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Great news out of Texas: the Dallas Recruiting Roadshow Unconference is sold out. My congratulations to Ami Givertz and John Sumser for organizing such a great line-up of presenters and marketing it so well to recruiters and other human resource professionals. CollegeRecruiter.com is proud to be one of the sponsors and looks forward to continuing to partner with these gentlemen.
Paul DeBettignies a/k/a The Minnesota Headhunter has done it again. No, I'm not talking about his almost completely irrational devotion to University of Minnesota football. I'm talking about his great job in organizing the second Minnesota Recruiting Unconference.
The conference kicks off (pun intended) tomorrow morning at 8am and concludes at 2pm. In between, the attendees will be treated to breakfast, some great networking opportunities, great speakers, some great networking opportunities, lunch, some great networking opportunities, and then some more great networking opportunities. Did I mention that there's no charge and no selling from the podium?
I was privileged to be one of the presenters for the first conference. This time around, CollegeRecruiter.com is privileged to be one of the sponsors. If you're within driving distance of the Best Buy headquarters in suburban Minneapolis tomorrow, you need to sign up right away and join us.
Doug Risebrough, former hockey player extraordinaire and now general manager of the Minnesota Wild, has quietly joined the recruiting blogosphere. According to the Star Tribune, Risebrough didn't know what a blog was a year ago but is now a blogger. Welcome!
Risebrough's first blog entry came almost a month ago on October 30th. His blog entry initially discussed the team's upcoming game against Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins. I was fortunate enough to attend that fabulous game after finding tickets for sale at the last minute on Facebook. More interesting than that, however, was his discussion of the potential negative impact of the huge new contract he had just agreed to with future all-star defenseman Brent Burns.
Risebrough essentially expresses concern that the huge contract will change the way that Burns plays. Unlike conventional wisdom, players like Burns who receive huge pay raises don't tend to slack off. Rather, their performance often takes a short-term hit because they try too hard rather than too little. They want to prove that they're worth the money so rather than focusing on what they do well, they try to do too much and end up not doing their own job well.
I see this with college students and recent graduates as well. Rather than focusing on what they were hired to do and making sure that they do that well, they try too hard to impress their boss by taking on additional responsibilities for which they do not have time, are ill prepared, or both. Part of experience is understanding your limitations and playing or performing within those limits. As a new hires gains experience, they gain wisdom and their performance improves steadily and sometimes rapidly.
I'm pleased to announce the launch of a new monthly service, the CollegeRecruiter.com Job Seeker Confidence Index. Each month we'll poll hundreds of candidates to better understand their level of optimism about the job market. We'll use the same question and offer the same answer options each month so that we'll be able to understand, over time, whether candidates are becoming more or less optimistic about their prospects of finding a new internship, entry level job, or other career opportunity.
We just posted the results for November and they look quite good. Almost 75 percent of respondents believe that it will take them three or fewer months to find a new job.
Innovative internship programs are the number one concern for students interested in gaining experience in their desired fields. You can integrate a great internship program into your company, but you need to learn the basis of how to succeed with the first intern. In this blog entry, I will review four ways to succeed with the first intern in all sized companies, primarily small or mid-sized businesses.
Create an intern responsibility sheet for the intern to abide.
Interns need to have something to do during their stay with your company. The responsibility sheet should include administrative duties, duties pertaining to their major or expected work, and one project in which the student can handle independently. In order for your company’s first intern to achieve success, they need to have the necessary tools to perform delegated tasks.
Provide necessary tools for performing tasks.
Interns need the necessary tools to complete tasks effectively and sufficiently. The responsibility sheet is your starting point in delegating work to your intern. An intern is just like an employee; employees are given tools, information, and responsibilities to handle on a daily basis. Make sure all information is accurate so there is no miscommunication between your staff and the intern. Include the intern in staff meetings so they are up-to-speed with company progress and projects.
Offer leadership opportunities in which the intern actively participates in meetings.
The independent projects should not be high-priority projects that require exclusive, expert management skills. The interns are not equipped to handle these kinds of projects until they have the appropriate experience in their field. Check for updates from the intern without hindering their progress, but make sure it is a project only for your company. Do not give an intern real projects unless you have absolute faith in their abilities to complete the projects on time and within budget. Your company is liable for any misconstrued information or developments made by employees/interns.
Ask intern for feedback pertaining to your program's effectiveness.
Speak with the intern about their experience with your company. Direct feedback can help you incorporate more into the program. Listen to your intern's concerns regarding staff treatment, company products/services, project management, and other vital details. Offer opportunities to enhance their career by providing references, results from their efforts, and other concrete data to add to their portfolios.
Students who are the first of their kind in any company consider it an accomplishment. The reference provided by your company is considered an accomplishment in future employers' eyes. Your intern needs some kind of confirmation that they:
One of the great new additions to the world of recruiting blogs a/k/a the recruiting blogosphere is Mark Liston of Valpak. He just posted a great blog entry in which he gave an example of how a Gen Y sales rep would handle his work differently than his Gen X and Baby Boomer counterparts:
Recently a boomer asked me to describe the differences of the three working generations. My perception is the following. The scenario is that it is 10 a.m. in an office with three sales people - a boomer, an X'er and a Millenial. The Sales Manager tells each of them that we need to get new sales and the sales manager wants them to go out prospecting and come back with four appointments. I envision the following:
- The millennial is back by noon announcing that they have their four appointments, have a lunch appointment with their friend and will be back in the office right after lunch.
- The gen x'er starts to argue with the sales manager and asks why they have to go out of the office to prospect. Why they can't just use the phone to set the appointments and save some gas. They then ask why new sales are so important and get into a philosophical debate on growing new customers versus having to get new customers. At the end of the argument everyone is frustrated.
- The boomer grabs a cup of coffee and tells the rest of the people in the office how he used to be able to get 10 appointments a day. He goes on ad nauseam about how he knocked on doors, got around the gatekeeper, made huge sales to the president of the company, etc. By lunch time he is still in the office pontificating.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
Many of our largest clients are federal government agencies. They include the Internal Revenue Service, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and all branches of the military. As different as each agency and their respective employees can be, they all share one startling characteristic: their employees are amongst the oldest in the country.
Thankfully though, the situation isn't as dire as it might first appear. Although the oldest Baby Boomers are now able to draw Social Security benefits and therefore retire, there is growing consensus amongst those of us who are fascinated by generational trends that many and perhaps most Baby Boomers will not actually retire but will instead change who they work for, how much they work, and what work they do. Rather than busting their butts to get a promotion, they'll work reduced hours or perhaps even work seasonally. They'll do work that fulfills their emotions rather than fills their pocketbooks. And they'll be joined by Gen Y.
Gen Y work for the federal government? Some would say that's just ludicrous as Gen Y is known for its desire to make a meaningful contribution and to have significant control over the work they do, where they do it, how they do it, how many hours they put in to get the work done, and more. None of those characteristics scream "federal government job" to anyone. Yet studies are showing that a significant percentage of Gen Y wants to work for the federal government. So what gives?
The reason, I believe, is that while many Gen Y'ers want to make a significant contribution from day one, many also highly value work/life balance and financial security and those goals are much easier to accomplish working for the government than they are for a corporation.
We just launched a new application on Facebook that allows you to send a free gift through Facebook to your friends, family, enemies, Donald Duck, etc.
The Holiday Gifts application works somewhat like the gifts application that Facebook created eons ago except that they charge $1 per gift sent and we charge nothing. In either case, the gifts are icons that appear on the profile page of the recipient. In addition, when you send a gift to a friend, that is noted on your page and theirs so that those who are friends of yours and the recipient of your gift will see that you are using our application and that makes it more likely that they will want to use it too. Also, when you send a gift to someone who does not have the application already installed, then they will need to install it. When they do, they can easily send gifts to their friends. So the entire process is designed to be viral.
So what does CollegeRecruiter.com get out of the new Holiday Gifts application on Facebook? If it takes off, we'll get a boost to our traffic as our logo appears on the application page. The logo gives us both branding for long-term benefits and it is linked to our home page for a short-term traffic boost.
Install it today. Give it a whirl. Add a comment below with your feedback. We're listening.
One of the greatest experiences that a college student or recent graduate can have is to work abroad. I had the good fortune of doing so immediately upon graduation from high school and then again after my sophomore year in college.
During the latter period, I hooked up with friends from London, England that I had met during my first work abroad experience. I was able to stay and hang out with them during the evenings and weekends while during the day I worked in London.
But what if you don't know anyone in the city you want to work in? Thanks to the Internet, it is now just about as easy to connect with employers in world class cities like London as it is in the city in which you currently reside. If you have a chance to work at a job in London, grab it. It will be one of the greatest times of your life.
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of participating in the Kennedy Information 2007 recruiting conference in Orlando. Virtually every employer engaged in the recruitment of college students for internships and recent graduates for entry level jobs and other career opportunities was focusing their attention on two topics: recruitment videos and green recruiting.
As eloquently stated by John Sullivan,
The new thrust of green recruiting is proactive and focuses on making "greenness" a major element of your employment brand. Some of the reasons why green recruiting is becoming more essential include:
- Gen Y demands it. This generation has learned about the importance of the environment and recycling in classes since elementary school. They filter both product purchasing and job selection choices with their green mindset.
- College grads demand it. Al Gore is a hero on most campuses. Students, while they are on campus, demand that every aspect of their campus life leave a minimal "environmental footprint." On my campus, San Francisco State University, even the most conservative of all schools, the College of Business is developing a "sustainability" major to satisfy the student demand for integrating business and the environment. It has become so important that even starting salaries take a back seat behind "greenness" when students evaluate potential employers.
- Many job candidates care about it. Although no one has yet quantified the impact that being environmentally friendly has on recruits, if you ask candidates whether working for an environmentally friendly company is important to them, a vast majority will respond with an affirmative.
- Global candidates can be passionate about it. Some countries around the world are extremely passionate about the environment (Germany, Australia, and Finland to name a few). As a result, if you expect to recruit the best from around the world, you must be prepared to meet a growing set of eco-expectations as an employer.
More and more recruiters understand that recruiting is selling. It is selling the candidate on how compelling are the opportunities provided by your organization. And right now in the world of college recruiting few things matter more to candidates than the opportunity to good for their community and living and working green are inherent in that.
If your firm is green or if it can start to become green, then your firm will have a huge advantage on-campus if you are able and willing to communicate that (sell that) to your target market, the students and recent graduates. But don't tell them you're green if you're not because today's candidates are far too savvy to be fooled and far too likely to ridicule your organization in well read blogs and other forums that likely rank higher in search engine results than does your organization's own web site.
As Sullivan stated, "green recruiting is a chance to differentiate yourself in a recruiting marketplace where standing out from the crowd is already extremely difficult. Incidentally, not only does green recruiting improve your chances of attracting and selling candidates, it's also your chance as a recruiter to do your part to improve the environment by showing senior management the dollar impact it has on recruiting, retention, and product sales."
On Wednesday, November 28th, I'll have the pleasure of serving on a panel with Jason Davis, founder of Recruiting.com and RecruitingBlogs.com; Matt Martone, manager at Yahoo! HotJobs; and Craig Silverman, EVP of sales & marketing at HireAbility. Together we'll discuss topics which should be of great interest to virtually everyone in the recruiting space including how to start blogging and increase your candidate flow, how to quickly drive more traffic to your web site, why there are already 100 million blogs, how you can stand out in your niche, and more.
Interested? Follow the instructions below to sign-up today.
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There was a great promotional event held today at the Mall of America in suburban Minneapolis. Papa John's, one of the nation's largest pizza chains, unveiled a new ordering system that is designed to appeal primary to Gen Y customers. Rather than calling in an order, you can now use your cell phone to text it in. As fun as that was to watch, it was even more fun to see Jason Bakker of CollegeRecruiter.com client and vendor, Campus Media Group, being interviewed on local TV about the idea.
I just returned from two recruiting conferences in Orlando. Both were fantastic. The first was organized by Kennedy Information and was attended by about 500 human resource professionals, most of whom were corporate recruiters. While at the conference I had the pleasure of meeting several senior Wal-Mart recruiting professionals and learned not only just how big of an employer Wal-Mart is but also just how great a place it is to start a career.
We all know that Wal-Mart is big. In fact, really big. But I had no idea that it employed 1.3 million people just in the USA. That's about one out of every 250 people people. Yikes. In addition to those folks, they also employ about 600,000 more worldwide for a total of about 1.9 million. The company's sales are $345 billion per year.
Think their head count and revenue numbers are big? Fast forward to 2012 when Wal-Mart projects worldwide employment of 2.5 million and sales of $500 billion.
So how does this fit with college recruiting when all of their employees are stocking shelves or running cash registers. The answer is they aren't. In addition to the thousands of people working outside of the stores in logistics, information technology, finance, marketing, etc., about 75 percent of their store managers started as hourly employees. That's right. About 75 percent. So if you're in college and want a career in management, consider working for Wal-Mart part-time while you're in school as there's a good chance that upon graduation they'll have a management position waiting for you.
I've had the pleasure of meeting Art Koff of RetiredBrains.com before but I've never been able to spend as much time with him as I have over the past two days at the great recruiting conference put on by the folks from Kennedy Information. Art is caring, smart, passionate, and funny. And does he know how to pick a dinner entree.
A group of speakers and attendees had a nice dinner together Monday evening at Orlando's Samba Room. Art ordered the yellow snapper special. People actually applauded. Wow.
Just heard from Jason Davis that the most recent entries to the Recruiting Blogswap free content exchange program are now being featured on the home page of his well regarded RecruitingBlogswap.com site.
The Recruiting Blogswap is a great way for recruiters and other human resource professionals to share their opinions by authoring articles which are then automatically distributed by the Blogswap software to the next publisher in line. The publishers are recruiting bloggers who want to provide more content and more diverse content to their readers. There is no charge to participate. We run this program as a service to the recruiting community and it also builds links back to CollegeRecruiter.com as each entry includes a "sponsored by" link at the bottom. Win-win-win.
Facebook just broadened their offerings again. These guys never sleep. When Facebook was launched just a few years ago, it was designed to be an on-line alternative to the school yearbook for Harvard students. Then it spread to other Ivy League schools, then other colleges and universities, then high schools, then non-educational organizations, and then to everyone. But through that entire time the only profile pages that could be created for free were those of individuals. So you, your friend Mandy, and your cousin Betsy could have a Facebook page, but organizations such as CollegeRecruiter.com could not. Until now.
Visit the just launched CollegeRecruiter.com page on Facebook and become a "fan" so that you will be the first to know what is happening with our Facebook efforts, including several new applications that we're finalizing and will be releasing over the coming weeks.
TMP just created an application in Facebook called Work With Me. The pitch to Facebook users is that they share information on pop culture, events and opinions - so why not JOB OPPORTUNITIES?
Using Work With Me, Facebook users can notify friends about current job opportunities within the organization of the user. TMP pitches that it's a win-win solution for everyone -- the user promotes their company's jobs to their friends, the user's company increases its access to top talent -- and when a friend who the user referred is hired, the user will be recognized.
So what's in it for TMP? A nice bit of lead generation. During the installation process, the user is asked to provide their contact information as well as the contact information for someone in human resources. Hmmm. I wonder where that information is going and how it will be used? Can anyone say, "build a mailing list?" I thought you could.
It will be interesting to see how widely this application will be accepted. I can see a lot of users being interested in promoting job opportunities within their organization to their Facebook friends, but I'm not sure how many of those will be interested in providing the contact information for someone in their HR department to TMP. Actually, most of the users probably won't even realize that the HR contact information is going to TMP. They'll probably think that it is going to Facebook. Either way, that is going to make a lot of potential users feel pretty uncomfortable.
Employers which are concerned about retention know that retention and job satisfaction go hand-in-hand. So a recent study about the job satisfaction reported by Millennials should give all employers some pause.
According to the Emerging Workforce Study conducted by staffing firm Spherion, only 34 percent of 18 to 24 year olds rate their current level of job satisfaction as very good or better. That's the lowest job satisfaction rate in among all age groups in the American workforce.
The low job satisfaction rates are very troubling as they lead to job hopping and that leads to lower productivity for employers, higher prices for consumers, and perhaps even less solid open ice checks in the NHL. Well, perhaps not that last issue, but that still should be a concern to us all.
Forty-eight percent of these Millennials indicated that they were likely to leave their employers within the next 12 months. And they don't see this job hopping as a negative. Some 61 percent said that they have increased their career potential by periodically changing jobs. Even though they're at the beginning of their careers, already 56 percent are employed in a field different from that in which they were employed when they first entered the workforce.
Great blog article at MNHeadhunter.com about do's and don't's for resume writing and also this tip for how to think of them:
"The best use of a resume is as a really large business card--a leave-behind after you have interviewed a potential employer."
Gerry Crispin has a great blog article over at ERE about how employers can use social networking sites such as Facebook to source candidates.
Gerry's idea is that, with the permission of the recent hire, the employer would market their employment opportunities to the friends of that recent hire. What he doesn't say but should be made clear to those who have little to no experience with sites like Facebook is that a "friend" on a social networking site is quite different from a friend in the non-digital world inhabited by most Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers. To those of us who are from those older, non-Millennial generations, our friends are usually in the dozens. To Millennials or those less discriminating older users of social networking sites, a list of friends can easily reach into the hundreds or even thousands.
So if you're an employer trying desperately to recruit electrical engineers for your Virginia facility and you hire a great one, it only makes sense to ask that new hire to refer their friends to you because people tend to hang out with people who are similar to them. For all of the reasons that you like your new hire you will probably also like their friends. And if your new hire is a user of Facebook, MySpace, or any of the other social networking sites, then you are now only one step removed from dozens and perhaps hundreds of other highly qualified electrical engineers in Virginia.
As put by Gerry,
Essentially firms would be able to use their employees as endorsers by tapping their employees own trusted networks -- without the employees themselves having to take any further action to forward on...or refer.
It hasn't been formally announced yet, but earlier today one of our partners, Beyond.com, acquired another of our partners, HRHQ / JOBANIMAL.COM INC., owner of hundreds of niche job boards. My congratulations to both parties.
CollegeRecruiter.com has worked with Beyond.com for the past 4.5 years and we referred HRHQ to Beyond shortly afterwards. Since its founding in 2000, HRHQ has seen tremendous growth in revenues yet managed to stay small, nimble, and client focused. It is a true pleasure working with them.
Beyond provides job search and resume bank functionality to JobAnimal, CollegeRecruiter.com, and 15,000 other career sites. Although you could describe JobAnimal as the holding company for hundreds of niche job boards powered by Beyond, what really defines JobAnimal is their “Short-List PRO” technology, as well as customizable, scalable services, and the application of sound recruiting to provide their clients with the best, qualified candidates.
Unlike the practice of simply advertising in local newspapers or on job boards that may simply overwhelm the clients of JobAnimal with resumes or applications from all kinds of unqualified candidates, JobAnimal effectively does the upfront work of qualifying a short list of candidates and providing them to its clients in the manner that best suits their current hiring strategy. In addition, JobAnimal's fees are based on a volume of candidate leads model and that tends to significantly reduce the costs of the employer's recruitment process.
One of my favorite people to meet up with at recruiting conferences, by phone, via email, smoke signals, whatever is Dennis Smith. Most of those who blog about recruiting in what has become known as the recruiting blogosphere know Dennis as the face of T-Mobile. No longer. Dennis has jumped to WorldLink.
So what is WorldLink? It is a global, services oriented organization that delivers innovative business solutions in areas such as information technology, marketing and sales, accounting and finance, and engineering. Put another way, they're a global technology, services, and outsourcing company.
If you haven't met Dennis, you've got a great opportunity next week. Dennis will co-moderate a panel discussion for Kennedy Information's 2007 recruiting conference in Orlando. The discussion is entitled, " Recruiting Trends: Best Practices From Today's Thought Leaders" and will feature a handful of panelists discussing topics ranging from Candidate Relationship Management (improving the candidate experience), the pros and cons of social networking and recruiting technology, Internet word-of-mouth and the best practices for Gen Y Recruitment.
Joining Dennis as co-moderator will be Jeanne Sturges, Editor, Kennedy Information and the following people as panelists: Paul Forster, CEO & Founder, Indeed; Chris Murdock, Executive Sourcer, Yahoo!; Jill Schwieters, Executive Vice President, Pinstripe Healthcare; Mike Grennier, Senior Director, Corporate Recruiting, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.; and moi.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Bill Vick today about the panel that he's putting together for the Dallas Recruiting Roadshow Unconference. Bill is putting together a panel presentation with quite a twist. None of the panelists will be at the conference.
The panelists, including me, will be interviewed about various topics using webcams and Skype Video. Bill will edit the presentations as necessary and then show it at the conference. If anyone had any doubts about Bill's love of practical technology, this should eliminate those doubts. During the presentation, Bill will be killing multiple birds with one stone. For example, during my part of the presentation, he'll be gathering content for the attendees about how to use social networking sites for recruitment purposes. But underlying that will be a demonstration on how easy it now is to do video conference and therefore...real-time, video interviews.
It has been pretty well documented that about 75 percent of employers admit to looking at information that candidates post to Facebook, MySpace, and other web pages as part of the hiring process. In other words, today’s college students and recent graduates are often finding in their race to find career opportunities that the finish line is being blocked by the risqué photos or stories about drunken parties that they or their friends posted on-line. What has not been as well documented is that the this same generation is often finding that the starting line is also blocked.
A recent study by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth found that 25 percent of college admissions offices admit to using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN to research potential students and that 20 percent look for the same information on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. The reality is that the percentages must be even higher because colleges and universities have little incentive to overstate their reliance on these digital dirt web searches but they have a significant incentive to understate their use due to a fear of negative public relations and likely backlash from many Gen Y candidates who view information that they post to MySpace and some of the other social networking sites as somehow being private even though it is accessible through a quick Google search.
The study of 453 private and public, large and small, inexpensive and costly, colleges and universities in 49 states, found that the college admissions officers were very familiar with technology such as social networking sites, blogs, and message boards. In fact, the study revealed that the admissions personnel were more comfortable with these new media than their corporate recruiting counterparts. “Students need to understand that their social network sites are being examined by colleges and universities,” said Nora Barnes, a profession in UMass Dartmouth’s Charlton College of Business and one of the researches for the study. “The content of their sites could have far-reaching effects on their academic futures if they are not careful.”
So how are college admissions officers using the information they uncover when they search MySpace, Facebook, and other web pages? I agree with Barnes that it is unlikely that many and perhaps no colleges are using these sites to research every applicant or even every applicant they intend to admit. But in any recruiting process there are going to be candidates who will definitely be rejected, others who definitely be accepted, and then a big chunk who fall into that grey zone. It is likely these candidates who will benefit or suffer the most from their digital dirt. If a college or employer is choosing between two equally qualified candidates and one has a blog that contains thoughtful information about topics related to their career path while the other has a MySpace page that has photos and other information about how they enjoy getting drunk, it is only logical that the college or employer will choose the blogger as that candidate has exhibited better judgment by building for themselves a positive on-line brand.
-- Want to become my "friend" on Facebook or MySpace or just see what we're up to? Go to my Facebook and our CollegeRecruiter.com MySpace pages.
My friend and fellow recruiting blogger, Jim Stroud, posted an article earlier this week that contains a list of the top 200 universities worldwide as ranked by recruiters. Thankfully Jim didn't indicate his agreement with the list or even that such a list is relevant to anyone who is actually recruiting at universities.
Jim is a smart guy and a great recruiter so I trust that he understands that how one organization's recruiters rank a school bears little relationship to how that school will or should be ranked by another organization's recruiters. Let me explain.
Let's say that you're a recruiter for Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Your primary interest are students and recent graduates with strong customer service, sales, and leadership qualities. You're going to focus your efforts on schools that turn out the most of those students. But what if you're the Internal Revenue Service? Sure you're going to want to recruit students with strong customer service and leadership qualities (who doesn't?) but you're unlikely to be looking as hard at those with great sales credentials as you are at those with a strong accounting or finance background. So Enterprise and IRS recruiters will rank schools differently not because one organization has great recruiters and the other doesn't but because the recruiters for both organizations understand their needs and those needs differ.
Whenever we talk with a client who asks us for a list of the "best engineering schools" or "top colleges for finance majors," we remind them that what makes a top school for one employer makes for a terrible school for another.
