailed questions about why they're interested in banner ads and how they plan to measure the results. If we're 100 percent convinced that they understand that they are likely to see very few clicks and far fewer to perhaps no applications and therefore extremely unlikely to actually hire anyone, then we will feel comfortable that they understand that banner ads are only suitable for building the brand of the employer. Some of our clients use banner advertising for exactly that purpose and it makes sense for them. If the college students and recent graduates who use our site are not aware of the employer or don't realize that the employer has certain attractive positions available, then a banner advertising campaign coupled with other media can make sense. But if the client is looking to the banners for clicks, applications, or hires then the client is making a mistake.
So what's the best alternative? Usually targeted emails. On behalf of the client, we can deliver within two or three business days and sometimes even faster an plain text or graphical (HTML) email to thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of highly targeted candidates. We can deliver an email to all of the 8.9 million college students and recent graduates in our double opt-in database or any portion thereof. We have up to 700 fields of data per candidate and can combine those in any way to select a highly targeted group of people. So we can deliver an email to African-American females who attend any of a dozen schools and reside in certain metro areas, who have a GPA between 3.0 and 4.0, who exhibit leadership skills by being active in campus sports and the Greek system, are majoring in accounting or finance, and who speak Spanish, French, Italian, or Swahili as a second language.
So why do targeted emails make less sense for employers who want to see a response rate? Let's do the math. A typical banner ad campaign on CollegeRecruiter.com would call for us to deliver 100,000 banner ads in a month. We charge $8 per thousand impressions (CPM) for banner ads, so the cost for that campaign is $800. The employers typically see about 0.01 percent of the banners clicked on, so that's about 10 clicks and therefore the cost per click is $80. Ouch.
Now let's look at the typical performance for a targeted email campaign. A normal sized campaign is 100,000 emails although many are smaller or larger. For employment-related campaigns, we will typically see an open rate (how many are read) of about 15 percent and about 15 percent of those click through to the employer's web site. So far fewer people will see the employer's ad with an email campaign and therefore they're hurt on the branding side, but far more people click through to the employer's web site and therefore far more people will end up applying. Rather than seeing 10 clicks like with a typical banner ad campaign, the targeted email employer will see about 2,250 clicks. The cost for an email campaign to 100,000 highly targeted, pre-qualified candidates is $4,200 so the cost per click is $1.87.
When I talk with other job board owners at gatherings like the International Association of Employment Web Sites meetings or on the phone (some of our clients are large, general and niche job boards), they tell me that about 80 percent of their revenues come from the sale of traditional job board products such as job postings, resume searching, and banner advertising. With CollegeRecruiter.com, about 80 percent of our revenue comes from targeted emails, cell phone text messaging, and other such direct marketing products. We know from experience how to sell and deliver these products so that they are well received by both the candidates and the employers. And we know that they greatly outperform banner ads in almost every instance.
A few months ago I wrote about hearing Guy Kawasaki speak about innovation at the University of Minnesota and how his speech caused me to think long and hard about the mantra of CollegeRecruiter.com: college career connector. I just ran across a copy of him delivering the same presentation to a different audience:
One of the most informative and high energy conferences that I've attended over the years, and I've attended a lot, was the OnRec conference last year in Chicago. My presentation was on how recruiters can and should use social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. You can watch a video of the OnRec social networking presentation on CollegeRecruiter.com.
This year, the OnRec conference will be in San Francisco on September 18th and 19th and I've been offered the opportunity to be one of the presenters. I'll be speaking about college recruiting. Other speakers include Joel Cheesman, Peter Weddle, Joe Shaker Jr., Gerry Crispin, Jeff Hunter, Kevin Wheeler, and Don Ramer.
As one of the presenters, I'm able to provide attendees with a $100 discount. All you need to do is click through to the special page they've built for me and then sign-up. See you there!
Millennials are likely to be “different.” They have a view that is more in tune with the globe, and they also have a tendency to want a better balance between their work and life. I’m going to contradict myself here and note that with all the “soccer moms” taking their over achieving kids to soccer, violin, debate team, and chess club, all the while running a 4.5 GPA and scoring 2400 on the SAT, this seems to be one of the most ambitious generations we’ve ever had. It would seem that they want the opportunities, they want to learn, and make lots of money. But if you’re perfect, and still can’t get into Harvard, Columbia or Yale, what do you do?
Amen, brother.
Source: systematicHR
I recently wrote about the best paying jobs for recent college graduates and listed the percentage increases to the starting salaries that these college grads should expect to receive. The highest paying job for recent college graduates were economics (business / managerial) and finance grads with average offers at $53,449 and $47,877, respectively. But the grads who saw the biggest increases in compensation were marketing graduates with an average 10.3 percent increase from 2006 to 2007 to $41,285.
So what is it that marketing grads do? There are a variety of jobs, but many become marketing managers. To see what they do, watch this short career video, which is just one of 350 career videos available courtesy of CollegeRecruiter.com:
One of the lessons that I learned early in my business career was that it was important to give away a lot of nickels. Now that may seem counterintuitive, but the reason is that those nickels have a way of coming back to you as dollars.
Jim Durbin's excellent blog entry on the value of networking got me thinking about this again. Thanks, Jim!
Paul DeBettignies of Nerd Search deserves a lot of credit. He's been the driving force behind the creation and impending promotion of the first Recruiting Roadshow. John Sumser, the dean of the recruiting blogosphere, will be taking Recruiting.com on the road and Paul, Josh Kahn of Best Buy/Accenture, and I are thrilled to be the ringleaders who convinced him that Minneapolis was the place to start his tour.
So does Paul deserve a lot of credit for that? Nah. All in a day's work. What is really amazing is that he did all of that while working through some family health issues, an Internet Service Provider who took a month to move his access to his new office 500 feet down the hall, the grief caused by the thrashing inflicted upon the Minnesota Wild this spring by the Anaheim Ducks, and the generally pathetic state of Minnesota college sports.
Details for the Minneapolis Recruiting Roadshow Unconference will be announced within the next couple of weeks, but mark your calendars for the morning and early afternoon of Friday, July 20th so that you'll be at the Best Buy world headquarters in Richfield (suburb of Minneapolis), Minnesota. The unconference will be free (hence the "un"), sponsors are jumping on board, and we're looking forward to kicking off the Roadshow with dozens of recruiters and other human resource professionals who want to learn more from each other and less from so-called experts about issues such as generational gaps, web 2.0, corporate employment web site design, social networking, and why Best Buy employees often can't tell whether they're strolling the halls of their corporate campus or the concourse at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport.
Retiring baby boomers are already creating a significant challenge for U.S. employers in certain industries, according to survey findings released today. The survey was jointly conducted by Buck Consultants, an ACS company, WorldatWork, and Corporate Voices for Working Families. The survey, "The Real Talent Debate: Will Aging Boomers Deplete the Workforce?" assessed responses from more than 480 organizations in a broad cross-section of industries.
Forty-two percent of all respondents indicated the aging workforce issue is significant. Of this group, 50% have a majority of mature workers eligible to retire in five to ten years. One-half of respondents in this group also see a current shortage of skilled workers.
The aging workforce is especially critical in the healthcare sector and oil and gas industry, with 66% and 65% of respondents, respectively, citing the issue as a significant challenge. Industries such as manufacturing and technology are less likely (34% and 23%, respectively) to perceive this issue as a significant challenge.
The departure of senior leadership was identified as the greatest potential risk associated with the exodus of mature workers (52%), followed by the departure of middle management (41%), and technical talent and knowledge workers (39%).
"It’s more than just a problem of not having enough bodies to replace retiring boomers," said James Sowers, Managing Director of Buck Consultants’ human resource management practice. "The real challenge is transferring their knowledge and talents to succeeding generations of workers."
Sowers noted that the survey respondents are currently using or planning to institute formal mentoring programs (57%), knowledge gap analyses (69%), and intergenerational work teams (44%) as strategies to address this talent transfer challenge.
However, more than 80% of respondents, regardless of industry, have not surveyed their mature workers to determine future work preferences or intentions. Forty-two percent have not even identified who is responsible in their organization for knowledge transfer and knowledge management.
"Solving the problems posed by the aging workforce is going to require out-of-the-box thinking," said Ryan Johnson, Director of Public Affairs for WorldatWork. "We need to get rid of the idea that retirement is freedom from all work, and change it to the notion of retirement as freedom to do different kinds of work."
To address retention of retirement-eligible workers, 48% of respondents currently offer flexible work schedules and 23% plan to adopt them. Forty-two percent currently offer consulting assignments to older workers. Forty-seven percent offer or are considering phased retirement, and 43% offer or are considering alternative job design.
Other key survey findings include:
In recognition of the talented businesswomen in the non-profit sector, MENTTIUM Corporation, on behalf of its Advisory Councils, is offering several full scholarship awards to the prestigious MENTTIUM 100 (r) leadership development program.
MENTTIUM 100 (r) Program participants are paired with a more senior executive from another company for a year-long mentoring partnership accompanied by business education and networking opportunities.
Hailed as “the model for mentoring systems nationwide,” by the U.S. Department of Labor, MENTTIUM has created more than 50,000 mentoring partnerships since it was founded in 1991. Many of America’s premier companies and senior executives participate in the MENTTIUM 100 Program making this a “once-in-a-career” opportunity for emerging female leaders.
“No one person has all the answers,” said Kim Vappie, COO of MENTTIUM Corporation. “But by participating in the MENTTIUM 100 Program, a woman is able to build a personal board of directors to help guide her career.”
Women with a minimum six years professional experience, above-average performance and proven commitment to professional and personal growth are qualified to apply. Candidates should be in a leadership position within the non-profit sector. The 2007 recipients will be honored at a Program Launch.
Qualified candidates should submit online applications at www.menttium.com. The deadlines for candidates are:
U.S. employers plan to maintain a cautious approach toward hiring during the third quarter of 2007, according to the seasonally adjusted results of the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey conducted quarterly by Manpower Inc.
"The survey suggests that it will be a cool summer when it comes to hiring in the U.S.," said Jeffrey A. Joerres, Chairman & CEO of Manpower Inc. "Employers are holding steady with their employment projections for the third quarter and taking a wait-and-see approach as they begin to look toward year-end."
Of the 14,000 U.S. Employers surveyed, 29% expect to increase their workforces during the third quarter of 2007, while 7% expect to trim their payrolls. Fifty-eight percent expect no change in the hiring pace, and 6% are undecided about their hiring plans.
The seasonally adjusted survey results show that hiring activity in nearly all industry sectors surveyed is expected to remain steady during the summer months of 2007. Employers in Construction, Durable and Non-Durable Goods Manufacturing, Transportation/Public Utilities, Finance and Services all foresee a hiring climate that is unchanged from the second quarter forecast, while Mining, Wholesale/Retail Trade and Public Administration employers anticipate a slight decrease in the hiring pace. Despite the decline in Mining, employers in this industry sector have the most optimistic staffing plans for the upcoming quarter.
"In general, employer optimism about hiring is expected to hold firm in the third quarter across most industry sectors," said Jonas Prising, President of Manpower North America. "However, employers in select industries are losing confidence about adding employees including those in the Construction, Wholesale/Retail Trade and Finance/Insurance/Real Estate sectors. The third-quarter hiring projections are a sign that the moderate decline in these industry sectors is likely to continue through the next three months."
Within the four U.S. regions surveyed, job prospects are strongest in the West. Employers in the Northeast continue to be the least optimistic about hiring -- most notably in the Non-Durable Goods Manufacturing sector, where there is a significant weakening in job prospects. A quarter-over-quarter analysis indicates that employers in the West are more optimistic about hiring for the third quarter, while those in the Midwest and South expect little change in their staffing plans. In the Northeast, companies are slightly less likely to increase headcount compared with second quarter.
I had the pleasure earlier this month of being a guest on Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning show with Lindsey Pollak, author of Getting from College to Career: 90 Things To Do Before You Join the Real World. In addition to writing, Lindsey is also an accomplished editor and speaker specializing in career advice for young professionals. She speaks frequently at colleges, universities, and corporate settings across the country. She's insightful, intelligent, positive, energetic, and funny.
After the show, Lindsey and I traded a series of complimentary emails. During the back-and-forth, she asked if I would be interested in reviewing a copy of her book. I jumped at the opportunity because it is one of those books that is easy to read in digestible chunks by the young professionals who use CollegeRecruiter.com to help them find internships, entry level jobs, and other career opportunities.
I would recommend Lindsey's book to any Millennial who is struggling to find a great internship or entry level career opportunity or who is trying to be proactive by preparing themselves for that challenge. Unlike a lot of other career books which are heavy on theory and suffer from never ending chapters that have a lot of writing but don't communicate much information, Lindsey's book is heavy on stories and anecdotes, which help make the information come alive in a very concrete manner. Her 90 tips are like mini-lessons with many being about a page in length and almost all being a couple of pages or less.
This is a rare combination of an easy-to-read book with excellent information for a generation that so desperately needs guidance. This book isn't preachy and understands that this is a highly motivated, intelligent generation that nevertheless is lacking in experience in how to find a career simply because this is the first time they are encountering this challenge.
Too much Pronger, too much Giguere, too much Niedermayer (squared), too much physical play, too much McDonald, too much Carlyle, too much Burke, not enough Spezza, not enough referees, not enough exposure between the East and West during the season -- anything else? Oh yeah, did I mention too much Pronger?
Despite the predictions of many so-called hockey experts, the Anaheim Ducks (it is so 2005 to call them the Anaheim Mighty Ducks) beat the snot out of Ottawa and made what looked like an incredibly balanced Stanley Cup Final look anything but. So it has now been 19 years since a Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup. Montreal's victory in 1993 doesn't count because they're in New France, as any good western Canadian will tell you. But over the past few years we've seen Tampa, Carolina, and Anaheim win. Not Toronto. Not Vancouver. Not Calgary. Not Edmonton. Not even Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. Brutal.
In all seriousness, I was rooting for Anaheim because I really wanted to see Pronger, Selanne, Carlyle, and Burke win the Cup. These Hall of Famers have earned it. I did predict before the playoffs started that Anaheim was the team to beat, but I had more confidence in Emery than I did in Giguere. Well, Jiggy proved me wrong. What a perfectly built team for the playoffs. Talented, tough, disciplined (except for the occasional flip out which can be helpful as the Senators never knew what to expect and guys like Spezza played like they were in fear -- they probably were). Congrats to the Ducks. The best team won.
Are members of Gen Y, also known as Millenials, the lazy, selfish, narcissistic, and demanding new generation of employees that believe them to be? According to Sarah Pierce of Enterpreneur.com, the attitudes of this new generation "are actually intuitive responses to a changing economy. And if employers want to keep up, they better change, too."
Gen Y'ers are disloyal.
Myth. They're loyal but not blindly loyal as were their Baby Boomer parents when their parents were in the twenties. Gen Y'ers are loyal but expect to be fairly compensated for the work they put in. If employers aren't willing to be loyal to their Gen Y employees, then that lack of loyalty will be returned.
Gen Y'ers don't want to pay their dues.
Myth. Gen Y'ers will absolutely do grunt work but they need to know what the payoff is and not just in the vague terms that placated their Baby Boomer parents when they were in their twenties. Although the Baby Boomer managers of Gen Y'ers may be resentful of the changing reality in the workforce, the fact is that the reality has changed and Gen Y'ers understand the new paradigms. Unlike the reality facing Baby Boomers when they were in their twenties, today's twenty-somethings understand that today's employers no longer are inclined to award status, prestige, authority, flexibility and rewards on the basis of seniority. Instead, rewards are meted out on the basis of short-term measurable goals.
Gen Y'ers need constant praise.
Myth. There is a significant difference between "need" and "want." Does this generation need constant praise? No. Do they want it? Yes. They are more high maintenance than previous generations because their Baby Boomer parents have raised them to want constant praise and many of them have been protected from experiencing any real failures. In a world when every child is above average, it is no wonder than some struggle when they enter the workforce and discover that they will sometimes fail and be told that they have failed. Yet some managers fail to understand that the overwhelming majority of all employees, including Gen Y'ers simply want to be treated courteously and honestly. If they succeed, praise and reward them. If they fail, critique their work and point them in the right direction.
Yesterday at the dinner table my wife and I had one of those "we must be doing something right" moments. We were talking about work and how we're about to hire a new Client Services Representative when our 12 year old (we also have 10 and 8 year olds) said that hiring someone is the highest level of tzedakah. For those who do not know Hebrew, and I fall into the group that knows just a little, tzedakah is often translated as being equivalent to charity or tithe but that is not an accurate translation because charity implies that your heart motivated to act. Tzedakah, however, literally means righteousness. In other words, tzedakah means doing the right thing.
I was pretty sure that my 12 year old was right but I looked it up today and confirmed that all of those years of Religious School didn't go to waste. Maimonides defined nine levels in giving tzedakah:
Source: http://www.shamash.org/lists/scj-faq/HTML/faq/11-07-01.html
We deliver multiple targeted email campaigns per week to employers and other organizations who want to reach our double opt-in database of 8.9 million college students and recent graduates. For years we hardly had any ask how many of the recipients asked to be removed from our list, but that question started popping up a few months and became pretty frequent. Actually, it is good question because it helps the advertiser understand the annoyance factor: are they ticking off as many people as they're recruiting?
The solution to the question was to provide the answer. We added a new field to our report so that all targeted email clients now received that information. Below is a typical tracking report for a targeted email campaign that we deployed a week ago. Note that it continues to include information about the number of emails we delivered (we guarantee 100 percent delivered emails so that's always what the client purchased), the number of emails opened (how many were read), clicks, and the new unsubscribe column.
The new report has proven to be a hit with the clients who were seeking that information. They're getting what they need and the low unsubscribes must be comforting to them as they can see in black-and-white that their campaigns are not annoying. If they weren't well targeted or if the list wasn't double opt-in or if the creative was awful then perhaps they'd be annoying but that's a topic for another blog entry.
Chief Financial Officers and other financial executives expect to continue hiring accounting and finance professionals in the third quarter although at a more moderate rate than during the second quarter. Six percent of chief financial officers (CFOs) surveyed anticipate adding employees and 3 percent forecast personnel cutbacks. Ninety percent of those polled foresee no change in staff levels. Respondents cited rising workloads as the primary driver of hiring.
The national poll includes responses from more than 1,400 CFOs from a stratified random sample of U.S. companies with 20 or more employees. It was conducted by an independent research firm and developed by Robert Half International, the world’s largest staffing services firm specializing in accounting, finance and information technology. Robert Half has been tracking financial hiring activity in the United States since 1992.
“Companies have become more strategic in their hiring efforts and are looking for individuals who combine strong technical expertise with outstanding communication skills,” said Max Messmer, chairman and CEO of Robert Half International. “Once solid candidates are identified, employers are moving quickly to bring them on board.”
Messmer added, “The demand for skilled accounting and finance professionals remains strong, and firms must find ways to differentiate themselves -- from providing higher compensation and better benefits to enhancing the work environment -- to attract top performers.”
Accounting and Financial Hiring -- By Region
The Mountain states of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming and West South Central states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas forecast the greatest gains in hiring. In each region, 10 percent of financial executives said they plan to add staff and one percent expect reductions in personnel, a net nine percent increase.
“The tight labor market in the Mountain states is causing many organizations to offer higher salaries and additional perks to secure financial talent,” said Messmer.
“In the West South Central, hiring is being led by the manufacturing and oil and gas industries,” added Messmer. “In particular, businesses need staff accountants who can assist with growth initiatives.”
CFOs in the East South Central states of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee also anticipate above-average hiring activity. A net six percent of financial executives plan to bring in full-time accounting and finance employees during the quarter.
Accounting and Financial Hiring -- By Industry
Among industries, CFOs in construction are the most optimistic about hiring in the third quarter. Nine percent anticipate increasing staff levels and 1 percent foresee personnel reductions, a net eight percent increase.
Hiring activity in manufacturing also is expected to outpace the national forecast, with a net seven percent of financial executives anticipating bringing in new employees in the quarter. A net six percent of CFOs polled in both the retail and wholesale sectors indicated they plan to add accounting and finance professionals to their teams.
-- Robert Half International was founded in 1948 and is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Its financial staffing divisions include Accountemps®, Robert Half® Finance & Accounting and Robert Half® Management Resources, for temporary, full-time and senior-level project professionals, respectively. The company has more than 350 staffing locations throughout North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, and offers online job search services on its divisional websites, all of which can be accessed at www.rhi.com.
Measuring success is critical in recruiting. There are four general types of metrics on which to concentrate – cost, quality, quantity and time. This blog focuses on the costs of recruiting.
Possibly the most overused and least-understood metric in recruiting is "cost per hire" (CPH). At its core, CPH should be very simple, right? Identifying CPH can be as simple as noting how much an agency cost you for a hire – agency fee multiplied by the candidate’s salary — most likely one of the highest cost per hires your organization pays.
However, as with many simple things, the complexity lies in the details of the metric and its implementation. For example, Recruiters Network has a CPH calculator that concentrates on six factors while Tek Systems has a 33-factor CPH calculator. Which one is more accurate? Hopefully, this variation allows you to realize that " Cost per hire might just be the great unknown and misunderstood aspect of staffing (Monster.com)."
When you are calculating CPH, there are several things to remember:
Numerator and Denominator of Cost Per Hire (CPH)
Measuring an accurate "cost" in the cost per hire (CPH) metric must include three separate elements; direct costs, indirect costs and risk costs. Once the cost is established, the denominator of the metric, number of hires, is equally important, and how you define this number will affect the metric.
Direct Costs of Recruiting
These costs are relatively easy to quantify, but it’s often hard to find all of the elements, as they may be distributed throughout your organization’s accounting structure.
Selection costs are background checks, drug screens, relocation, printing welcome packets, etc. H1B Visa costs can be included here, or in the sourcing category.
Indirect costs can be divided into sub-categories, too. Personally, I use process costs, opportunity costs and intangible costs.
Risks of Recruiting
Risks are not necessarily costs, but can greatly contribute to the "cost of hiring." Risks cannot be compared with direct or indirect costs because they are probabilistic – they may or may not occur. While you will spend money on a job board and your managers will spend too much time reviewing resumes, you may or may not incur a penalty for EEOC or OFCCP violations. However, if that does happen, it typically dwarfs other costs. You would be foolish to ignore risk costs.
We won’t focus on risks, except to note that you should make every effort to identify and control them, as they are a very real potential cost of recruiting, especially if you ignore the "process" part above.
The Denominator – Number of Hires
Finally, once you have figured out your "cost," you need to know how many "hires" you actually made. This seems simple, but I have seen many clients that don’t know the answer to this question. Make it a point to diligently track this number – it is critical.
You can split the number of hires into specific groups in order to calculate and track different CPH. For example, costs for different position tiers (executive, professional or hourly staff) or for different position profiles (remember the CPH of that un-filled high-value sales position). It all depends on what is important to your organization, and what integrates with your recruitment strategy the best.
You may also want to consider if the number of hires is the right denominator. Should you consider the work your recruiting team was forced to do on requisitions that closed prior to a hire being made as part of the costs? Some cutting-edge recruiting providers are measuring the "cost to submit the candidate that eventually gets hired." You get the point – there are many ways to peel this onion.
Final Note
If you care about the costs of recruiting, and you should, you ought to give how and what you measure around costs some serious thought. Think about getting some professional assistance with your analysis. It will pay for itself many times over.
After all of this analyzing, I’m going to invest in the cost of a cold one at my local networking establishment!
-- -- By Doug Fuehne, Co-Founder and Vice President - Services, Scalability and Strategy at Quantum Solutions for Business. This article is courtesy of Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching entry level jobs and other career opportunities.
Yesterday I wrote about how college students who are looking for an internship or recent graduates who are hunting for an entry level job or other career opportunity could best negotiate their salaries. Let's continue the conversation today.
You want a higher salary in your next job, right? Yet, you're worried about discussing salary, right? If you're like most people, you answered, "yes" to both questions. Let's face it, discussing salary is a touchy subject in any job interview -- what if you ask for too much or not enough? Here's how you can navigate the salary question and position yourself to make more money, before and during the job interview:
So, in your cover letter, I would simply write, "My salary requirements are negotiable." This shows you've read the ad, but are choosing to dodge the issue. Most HR professionals and hiring managers I've talked to won't take offense. On the contrary, it gives them one LESS reason NOT to call you.
-- Article courtesy of Beyond.com.
Joe Grimm of the Detroit Free Press provided some great advice to a recent college graduate who was entering the world of journalism and wasn't sure if the salary being offered by her employer was sufficient even though they were giving her a raise from her previous position. He essentially recommended that the candidate use a salary calculator to determine what others in her position and geographic area were receiving. I agree but I believe that is only one part of the process.
Whenever an organization prices its products, it should price them based on their cost to produce and market and the value that the product brings to the customer. Candidates are marketing themselves so they should do the same. They should price their services based on the cost and on the value. For the cost, I would look to the salary calculators as it gives you a good feeling for what others are charging with similar credentials. But for value you need to get more creative. You need to estimate the additional revenues that you'll generate for your employer or the expenses that you'll save them. If you find that you'll save them $250,000 per year and they're offering to pay you $25,000, you should realize that they have some flexibility especially if you provide those numbers to them as the hiring manager is probably in the dark about your value just as much as you were before you pulled out your calculator.
Many candidates object by saying that it is too hard to estimate their value. Wrong. They just need to get creative. Let's look at an administrative assistant. If he figures out a more efficient filing system that takes one minute to find each file rather than two minutes under the old system, then that's a real cost saving. Now extrapolate. If 25 files are pulled per workday, that's 125 files per week and 6,500 per year. If the person pulling the files makes $20 per hour plus benefits and payroll taxes, that person probably costs the employer about $30 per hour. The new system saves that person 6,500 minutes per year or 108.33 hours. At $30 per hour, that's $3,250. Now do the same for everything else that you can do for the employer that generates additional revenue, saves them money or both.
By anybody's measure, Eddie Murphy is a successful entertainer. A huge hit on Saturday Night Live before his 20th birthday and a crossover to movies shortly thereafter, he's been a prominent figure in the entertainment business for 25 years. During his promotional tour for Dreamgirls in December, 2006 he made a visit to Inside the Actor's Studio that revealed an particularly interesting insight on taking advice.
Usually when you see Eddie Murphy on a talk show, like with Leno or Dave, he's playful with a hint of cockiness. Like a lot of people who sit opposite James Lipton, he was almost all business during this particular interview. Stoic much of the time and, as the environment tends to foster, very reflective of what he's done with his career, Eddie was very different than every other time I've seen him plug a movie. Throughout the main part of the show with Lipton, he made multiple references to studying the successful aspects of those who had come before him. He made the expected references to people like Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby, but it is clear he does his homework based on his other comments. For example, he went as far as to admit stealing aspects of certain performances for his own such as Charles Laughton's Hunchback of Notre Dame and its influence on Eddie's version of The Nutty Professor.
During the student question section, though, he said something very interesting about advice. He was asked a variant of the typical question, "What advice would you give to an up and coming actor?" Here was his answer:
"The advice I would give an actor is not to take any advice from anyone. . . When you make that choice [to be an actor], you know it and you know what's in your heart and you know what you want to do and you know what your abilities are deep down inside and lots of times advice can screw you up."
On its surface, he seems to indicate you should never take advice at any time, but he then told a story that gave some more depth to what he was trying to say.
He said that as a 16-year old on the stand up comic circuit, Rodney Dangerfield saw Eddie do his act. Many people reading this have no idea who that is, but do yourself a favor and follow the link to find out. Suffice it to say, Rodney Dangerfield was a comedy king in the late 70s and early 80s (best known by general audiences for his role in Caddyshack) when this incident took place, so naturally Eddie sought guidance from him. Dangerfield advised Eddie to cut down on his use of profanity. He told Eddie he was funny, but was going too far with his use of expletives.
Ultimately, Eddie decided that his use of language was a fundamental part of who he was as an entertainer and he ignored the advice. Years later, after Eddie had achieved fame, he next saw Dangerfield when they happened to be using adjacent urinals at a bathroom in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. When Rodney noticed who it was next to him, he simply shrugged his shoulders and said, "Who knew?"
To me, the point of the story isn't that you simply ignore advice out of hand, as the original quote implies. Instead, it shows that you have to know who you are and what you want to achieve in order to put whatever suggestions you might get to their best use. Ultimately, your day to day decisions are nobody else's but yours. You have to decide what advice is good or bad given the situation. The important part is that you be open to ideas in the first place and know enough about what you are trying to achieve, both in the short term and the long term, in order to make an informed choice when advice comes your way.
-- By Pete Johnson, Nerd Guru and courtesy of Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching entry level jobs and other career opportunities.
I've been a Dell customer since 1990 when Michael Dell himself was probably still tightening screws on laptops sent out the door. My first Dell was a 386SX laptop, which was a fantastic tool for banging out papers in the school library.
Fast forward 17 years to 2007. The calculator that Michael probably has strapped to his belt surely has more firepower than my trusty 386SX did on its best days and the Dell company has evolved from being a minor mail order computer manufacturer to a leading mail order computer manufacturer to a leading mail order electronics manufacturer to a leading electronics manufacturer. That's right, they no longer are exclusively a mail order business. You can now buy a Dell in Wal-Mart and through kiosks located in malls etc.
So how does a company that has always prided itself on being at the leading edge of useful technology recruit call center sales representatives? One way is through a targeted email campaign (full disclosure: the campaign is going out through CollegeRecruiter.com). But if that was the extent of the story then I wouldn't have taken the time to write this blog posting. Thankfully there's a great twist to the story.
Although we deliver multiple targeted email campaigns for our employer, school, and other clients every week and often multiple campaigns a day, we've never delivered a campaign that instructs job seekers to send a cell phone text message (SMS) for information about the job opportunity. I love it. I love what Dell is doing because they understand that the candidates that they're recruiting communicate far more by text messaging than by email and wouldn't know a fax machine or snail mail envelope from a 386SX laptop.
Dell's candidates are Millenials a/k/a Gen Y'ers. They're not Baby Boomers or even Gen X'ers. And because Dell understands that to successfully recruit Millenials you must speak to their needs and wants, Dell is speaking in a loud and clear voice by including the SMS option that Dell is not only willing but actually eager to communicate with their Millenial candidates in the manner most desired by those candidates.
Too often we get caught up in what is efficient and forget that what is effective is just as important and often more so. Dell is being somewhat inefficient by allowing and even encouraging call center job seekers to communicate via SMS but that's okay because Dell is apparently betting on that communication leading to a more effective recruiting campaign. You know what? I'll take that bet...if I can bet on their side.
Bravo, Dell.
