We recently partnered with Salary.com to offer the students, recent graduates, and employers using CollegeRecruiter.com a wealth of information about compensation. You can now research an amazing amount of information through these tools:

1. Salary Wizard - How much are you worth?
2. Cost of Living Wizard - Does it make financial sense to relocate?
3. Job Assessor - Which job is right for you?
4. College Tuition Planner - How much do you need to save for college? Hint: it is more than you want to know.
5. Executive Compensation Wizard - Want to be an executive or at least be paid like they are? Use this tool to research the compensation of executives at many of the largest corporations.
6. Millionaire Maker - What will it take for to make you a million dollars?
7. Salary Timer - How much do you make per second, per minute, or over another period of time as compared to celebrities like Barry Bonds? Have even more fun by converting that to hamburgers. Have even more fun by comparing photos of young Bonds below left with a recent photo of a much larger Bonds on the right. Hmmm. The recent Bonds looks much, much bigger. Could it be too many hamburgers. No, that can't be it. Most of his bulk looks muscular and you get that from eating hamburgers. So how do you add all of that muscle. What else must you ingest or inject in order to bulk up that much, that quickly? Hmmm.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 30, 2007 at 2:10 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

What a shock. College students spend a lot of time on the Internet. No surprise there, but some of the details from a recent study by Burst Research is very interesting because it provides a fair amount of detail about what college students are doing and not doing while they're on-line and it also details what they're doing and not doing in other areas of their lives as a result of their Internet surfing:

• One third (33.0%) of college students spend more than ten hours per week on the Internet, and 19.6% spend more than 20 hours per week online.
• Among college students, Internet usage levels surpass those of television and terrestrial satellite radio.
• While one in three college students are heavy consumers of the Internet, only one in six (16.6%) watch more than ten hours per week of television and merely 5.5% listen to terrestrial/satellite radio more than ten hours per week.
• College students are multi-taskers – often consuming different media simultaneously. In fact, one-half (50.6%) of college students surf the Internet while watching television and 43.5% are online while listening to terrestrial/satellite radio.
• Top activities for students include downloading music (53.3%), listening to Internet radio (44.5%) and viewing streaming video content (42.6%).

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 30, 2007 at 7:55 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

College students for generations have studied abroad to gain a better understanding of the world, their areas of interest, and, well, to have even more fun than they can on their own college campuses. So it shouldn't be much of a surprise that today's college student is combining her thirst for a great internship with the benefits of studying abroad to create international internship opportunities. Since 2004, there has been a six percent increase in the number of college students pursuing international internship opportunities.

In addition, about 25 percent of students who study abroad also complete an internship during that experience. That's up from 17 percent in the 1980's and 21's in the 1990's.

Source: Campus Career Counselor

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 27, 2007 at 7:46 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Although today's college students and recent graduates are under far more financial pressure than those of previous generations, an increasingly large number of them are bypassing the opportunity to make big money after graduation by going to work first for service-oriented organizations such as AmeriCorps, Teach for America, and the Peace Corps.

Want some numbers to crunch on? I thought so. Consider these:

• In 1999, federal service initiative AmeriCorps enrolled 7,608 new college graduates. For 2007, that number will be 13,447.
• Teach for America received 13,500 applications in 2004 and 19,000 in 2006.
• The Peace Corps received 8,917 applications in 2001 and 12,242 in 2006.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 26, 2007 at 7:41 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

An increasingly large number of employers and college students view a great internship as the best path to landing a great entry level job upon graduation. Want an example? PricewaterhouseCoopers hired about 2,800 college students this summer for internships in their various offices. That's up from "just" 1,100 in 2002. But unlike some other employers, PwC does not see interns as merely temporary workers or short sources of labor. The evidence for that is that PwC extends offers for permanent employment to a remarkable 85 percent of its interns and, even more remarkably, 90 percent accept.

"We invest in them. We spend time developing and coaching them," said Amy Van Kirk, PwC's vice president of recruiting. Well, Amy, your success is well deserved.

Source: ABCNews.com

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 25, 2007 at 7:37 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

As the world gets flatter and more and more business people do more and more business globally, it seems to me that a premium will be paid to those who speak multiple languages. But an even greater premium will likely be paid to those who have successfully completed business language courses. There's a big difference, of course, between conversational questions like asking for directions to the nearest restaurant like most language courses teach and business questions like asking for pricing information on a custom built product.

I've run across one organization that offers such business language courses but there must be many. The one that I've run across is a U.K. firm that offers Spanish and English courses in London, Bristol, Brighton, Liverpool, etc. If there aren't many yet, hopefully there will be more in the future as there is a big need for services such as this.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 24, 2007 at 3:31 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I was contacted recently by one of the recruitment advertising agencies with a question: which employers are viewed as the most desirable by undergraduates? In other words, which employers have the strongest brand on-campus by today's college students and recent graduates? Universum Communications compiles data such as this and they recently put out a list of the employers with the strongest brand on undergraduate college campuses:

1. Google
2. Walt Disney
3. Apple
4. U.S. State Department
5. Peace Corps
6. Central Intelligence Agency
7. PricewaterhouseCoopers
8. Microsoft
9. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
10. Teach for America
11. Goldman Sachs
12. Ernst & Young
13. BMW
14. Mayo Clinic
15. Boeing
16. Sony
17. Deloitte & Touche
18. Johnson & Johnson
19. Nike
20. Lockheed Martin
21. Proctor & Gamble
22. Pfizer
23. Merrill Lynch
24. JPMorgan Investment Bank
25. General Electric

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 24, 2007 at 7:28 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Is the term "talent management" a fuzzy new catchphrase for tired, old concepts? Or is it a term that defines a dynamic way of thinking about managing key personnel that drives better performance? According to a recent Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) study based on responses from 524 business professionals, the answer depends on how companies use it.

Talent management is a poorly defined and executed concept in many companies, with only about a third of participants rating their organizations as good (30%) or excellent (5%) at managing talent. Just a quarter of respondents say their organizations have an agreed-on definition of talent management, and just 38% say the phrase is used to a high or an above-moderate degree.

But talent management is associated with performance benefits for companies that manage it well. Companies that define the phrase and use it more frequently are much more likely to see themselves as good at managing talent. More importantly, the study found that these same companies are significantly more likely to be high market performers. Whereas only about a third of all respondents rate their ability to manage talent as good or excellent, nearly half of the best market performers in the survey do.

"It’s no surprise to me that talent management pays performance dividends when it’s done right," said Jay Jamrog, i4cp’s senior vice president of research. "As the war for talent heats up, more companies will be looking at integrated talent management as their secret weapon to succeed and ultimately outperform. But it has to be more than just a buzzword. It has to become part of the culture of the organization, and the responsibility has to be borne by groups outside of the HR department."

i4cp’s talent management study shows that companies that identify themselves as good talent managers are also more likely to integrate talent management with other human capital processes. And they are more likely to believe that all managers, not just HR professionals, are responsible for the execution of talent management.

Jamrog noted that integrating talent management into the culture requires communicating what it means and why it’s important. The i4cp survey shows that the most widely cited strategy for improving talent management is to more effectively communicate its importance.

Participants in the study also helped define what goes into an integrated talent management initiative. The study identified nine primary components:

1. Leadership development
   
2. Career planning
   
3. Development of high-potential employees
   
4. Performance management
   
5. Succession planning
   
6. Learning and training
   
7. Competency management
   
8. Retention
   
9. Professional development
   

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 23, 2007 at 8:05 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The Minnesota Headhunter was right. He was right. I was wrong. I was wrong. There. I said it. Twice in fact. He predicted that we'd have WAY more than my prediction of two or three dozen people sign-up for today's Minneapolis Recruiting.com Roadshow Unconference. We capped the sign-up at 100, reached that with a week to go, and created a waiting list.

A handful of us got together last night for dinner, general bs'ing, and some last minute planning. We made some predictions for the attendance. Mr. I'm Always Right guessed that we'd have 78 attendees. I went with the Bob Barker strategy and guessed 77 attendees. Don Ramer guessed 60 attendees. John Sumser guessed 50 attendees. The wager was $5 each.

The conference was today. Of the 100 sign-ups, 87 showed up and brought one to dozen friends. About half a dozen from Best Buy (the host) showed up. Add that to the eight speakers and the count was about 110-120. The final numbers are still being tallied but he was right. I was wrong. There. I said it. Three times in fact. And I am ever glad.

Initial feedback from the attendees was universally positive. Thrilled would be a better word. I was one of the presenters but did little else other than offer a few pieces of advice here and there so I'm taking no credit. The biggest complaint we had was that it wasn't long enough (always a good sign) and that the attendees wanted more time for networking so they could get to better know each other (also always a good sign).

Now if only the Gopher football team could perform so well...

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 20, 2007 at 2:25 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

College students and recent graduates are always asking which city is the best for them to live in. The short answer is that it depends. It depends upon what is important to them and that will be different from what is important to me, my sister, my friend, or others. When you have that type of discussion, invariably you'll find out that the college student is really asking which cities have the most internship opportunities and the recent college graduate is really asking which cities have the most entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

The following are the ten cities with the most number of internship opportunities and entry level jobs and other career opportunities for college students and recent graduates:

1. New York, NY
   
2. Los Angeles, CA
   
3. Washington, DC
   
4. Chicago, IL
   
5. San Francisco, CA
   
6. Dallas, TX
   
7. Philadelphia, PA
   
8. Miami, FL
   
9. Houston, TX
   
10. Phoenix, AZ
    

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 20, 2007 at 7:11 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

It is here. Finally here. Really here. Well, almost here. Tomorrow if the first of hopefully many Recruiting.com Roadshow Unconferences.

Paul DeBettignies, Don Ramer, John Sumser, and I got together tonight for a great dinner, a lot of laughs, and we even managed to share a bit of knowledge with each other. Tomorrow should be a blast.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 19, 2007 at 11:17 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

As the owner and an employee of CollegeRecruiter.com, I see the increasing costs of healthcare insurance from both sides of the desk. But many employees only see the increasing the bite that is coming out of their paychecks and assume that they are bearing the majority and perhaps all of the increased costs of healthcare. Some even believe that employers are paying less both in percentage and absolute dollars than they used to. The reality is that both employers and employees are paying more than they used to and often getting less.

According to the preliminary results from Compdata's Compensation Data 2007 survey, 67.6 percent of companies pay $150 to 349 monthly for each individual on employee only plans. In comparison, 78 percent of employers pay more than $450 on family plans. For these employers, the cost to cover a family for an entire year is over $5,400.

When examining costs on percentage plans, 56.8 percent of employers pay 70 to 89 percent of the premium on employee only plans, and 56 percent pay the same percentage of the premium per family. In addition, 38.9 percent of employers reported their annual deductibles were between $250 and 499 for individuals, while 53.5 percent said annual deductibles for families were more than $900.

Employee costs can also add up quickly for individuals and families. The Compensation Data 2007 results show a great number of employees, 48.7 percent, pay $25 to 74 of their monthly premium. This translates to as much as $888 annually. A large number of families, 42.7 percent, pay more than $250 of their monthly premium or over $3,000 per year. In the majority of plans, deductibles and/or co-insurance add to out-of-pocket costs for employees, as 77.4 percent of all plan types include them.

"Individuals often believe they are carrying the majority of health care cost increases on their own," said Amy Kaminski, manager of marketing programs for Compdata Surveys, the nation’s leading compensation and benefits survey data provider. "However, in actuality, both parties are sharing the burden of increasing costs at various degrees."

The Compensation Data 2007 results reported 22 percent of organizations have no waiting period for health insurance coverage, while the majority, 40.6 percent require one to 31 days of service. PPO plans are the most offered type of health insurance at 81.7 percent. They are followed by HMO plans at 29.5 percent and Indemnity at 19.7 percent.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 18, 2007 at 7:59 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Those worried that their Facebook or other social networking data can come back to haunt them in the employment context can take heart: employers can get in trouble as well if their use of such data is unauthorized and runs afoul of employment discrimination or privacy laws. Examples cited by George Lenard in an interview with ZDNet are:

1. If you you've granted your boss "friend" status, then you've likely given up any legal basis for “reasonable expectation of privacy” claims.
2. If you use a work computer to post information to Facebook and your boss gains access by using the Windows feature that remembers your password then you've likely given up your expectation of privacy but the actions by your boss are probably illegal under federal computer fraud and abuse act. Even if they are illegal, however, the reality is that you will likely lose your job and not know about the snooping so won't be able to pursue a claim against the employer.
3. If you make your boss a "friend" in Facebook, you've likely lost any chance of claiming a privacy interest in the information you post to your Facebook account regardless of how they use that information. So if you're arriving to work late each day and post that information to your Facebook account, you can't later claim that your boss violated your privacy interests because you were disciplined or even terminated because of the tardiness that they learned of through your Facebook postings. However, just because you've granted access to that information to your boss, you have not granted it to everyone in the world. So if you grant it to your non-work friend and your friend passes that information to your boss, you may still have a privacy interest in that information against your boss.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 17, 2007 at 6:28 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The good news for the Class of 2007 continues to roll in: employers project hiring 19.2 more recent college graduates this year than they did last year. Not surprisingly, compensation for those hires is also increasing with nine out of 10 employers reporting that they're having to compete more for those hires than they did in previous years. Employers also are projecting that the competition will only get worse for them, and better for the graduates, in coming years.

While many employers are scratching their heads over what to do about these economic indicators, over half are planning to change at least some of their recruitment strategies this year. These changes include increasing the focus in their efforts to recruit Gen Y candidates. But employers are also changing tactics such as increasing their average starting salary offers. The result is an almost across the board increase in starting compensation for 2007 college seniors:

• Accounting graduates average offers increased an average of 2.3 percent to $46,718.
• Business administration / management saw their offers increase 3.9 percent to $43,701.
• Economics grads are receiving an average of $48,483 and finance grads are receiving $47,239. These disciplines were previously reported as one figure so the percentage increase is unavailable this year.
• Management information systems / business data process grads received 4.2 percent higher offers, translating into average offers of $47,648. Those working for consulting firms fared even better with an average offer of $50,139.
• Marketing graduates increased their compensation by 6.1 percent with average offers of $40,161.
• Computer science graduates posted a 4.1 percent increase in their average salary offers with offers averaging $53,396.
• Information systems and systems graduates saw a 4.6 percent increase with their average offers being $50,852.
• Chemical and civil engineering grads posted 5.4 percent increases, bringing their average offers to $59,361 and $48,509, respectively.
• Computer engineering grads did even better with 4.8 percent increase to $56,201.
• Mechanical engineering grads saw their average salary offers increase by 4.6 percent to $54,128.
• Electrical engineering grads saw their offers increase by 3.2 percent to $55,292.
• Liberal arts majors have little to cry over with their offers being up 3.5 percent to $32,348.
• Political science / government majors had the least to cry over as they saw the highest increases with average offers being up 5.9 percent over last year to $34,590.
• English majors increased their offers by 5.3 percent to $32,553.
• Psychology majors were up 4.7 percent to $31,631.
• Sociology majors were up 3.5 percent with average salaries now being $32,033.
• History majors are looking forward to 3.3 percent increases to $33,768.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 16, 2007 at 7:25 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Paul DeBettignies, Managing Partner of Nerd Search, LLC, Josh Kahn of Best Buy / Accenture, and I came together a couple of months ago and laid the foundation for a free, half day conference for recruiters and other human resource professionals. We knew that a key component to the success of what later would become known as the Minneapolis Recruiting.com Roadshow Unconference would be to have a nationally known speaker keynote and I knew that John Sumser of Interbiznet and Recruiting.com was looking for a way of getting the word out about Recruiting.com so I contacted him to see if he'd be interested. Not only did he agree but he enthusiastically helped with some of the organizing.

Flash back a bit. Paul, Josh, and I are sitting around eating burritos at Chipotle and planning out the timing, duration, price, target market, location, etc. for the conference and we're having that discussion about who should keynote. As the conversation developed, Paul opines that he thinks we could have 100 or more participants but just as quickly said that he often will over estimate because he's such an optimist. I wouldn't call myself a pessimist as I tend to be on the optimistic side but I said that I thought we'd get around two to maybe three dozen attendees. Josh later lines up a room for 100 people and I figured we'd have a LOT of empty seats but this was the first time so the number of attendees was anyone's guess.

Flash forward. Two days ago Paul calls. We're oversold. More than 100 people have signed up in the 1.5 weeks since we started taking reservations. We're maintaining a waiting list and will email all of the attendees twice to remind them of the conference and ask them to notify us right away if their plans have changed so that someone from the waiting list can take their spot.

Wow. Paul deserves a real tip of the hat. If his recruiting gig ever gets old for him, he could do quite well as an event planner...especially if he does his planning at Chipotle.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 13, 2007 at 6:01 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

It is always nice to hear people saying nice things about you or your company's products. I had a couple of those today from advertising agency contacts who were praising our service and products. But that's not what this blog entry is about. Instead, it is about how great it feels to be the person who is dispensing the praise.

A few weeks ago, our web site suffered a denial of service attack that made our site unavailable for a few minutes. We were unaware of it until after the fact because INetU, our managed hosting company, identified the threat and immediately neutralized it for us. They then notified us of what had happened. I sent an email to our sales representative praising him and the rest of their team and received a request back for a testimonial. Smart. Very smart. I agreed.

The public relations person emailed a questionnaire to me and I completed it and emailed it back to her. She took the information and converted it into a web page that contains information about our site and why we like working with INetU. Smart. Very smart.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 13, 2007 at 5:53 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Months ago we were honored to be awarded the Weddle's User's Choice Award for being one of the 30 best job boards. As is the case with most industries, the number of major players is often surprisingly small and collegial. And those players often work together in a cooperative fashion to bring as much value to their clients as possible. Want an example?

One of our clients is Casino Careers Online. They were established in 1998 and opened their Casino Executive Search division in January 2003. Both companies are staffed by professionals with management experience in the casino-gaming industry, human resources and marketing.

Since its inception, Casino Careers has provided recruitment services to hundreds of gaming properties & companies. Thousands of employees, from entry-level to executive management, have been hired by employers recruiting thorough the web site.

We've learned from working with the folks there that over 300 casino-hotel resorts, cruise lines, riverboats, racinos, gaming technology, manufacturing, pari-mutuel, tribal enterprises, on-line gaming companies and regulatory agencies subscribe to post their career opportunities on the Casino Careers where they can use a host of recruitment tools and access a resume database of over 70,000 candidates.

If you're looking for a position in any of the above industries, then post your resume to CollegeRecruiter.com, apply to the job postings on our site which are of interest to you and for which you are qualified, and then head over to Casino Careers to do the same. They provide free on-line resume posting in confidential and open access formats to protect the interests of candidates and you'll be able to access and edit your resume at anytime.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 13, 2007 at 9:16 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

When it comes to career development, many companies have an "it takes a village" mindset. According to a just-released study conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), 60% of the 382 polled companies have a career development program in place and 41% of those use in-house coaches and/or mentors to drive development. The study also suggests that people who want coaching and mentoring are better off working in the rich and diverse “villages” of large corporations.

"We asked about career development outside of skill-based training and found that this kind of thing is a community effort," said Jay Jamrog, Senior Vice President of Research at i4cp. "By far the most common type of development programs are mentoring and coaching. People aren’t relying on trainers. They’re relying on one another, tapping into each other’s experience and expertise, especially in larger corporations."

The study findings showed that use of coaching/mentoring programs rises along with company size. For example, 48% of companies with fewer than 500 employees use coaches and mentors. That rises to 58% for those firms with 3,000 to 5,000 employees, and it peaks at 65% for companies with 10,000 or more employees.

The study also found that career development programs are an up-and-coming trend. Of the companies that presently do not have such programs, four-fifths plan to implement one within the next two years.

"There are a couple of possible reasons for this," said Jamrog. "First, a lot of companies are complaining about talent and leadership shortages, and these programs are one of the best ways of addressing those shortages. Second, younger employees attach a great amount of value to these kinds of programs. If they don’t feel they’re getting anywhere or learning anything, they’ll just leave. So these are retention as well as development programs."

Among other findings, the study showed that more than half of companies (53%) select career development candidates by manager referral, although a number did say they use a combination of manager referral and employee self-selection. Also, the majority of companies (76%) integrate their programs with talent management goals, and 81% say career development is integrated with business objectives.

"That just shows good sense," said Jamrog. "Development is as important for the organization as a whole as it is for the careers of individuals."

-- The Career Development Practitioner Consensus Survey was conducted by i4cp, in conjunction with HR.com, in June 2007.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 13, 2007 at 7:34 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Dave Lefkow of TalentSpark and author of the Director of Recruiting blog, posted an interesting blog entry in which he wondered why so many recruiters blog and then answered his own question:

1. Recruiters know the hiring process better than anyone.
2. Recruiters know that publishing interesting content helps them get found by employers, helps add context to their resumes and provides interesting fodder for discussion during an interview.
3. Recruiters know that blogs help them connect with other people with similar interests that can help them find gigs down the road.

But I think the more interesting question is why don't more recruiters blog?

• Third Party Recruiters a/k/a TPR's a/k/a Headhunters - Many and perhaps most of the tens of thousands of headhunters run their own small recruiting businesses or work within a firm of a handful or two of people. They know their employer and candidate clients well. They are specialists and have a wealth of knowledge about their niche. Each could own their own niche by regularly blogging about topics which are either directly related to that niche or or interest to that niche. The poster child for these bloggers is Paul DeBettignies of Nerd Search, LLC, who blogs at MNHeadhunter.com and the CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Employers Blog. If you're one of these headhunters and you're not blogging, imitate what Paul is doing. Most blogging recruiters are headhunters but the vast majority of headhunters are not yet blogging. Yet.
• Corporate Recruiters - Most of these folks work in medium to large organizations and spend most of their time sourcing rather than recruiting. Although it is often said that successful recruiters are sales people, most of the work that these folks end up having to do is more akin to the work done by accountants than by sales people. They typically don't eat what they earn and are constrained by the formal and informal rules within their large organizations. Blogging for these folks is risky and has few tangible returns. Yet a disproportionately high percentage of the stars in this world are bloggers. Just correlation or cause too? Me thinks cause too. The poster child for these bloggers is Dennis Smith of T-Mobile, who blogs at WirelessJobs.com and for the CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Employers Blog.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 12, 2007 at 12:11 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Human resource search engine optimization expert Joel Cheesman was kind enough to post a blog entry today about our just released Facebook job search application. Thanks, Joel! And thanks, Facebook!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 11, 2007 at 11:19 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Now that the Vancouver (British Columbia) Police Department has started to recruit new police officers using virtual world Second Life, you know that the technology has gone mainstream.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 10, 2007 at 2:08 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

If you think that today’s two- and four-year college students lack solid writing and leadership abilities, you’re not alone. According to a recent study of 431 human resource professionals across the United States, recent college graduates are not ready for the workplace.

Although 71 percent of the human resource professionals said written communication was very important for graduates of community, technical, and other two-year colleges, 47 percent said that these graduates are deficient in their written communication skills. Similarly, 83 percent said that skill was very important for graduates of four-year schools yet 28 percent said graduates of four-year colleges are deficient in that area.

The concern didn’t stop with written communication skills either. Some 45 percent of human resource professionals said leadership qualities is a very important skill for two-year graduates to have and 82 percent said the same for graduates of four-year schools. Yet 43 percent said two-year graduates were deficient in their leadership skills and 24 percent said that four-year graduates were deficient in that area.

-- Sources: Campus Career Counselor; Are They Really Ready to Work?; Inside Higher Ed, October 3, 2006; and Financial Times, October 1, 2006.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 10, 2007 at 7:34 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the organizations that I've had the pleasure of working with over the years has been Kennedy Information. Most of what I've done with them has been to speak at their regular human resource and recruiting conferences, but they recently invited me to be a member of their Recruiting Trends Thought Leadership group, which I gladly accepted.

As a member of that group, I have the opportunity to write a monthly article for their web site. They just published my most recent article as the leading article. Here's an excerpt:

A tight talent supply of highly talented college students has drawn attention to the latest developments in entry-level online marketing positions. The need of Internet marketers has caused some companies to hire fresh candidates with one year of experience for $40,000, according to Revenue, an affiliate marketing magazine. This new decree outweighs the current wages available for traditional entry-level marketing positions which is currently $35,000. Even though some marketing companies are interested in recent graduates, they still want to hire candidates with on-the-job experience.

To continue reading the rest of the article, go to http://www.recruitingtrends.com/online/thoughtleadership/476-1.html

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 10, 2007 at 7:17 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The rapid growth of internships has been one of the most incredible changes in the world of college recruiting since we entered the business in 1995 and launched CollegeRecruiter.com in 1996. A solid internship was highly desired both by employer and employee back in 1995 but neither side consider the temp-to-perm relationship as essential. Today, at least one great internship and preferably two or even three is not uncommon and more and more employers have come to recognize that the internship is the entry level employer’s best opportunity to find and recruit the best students.

In 1995, it wasn’t unusual to talk with employers who hired recent college graduates through on-campus recruiting but who didn’t have any internship opportunities. Today, few employers with such formalized college recruiting programs hire only the graduates. They now almost all hire students for internship opportunities and then hope to convert 75, 80, or even a higher percentage into permanent, full-time, entry level employees.

“We continue to find that students who complete internships as undergraduates remain in high demand upon graduation,” said Andrew Sears, chair of the information systems department at the University of Maryland (Baltimore County). “Our students intern at AT&T, Deloitte and Touche, IBM, T. Rowe Price, the Department of Defense, Lockheed Martin, and others. We currently have more industry requests for talented student interns than we have students to fill those positions.”

If your firm recruits recent college graduates then it should also have an internship program. Pay your interns as a successful internship program is not about cheap labor. A successful internship program is a program where at least 75 percent of interns are hired for permanent, full-time, entry level positions upon graduation. Employers who offer that high a percentage but fail to convert those employees from temporary to permanent have failed as the students have experienced what they employer has to offer and chosen to pursue better alternatives. Employers who make offers to fewer than 75 percent are also failing as they are failing to select students with the potential to become permanent employees or the students have the potential but the employer has made the mistake of looking to them for cheap labor.

College recruiting is strategic as it is all about recruiting your next generation of leaders. As more and more Baby Boomers retire, more and more employers will need to replace their talent and there simply aren’t enough of us Gen X’ers to go around. So employers have been and increasingly will turn to the colleges to replace their retirees. And when they turn to the colleges, they need to create a successful internship program to ensure a sufficient flow of students into their college hiring program.

Source: Campus Career Counselor

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 9, 2007 at 7:29 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The summer months often allow for more relaxed dress codes in offices and for some employers defining a specific dress code may be difficult. Giving employees the option to dress down at work allows for a more comfortable work environment and saves employees time and money. Also, it has been proven by successful companies such as Microsoft, that a casual dress code and work environment can still provide optimum results for a company. Many argue that a professional dress code will create increased productivity but that is not always the case.

Business casual can often times be difficult to strictly define, and when guidelines are not implemented some issues may develop in the workplace. Generally speaking, business casual refers to dressing professionally, yet allowing for a relaxed, neat and comfortable appearance. Common sense should allow employees to assume shorts, low-cut shirts, halter or tube tops, ratty jeans and T-shirts to be saved for a picnic or day at the beach. However, it is the employer’s responsibility to provide a dress code to prevent any inappropriate attire in the workplace.

Even some of the most formal workplaces now institute a "casual Friday" policy for the hot, summer months. Just how casual one can dress does of course depend on the company you are working for. Jeans, sneakers and flip flops are becoming more widely accepted in the tech savvy, internet age of companies, where face to face interaction with clients is rare. However, this attire is seen as inappropriate even for casual attire in a more formal corporate setting.

As acceptable forms of summer business-casual attire may vary from job to job, it is important to get to know the fashion sense of your particular workplace. Asking the Human Resources department for specific guidelines and implementing one if it does not yet exist is very important to prevent any controversy over what people wear to work. Often times the easiest thing to do is look around at what everyone in the office is wearing and take into consideration your role in the company including who you interact with throughout the day.

-- Courtesy of Beyond.com

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 6, 2007 at 7:49 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

As the weather heats up, many employees are packing their bags for a summer vacation. According to the newly-released Compensation Data 2007 preliminary results, exempt employees with five to nine years of experience have 14.4 vacation days on average. Non-exempt employees with the same years of service have 13.8 days.

The number of vacation days offered to exempt employees has changed little since 2005. Those in their first year average eight days and then, are given 10.5 days after their first year. Workers with 15-19 years of service typically average 19.5 days. A recent study by Expedia.com revealed 35 percent of U.S. employees won’t utilize all of their vacation time, and on average, each will leave three days unused.

Compensation Data 2007 also reported 56.4 percent of companies allow carryover of vacation days, and 86.9 percent place a cap on the number of days that can be carried over. The maximum number of days allowed for exempt employees is 18.5 days, compared to 17.8 for non-exempt.

"As Gen Y enters the work force, many companies are looking for new ways to recruit top talent," said Amy Kaminski, manager of marketing programs for Compdata Surveys, a leading compensation and benefits survey data provider. "Offering extra vacation time in the recruiting process and allowing flexible schedules are two practices that appeal to this group."

In 2007, extra vacation time was offered as a recruiting tactic by 15.4 percent of organizations, which has risen from 13.7 percent in 2006. Flexible schedules are another way organizations can bolster time off packages. According to the new results, 54.3 percent of companies allow flexible schedules. When comparing prevalence among employee groups, they are most used by technical/professional employees, 41.2 percent.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 6, 2007 at 7:09 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Writing a job posting for the Internet is different than writing a job posting for a newspaper. Since you are charged by the line or column width for newspaper ads, ads are very plain and full of abbreviations therefore job seekers can not get detailed information about your company or the position. Unlike newspaper advertising, an online job posting allows you to showcase your company and provide a full description of the position. Even though some career sites do have length restrictions, there is still sufficient space to outline enough information for the candidate to fully understand the requirements and expectations of the candidate for the available position.

Here are some tips to effectively write an Internet Job Posting:

1. Job Title

The job title is one of the most important components of your job posting. The title is the first thing that job seekers see and determines whether or not they will click through to view your job posting. An effective job title should be targeted to the main responsibility of the job, without being too limited to allow for maximum search results to attract a higher response rate.

2. Company

Regardless of whether or not your company is well-known, you will want to provide insight into your organization to allow the candidate to understand your overall environment and culture. Components to consider are as follows:

* Brief description of the company
* Products and services your company provides
* Desirable aspects of your corporate culture
* Type of training and career path job seekers can expect
* Work environment
* Benefits

This information should be both informative and appealing for job seekers.

3. Job Description

The Job Description is a very crucial component because job seekers want to know exactly what they will do doing on the job. Make sure to include the following information:

* Detailed overview of the responsibilities for the position
* Interesting challenges of the job and desirable aspects of the job
* Whether or not they will be apart of a team, managing a team, or working independently
* Role the position and department has within the company
* How their success will be measured
* Potential for growth within the company
* Time commitments, salary and travel expectations

The goal is to be as descriptive as possible so that job seekers can visualize what they will be doing on a day to day basis.

4. Required Skills and/or Qualifications

Outline the skills that are necessary for the position. Make sure to distinguish between the required skills and the “nice to have skills” for the job. Some items that should be addressed are if there is a requirement for the minimum number of years of experience, education level, and any certificates needed. You should also list any soft skills that are needed for the position. Soft skills can include communication skills, willingness to travel, ability to work in a team environment, organizational skills, etc. To try and minimize that number of applicants you receive, you can consider stating whether or not you are accepting resumes for candidates that are outside the U.S.

5. Keywords

Always include keywords that are found in your job posting otherwise job seekers will not be able to locate your job posting. It will be helpful to list common words that job seeks might use when searching for jobs. Not only do keywords determine which candidate searches your job posting will appear in, but they are also the basis of search alerts and agents, which help you reach both active and passive candidates. Be sure to use words that ideal candidates for your position would use to search for it. Include alternate job titles, responsibilities and skills needed for the position.

6. Proofread Your Posting

After you are finished writing your job posting, review it and make sure that your spelling and punctuation are correct. If there are any grammar mistakes, this will not make a good impression on the job seeker. In addition, do not use ALL CAPS when writing your posting. You want yourself and your company to be viewed as very professional.

Once your job posting has been proofed, it is ready to be posted on the Internet. Just remember the more detailed and specific your job posting is, the better fit candidates are more likely to respond. This will save you time and money during your recruiting process.

-- Courtesy of Beyond.com

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 5, 2007 at 7:47 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I will participating in The Onrec.com Conference and Expo, on the 18th and 19th September 2007, San Francisco and would love to see you there!!

This leading industry event is jam packed with informative, cost-saving advice and innovative ideas on how to improve your recruitment strategy, including the chance to:

• Discover new ways of reaching the best candidates, whilst reducing your cost-per-hire spend;
  
• Learn how the online recruitment market is developing and how to keep ahead of the game;
  
• Explore new techniques in attracting candidates using web 2.0 technologies;
  
• Hear about new employment regulations and how they affect YOU;
  
• Network with the leading authorities in online recruitment and take part in engaging panel debates about the future of online recruitment; and
  
• Meet suppliers that have solutions and packages to solve your recruitment problems.
  

As a speaker, I have secured discounted tickets to the event. You can take advantage of this special, time-limited offer by simply entering the following code when you register at https://www.cteusa.com/onrec2/. When at that page, enter code 3TC7T. Book now to take advantage of the special offer! I look forward to seeing you there!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 3, 2007 at 11:43 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

We’ve all heard the stories of potential employers finding a little too much information about candidates through a Google search of the names of the candidates. A good friend of mine declined to hire an otherwise highly qualified sales candidate when he found her MySpace profile and it revealed in excruciating detail how she enjoyed getting drunk and having sex with strangers. Employers have also terminated the employment of those who revealed a little too much about themselves. The CEO of social networking site Digg, for example, terminated an intern after he bragged on his blog that he did nothing at work all day other than instant message with his friends. A Texas school district terminated a teacher after non-obscene nude photos of her were discovered by a fellow teacher who then told a number of students where they could see a little more of their teacher than they probably wanted to.

Yet candidates can and usually do include far more positive than negative information about themselves on their MySpace, Facebook, and blog pages. Employers should realize that these sites offer a wealth of information about highly qualified candidates who may not even realize they are candidates yet – the elusive and much sought after passive candidate. So how should employers use these sites to find these candidates? The same way that they use the resume banks of CollegeRecruiter.com and other job boards: keyword searches.

Ryan Loken, a recruitment manager for Wal-Mart Stores Inc., was recently quoted by CareerJournal.com, as recognizing the phenomenal potential for employers of blog entries and comments to blog entries. “If [someone has] a blog or [has] made a comment on one, you can see what their knowledge level truly is – because resumes can be full of fluff.” Loken estimated that he had filled about 125 jobs through his willingness to read blogs and contact the writers who make intelligent contributions.

The best recruiters that I talk with always advocate asking candidates for proof of performance: don’t just tell me that you can do the job, show me that you’ve done it. Loken has that figured out. He’s looking for candidates with a significant degree of knowledge and passion for his niche so he’s gone where more and more people with knowledge and passion for a niche are going: to the blogs. And wouldn’t you rather recruit someone for your electrical engineering firm who has proven her ability to perform by choosing in her spare time to write about new developments in electrical engineering than trolling a resume bank for an electrical engineer who has proven, well, that he has an ability to post his resume to a job board?

Source: Campus Career Counselor

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 2, 2007 at 7:00 AM | Leave a Comment (0)