It's been a year since Paul DeBettignies a/k/a the Minnesota Headhunter, Josh Kahn of Accenture at Best Buy, and I got together at Chipotle for some burritos and to plot strategy for how to increase the number of active recruiting bloggers in Minnesota. One thing led to another, which is often the case when you get three guys together over exceptionally good food, and the end result was the Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conferences.

Josh has been instrumental in getting the group access to the Best Buy world headquarters facilities. They have superb meeting rooms and the price is certainly right. Their in-house catering service also bends over backwards to make it as easy as possible to host an event in their building.

Joining the group later was Nicole St. Martin, who we affectionately refer to as Paul's wingman. She's the one who makes these volunteer-driven events happen so professionally that I have to believe that most attendees think that Tinkerbell must be involved as everything just magically works perfectly. She's an incredible asset to the recruiting world generally and the human resource search engine optimization community
specifically.

But it is Paul DeBettignies who is the driving force. He is the visionary and the face of the organization. My involvement has been negligible after that initial burrito fest. His involvement has been almost like a full-time job. His energy, enthusiasm, sense of humor, and wisdom are infectious. People just love to be around him. He must do incredible work helping his employer clients find outstanding I.T. candidates.

If you've never attended a Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conference, you have another chance. Here are the details:

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 30, 2008 at 2:22 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

There are approximately 50,000 job boards in the United States and about the same elsewhere in the world. Many are essentially cookie cutter boards with little to no traffic and little to no unique job posting or article content. But all serve employers and job seekers and to survive and thrive all must therefore listen to those visitors to understand what features, functionality and services they like best on today's job boards.

Fortunately, the industry has the International Association of Employment Web Sites to help us out with keeping up-to-date on issues like this. The executive director, Peter Weddle, conducted a survey between April, 2007 and April, 2008 and generated over 15,700 responses. The results were:

• 19.4% The caliber of the job postings on a site;
  
• 19.1% The number of job postings on a site;
  
• 16.7% Ease of access to employment opportunities on the site;
  
• 16.2% The job search tools and information provided on a site;
  
• 16.1% The fact that access to employment opportunities is free; and
  
• 12.5% The ability to network with others on the site.
  

According to Peter, "these data suggest some strengths and at least one area of vulnerability for job boards. Our strengths, of course, are that we are seen as the go-to destination for large numbers of high quality employment opportunities. Almost four-out-of-ten of the respondents like either the quantity or quality of the jobs we post. And over half like the quantity, quality or convenience of our employment opportunities. In other words, people on the Web truly do see employment Web-sites as 'the sources of success.'"

But just as we have strengths so do we have vulnerabilities. "Respondents seem not to associate our sites strongly with networking. Hence, we run the risk of losing market share if job seekers and career activists begin to associate other sites with this rapidly growing phenomenon. While much of the attention, to date, has been on social networking, interest is also growing rapidly in professional networking. As that practice gains ground--which it will undoubtedly do in today's sagging economy--we must make sure that our sites are the go-to destination for it, as well."

CollegeRecruiter.com is in the final stages of a complete re-build. When we re-launch in the near future, you'll hardly recognize our look-and-feel. Just about the only feature that will look the same will be our logo. The rest of the site, from our home page to every interior page, will be MUCH cleaner and designed to optimize the user experience. We'll still have a wealth of quality job, article, video, and other such content. But we recognize that the vast majority of job seekers come to job boards to find jobs so we've placed the job posting content front and center. We're excited. We hope that you will be as well.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 30, 2008 at 10:27 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 29, 2008 at 8:16 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the privilege of attending a presentation by Jason Alba of JibberJobber fame at the JobDig offices yesterday evening. For a guy working on four hours of sleep and doing the fourth of four presentations in one day, he was great. Actually, he was great compared to the vast majority of speakers so someday I'll need to see him when he is totally fresh. He must be amazing.

As indicated by a review posted at Staffing Software Talk shortly after the event, Jason did a great job explaining social media like LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, articles, Twitter, etc. and how they all fit together. He explained how honesty and transparency are critical in today's job market. And he wasn't above poking fun at himself or friends of his in the audience.

JibberJobber is a great tool for job seekers. Employers can think of it as an applicant tracking system for candidates in that it enables them to easily track which jobs they've considered, applied to, been interviewed for, received offers, etc. There's a great free version and also an inexpensive paid version that offers even better functionality. It is truly a gift to candidates and therefore the recruiting community.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 29, 2008 at 10:35 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I'm pleased to announce that we converted another of our unpaid intern bloggers to a paid employee.

William Frierson of Florence, South Carolina graduated from high school in 2002 and earned his associate's degree in business marketing in 2005.

William became an unpaid writing intern for CollegeRecruiter.com almost a year ago in May 2006. His writing and thoughtfulness so impressed us that we started to pay him to write for us on a freelance basis to help ensure that he would continue to write for us and hopefully write more and more. I've loved his work and work ethic and so was quite pleased when we finalized the paperwork last week and converted him to a W-2 employee. I have every confidence that he will continue to impress us and those who have the privilege of reading his articles.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 28, 2008 at 3:24 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 25, 2008 at 8:34 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The vast majority of recruiters and hiring managers would agree without hesitation that it would be foolish to ask during an interview the same questions of a potential fast food fry cook as a financial analyst, brain surgeon, or anyone else whose qualifications, job, and work product will be dramatically different. Yet how many modify the questions they ask based upon the generation of the candidate? Many questions which are designed to elicit relevant, informative answers from a Baby Boomer candidate and perhaps do a passable job with a Gen X'er are doomed to fail with a Gen Y'er / Millennial because their perspectives, needs, wants, and way of working are so dramatically different. Not better. Not worse. Just different.

William Pisano of Stephen James Associates wrote a great article for ERE about this very issue and went so far as to provide examples of specific questions to ask Gen Y candidates. For example, William writes that Gen Y'ers "aren't as likely as their elder colleagues to have a clear vision of their professional selves in five or 10 years, but that doesn't mean they won't have an answer. Rather than asking them what job title they want to have in the future, it might be more telling to determine a candidate's perceptions of how one gets ahead in your industry, and how quickly."

Other questions that he recommends are:

• After you're hired, how will you advance from this position to the one just above it? More specifically, what qualities and actions do you believe are necessary to continue moving up in this organization?
  
• Where do you see yourself in two/five/10 years? Explain how you'll get there.
  
• What do you expect to get out of this job?
  

William recommends that interviewers "incorporate more personal questions that expose a candidate's personality, work ethic, and personal motivations" because "how a person approaches life is often indicative of how they'd approach work." He therefore recommends rephrasing typical interview questions in a way that they better apply to the personal lives of your candidates. Sample interview questions in this area include:

• How do you primarily communicate with friends? How often?
  
• When you have a dilemma to solve, how do you approach it?
  
• How do you spend your free time? (Do you prefer doing activities solo, with friends, or in groups?)
  

• When you do an outstanding job, how do you want to be rewarded?
  
• Describe your ideal feedback scenario (i.e., What format? How often do you want to receive it? Who should provide it?)
  
• Describe the ideal work/life balance.
  
• Is the concept of "paying your dues" outdated?
  

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 24, 2008 at 11:09 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Well, not really. But the CEO of JibberJobber is coming to Minneapolis to speak at JobDig. Say that ten times fast and then we'll see who sounds like Ned ("hi diddly do neighbor?") Flanders from The Simpsons.

I've had the good fortune to meet and get to know Jason Alba. His story is inspirational. He was downsized in 2006 and found the process of finding a job to be a very difficult job. He drew on his extensive computer software and I.T. experience, analyzed the job search process, and developed JibberJobber.com, the gold standard in career management technology. For those on the employer side of the table, think of JibberJobber as an applicant tracking system for candidates. It helps them keep track of the jobs they're targeting, applications, interviews, offers, etc.

Jason is also a social media expert and focuses his efforts in that arena on getting professional or business value out of various social tools. Jason maintains four blogs, including JibberJobber.com/blog, and is co-author of "I'm on Facebook - Now What???"

So why am I telling you all of this? Well, if you're anywhere close to Minneapolis on Monday then stop by the head office of JobDig from 5pm to 6:30pm and you'll get to meet Jason and take in his presentation:

Social Tools and Technologies for Recruiters - LinkedIn is obviously a powerful tool for recruiters. What about other social tools, such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs? How can recruiters develop and execute a social networking strategy that will help them find new (and passive) candidates, engage with them and develop a relationship, enriching their candidate pool? Join Jason Alba as he shares what he's learned as a job seeker and career management advocate, taking you on a tour of successful recruiter strategies with these four technologies.

Space is limited to 50 attendees and is on a first come, first serve basis. Sign-up today at the Minnesota Recruiters web site.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 23, 2008 at 5:07 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

1. Both are flat.
   
2. Both apparently have no hope of rising.
   
3. They have no spice.
   
4. They're full of holes.
   
5. You don't want to be involved with either of them anymore than absolutely necessary.
   
6. Pretend as much as you want that they're something better than what they are but they ain't.
   
7. Even the ancient Egyptians would have nothing to do with them.
   
8. They have an seemingly endless series of ripples.
   
9. Even when consumed in small amounts they both give you indigestion.
   
10. They're both too easily broken.
    

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 22, 2008 at 1:31 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Ryan Healy at Employee Evolution just posted a very thought provoking blog article for Gen Y employees about how they can become leaders in their organizations. Healy offers four tips:

1. Demonstrate that you're able and willing to make the decisions because leaders need to decide even when they don't have all of the information available.
   
2. Try new things. "Being comfortable and competent in unfamiliar situations is a sign of true leadership ability. So whenever you have the opportunity to do something new, try it!"
   
3. Surround yourself with people smarter than you. You don't need to lead them at every opportunity or even occasionally. But interact with smart people and learn "to hold your own in complex or thoughtful conversations."
   
4. Learn to work well alone. Leaders often have to make decisions by themselves and work through issues without the assistance from others.
   
   

   That all said, what should organizations be doing to help 22 year old, recent college graduates and other Gen Y'ers learn how to become leaders within their organizations. College recruiting is strategic because it is used by organizations to recruit their next generation of leaders. But if those organizations don't teach their future leaders how to lead, then their college recruiting programs are doomed to failure.

   So folks, how do you teach your Gen Y employees how to lead?

   Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 21, 2008 at 11:11 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

We've all heard about people who marry up. I hear it all the time. From friends, family, my dog. Oh well. My win.

But how do you get hired for a job which is seemingly above your qualifications? Penelope Trunk provides five great suggestions in a recent blog article:

1. Use the informational interview as a sales pitch.
   
2. Sell yourself as a consultant.
   
3. Get people to use you as a reference.
   
4. Blog to become an expert.
   
5. Have a realistic idea of your skill set.
   

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 18, 2008 at 1:10 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Kudos to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) for creating the All That Jazz blog to help engage their members and hopefully increase the attendance at this spring's annual conference in New Orleans. The NACE annual conferences are very well attended and offer a wealth of content, but given how the career service office, employer, and other members are so spread out geographically it must be very difficult for NACE to engage with them throughout the year.

NACE asked for volunteers to write for the blog. I jumped at the opportunity and so did a handful of others. The entries and related comments so far have been diverse, regular, and interesting. A great example is a post about low student attendance at career center programs and ideas for what to do about it.

If you're looking for insight into the hearts and minds of those who live and breath college recruiting each and every day, then read the All That Jazz blog.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 17, 2008 at 11:29 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the fringe benefits of running a job board and being an active blogger is that you receive a regular stream of career-related books. Most are quite good. A few, well, not so much. But definitely falling into the former bucket is Alexandra Levit's How'd You Score That Gig?

Alexandra's book provides an in-depth look at the 60 careers that over 500 Gen Y and Gen X voted to be the coolest jobs. But the book does more than just give examples or describe the jobs. It also helps the reader determine which jobs are most suitable for them through a unique self-assessment.

What I really loved about this book is that it includes insider accounts. So rather than just taking Alexandra's word for what a particular job is like, you'll be able to learn about the jobs from peers who actually are employed in these cool jobs. And if their experiences resonate with you, the book then walks you through how to get the job.

We regularly advice job seekers to conduct a series of informational interviews with people who work in the types of jobs which are of interest to the job seekers. The job seekers should not ask these people for a job but instead they should ask them to describe their work and how they got their jobs. This book is a great supplement to that process it will enable the job seeker to walk into these informational interviews with a lot more insight into the jobs they are considering and likely save them a lot of time by helping them include jobs they may not have considered and excluding jobs that they didn't realize were not suitable for their competencies, interests, or values.

Bravo, Alexandra! The bookshelves of every college career service office should include at least one copy of the superb How'd You Score That Gig?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 15, 2008 at 10:12 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Less than a week ago I wrote that there have been exploding offers this year and will be more but there won't be as many as there were in the 2001-03 recession. An exploding offer is a job offer which an employer makes to a candidate, which the candidate accepts, and which the employer later rescinds usually because of changing economic conditions.

Today's Wall Street Journal includes an article about how a year ago law firms were falling all over each other to recruit and retain entry level lawyers for their summer associate programs (sort of like internship programs) and as first year associates (entry level lawyers). Now some of those same law firms are cutting back:

• Some law firms like New York-based, 800 attorney Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP shrunk the duration of their summer associate program from 12 to 10 weeks. That effectively cuts the pay of their summer associates / interns by almost 17 percent.
• Other law firms are delaying the start date of some of their first year associates. In addition to Pillsbury cutting its summer associate program, it is also delaying the start date of its first year associates.
• Chicago-based, 700 lawyer Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP is taking an even harsher approach. It admits to exploding the offers for two summer associates and two first year associates who had accepted offers to work at its Charlotte, North Carolina office.

I get why these employers believe that they should not pay money to employees whose work is not needed. But what I hope that all employers get is that their long-term viability depends upon these interns and entry level hires for college recruiting is strategic and without college hires entering the employment ranks, an organization is doomed to a lack of managerial and executive talent within a decade. If the organization manages to survive it will need the success of some very highly paid headhunters to acquire the talent that the organization could have brought on board at much less expensive rates through its college recruiting program.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 14, 2008 at 4:26 PM | Leave a Comment (2)

I recently had the good fortune of being interviewed via webcam by Bill Vick of XtremeRecruiting.tv about how recruiters and employers can and should use Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites for recruiting.

Note the extremely classy Minnesota Wild pennant over my left shoulder.

Enjoy the video!

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Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 11, 2008 at 4:31 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the pleasure of being a guest on a Human Capital Institute webcast earlier this week with Kristine Rhodes, Executive Director Talent Strategy for NAS Recruitment Communications, and Kristy Seidel, Manager of Recruiting for Hyatt Hotels and Resorts. The discussion was why and how employers should stand out from the crowd if they want to be successful in their efforts to hire college students for internships and recent graduates for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

On today's college campuses, "eye-ball" time is at an all-time premium. Students are bombarded daily with credit card offers and philanthropic requests while employers are trying to communicate with them to fill their ranks with top-tier talent. The market is so saturated that investing dollars and effort may not guarantee success, but innovative strategizing will. Great employers struggle to stand out from the crowd and often don't have enough of their targeted students' bandwidth to communicate their differences.

To understand how to communicate with young talent one must start by asking questions and listening to the answers. In this case-study webcast, hundreds of attendees heard how Hyatt, already a premier hospitality employer, designed and implemented their college recruitment strategy. We also heard about how NAS and CollegeRecruiter.com created and implemented a national e-survey of thousands of students and recent grads to identify their employment messaging preferences. The results were fascinating and often completely unexpected.

We learned that there are more than 19 million college students at 4,140 college campuses. We discussed who the students identify as being their employers of choice and why. We talked about the paradigm shift in attitudes between students of yesterday and today and then looked at the results of the survey.

CollegeRecruiter.com emailed a small portion of the 10 million students and recent graduates in our double opt-in targeted email database. We incentivized respondents by giving away two $300 gift certificates on Northwest Airlines. The targeting and incentive combined to get us 443 responses from U.S. students and recent graduates with 210 of those being seniors, 163 underclassmen, and 70 recent graduates.

We asked a lot of questions but some of the more interesting pieces of information to come out were:

• 61 percent indicated they began to seriously job search in their senior year and 23 percent in their junior year.
  
• 57 percent want to communicate with recruiters monthly, not just at fall recruiting and then again when they report for duty in the spring.
  
• About 70 percent preferred to receive company information by email, 40 percent by phone, 25 percent by traditional advertising such as newspapers, 25 percent by RSS feeds / job alerts, 15 percent information sessions, 15 percent career fairs, 5 percent cell phone text messaging (SMS), and 5 percent podcasts.
  
• 90 percent felt strongly that employers should sponsor or participate in networking events on campus and talk about their job opportunities at those events. So sponsor sporting events, dinners, community service events, and more.
  
• Although social networking sites get a lot of buzz, few are using them for job hunting. Only 17 percent use LinkedIn, 15 percent Facebook, and 9 percent MySpace for job hunting. Yet almost 70 percent of those who expressed an opinion feel that it is appropriate or even cool for employers to advertise their job opportunities on social networking sites. So students may not be using the sites that much yet but it is seems that it is because employers have not yet embraced them.
  

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 10, 2008 at 7:30 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A job offer which is extended by an employer, accepted by a candidate, and then rescinded by the employer is often referred to as an exploding offer. Here today yet gone tomorrow.

There were a lot of exploding offers in the recession earlier this decade. College students who turned down great offers during the fall recruiting season in favor of even better offers were understandably devastated when spring rolled around and they received word that their employer had deferred their start date by months or sometimes even rescinded their job offer. Career service office professionals were livid and many banned the offending employers from conducting on-campus recruiting for a year or more. The lack of talent entering the management ranks of the employers seriously impaired and sometimes even crippled the employers five years later when the classes of 2001-03 would have been entering the ranks of middle and upper management.

The recession of 2001-03 was worse than the recession of 2008 and employers are looking backwards in order to better understand what to do as they move forwards. Although many and perhaps most employers have scaled back their college hiring plans for this spring, there's little talk of exploding offers. More employers realize that recessions are tactical problems and college recruiting is strategic. You don't solve tactical problems by grossly altering and certainly not abandoning your strategic vision. You may tweak the strategy here and nip it a bit there in order to survive the tough times, but organizations which confuse tactics with strategy are organizations which tend not to survive let alone thrive.

There have been exploding offers this year and there will be more. But I'm willing to wager that there will be far, far fewer than there were early this decade. And for that I'm thankful that most employers which are engaged in college hiring understand that if you forget your history then you're doomed to repeat it.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 9, 2008 at 7:06 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

We recently surveyed job seekers and found that 64.1 percent of college students and recent graduates believing that it will take them three or fewer months to find a job if they were to start looking for a new job today. That level of pessimism is significantly stronger than it was in March when 73.5 percent expected to find a new job within three months or even February when 65 percent expected to find a new job within three months.

Source: Job Seekers More Pessimistic in April: CollegeRecruiter.com Job Seeker Confidence Index for April 2008

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 8, 2008 at 6:26 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

There aren't many training sessions designed specifically to help college recruiters become more successful at their trade and fewer still which have been around for 19 years but there is one: the popular Recruiting Workshops offered through Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.

Since 1987, the popular Recruiting Workshops have provided training for thousands of college recruiting professionals across the United States. The format of each workshop is designed to accommodate a variety of experience levels, company sizes and individual needs. The interplay of general seminars -- conducted by outstanding professionals -- with small group and hands-on learning opportunities permits each participant the maximum flexibility to gain what he/she needs from the program.

This year, the Recruiting Workshops are offering two training programs, featuring some of the leading authorities on recruiting.

• Selection Interviewing on June 11th
• Strategic College Recruiting on June 12th and 13th

For detailed information on these programs and to learn how to register, please visit the Recruiting Workshops website.

Since these progams usually sell out, registering before May 9th not only insures a seat but also a discounted rate. For more information, contact Susan Kesti, Workshop Coordinator, at 919-660-7673.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 7, 2008 at 6:35 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I was approached by Kristine Rhodes, Executive Director & Talent Strategist at NAS Recruitment Communications, this past fall with the idea of conducting a survey of college students and recent graduates nationwide so that we could better understand how they want employers to communicate with them. Well, the results are in and they're very, very interesting.

This Tuesday from 1:00pm to 2pm ET / 10am to 11am PT, Kristine and I will be joined by Kristy Seidel, SPHR, Manager of Recruiting, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts - North American Operations, for a free 45 minute webcast entitled, "Creating Employment Buzz On Campus: Standing Out In a Crowd." We'd love for you to join us.

On today's college campuses, "eye-ball" time is at an all-time premium. Students are bombarded daily with credit card offers and philanthropic requests, while employers are trying to communicate with them to fill their ranks with top-tier talent. The market is so saturated that investing dollars and effort may not guarantee success, but innovative strategizing will. Great employers struggle to stand out from the crowd, and often don't have enough of their targeted students' bandwidth to communicate their differences.

To understand how to communicate with young talent, one must start by asking questions and listening to the answers. In this case-study webcast, we'll hear how Hyatt Hotels and Resorts, already a premier hospitality employer, designed and implemented their college recruitment strategy. We'll also hear about how NAS and one recruitment communications professional decided to undertake a national e-survey, with help from CollegeRecruiter.com and Northwest Airlines, of thousands of students and recent grads to identify their employment messaging preferences.

In this webcast, led by Kristine Rhodes, Executive Director & Talent Strategist, NAS Recruitment Communications, and Kristy Seidel, SPHR, Manager of Recruiting, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts - North American Operations, we'll hear from the team that created a successful campus strategy!

This live event is FREE, and available on a first-come, first-seated basis so register today. To register online: go to HumanCapitalInstitute.com. If you would like to register by phone, please call 1-866-538-1909.

Please contact NAS if you have questions about this exciting webcast.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 4, 2008 at 9:31 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I recently read an article at ERE and noticed a comment posted to it by Lisa Graham, Client Relationship Manager for FurstPerson / Sprint. Lisa's comment caught my eye because she wrote that she's made four good hires from MYSpace and had multiple potential candidates ask questions about her positions and express interest in them. She's had similar responses from Facebook. And to make her comment even more intriguing, she admitted to being a relative newbie as she's only been using MySpace and Facebook for about six months.

I emailed Lisa to ask her to share her wisdom and she very kindly obliged right away. Lisa hires for Sprint's contact center in Oklahoma City. They focus on tech support but have some customer service positions available as well but the customer service department is smaller and her group does not hire for it very often.

The tech support group has three tiers: tech, advanced tech, and tickets. Her group hires only for the first level tech support. Employees in that area are promoted into the higher two groups. Together they support Sprint's wireless devices including some of the more complex BlackBerry and other PDA-style phones and the wireless air cards. As you can imagine, their workforce skews young. Sprint's only age requirement is that the employees must be over the age of 18 and they do hire some retirees but the tech skills they're looking are more commonly found in younger rather than older employees and they're even more commonly found amongst people who are using these sites as the ability of a candidate to use the sites at all indicates that they're at least somewhat tech savvy. Which leads us to Lisa's decision to use MySpace and Facebook as part of her recruiting arsenal.

So what did Lisa do? On MySpace she created a personal profile, set it to private, and then placed a classified ad. She checks her MySpace account daily to answer any emails she receives regarding and to-date has hired at least four candidates and had numerous interested inquiries from candidates. She tries to update her ads at least once a month and sometimes even more frequently depending on the number of positions she has available.

On Facebook, she set up her entire profile as one big recruitment ad. She lists events for any on- or off-site job fairs she attend or hosts and has joined area networks so when she posts information about her job fairs to her page that information also gets displayed on the area network pages. She's also purchased Facebook Flyer advertising to be sent out to the network in her area and looks for people that she knows and adds them to her friend list to build her network. LIsa has also posted ads in the marketplace. As she does with MySpace, Lisa checks her Facebook email daily and keeps her page updated.

Interestingly, Lisa's efforts so far on Bebo have so far failed to bear fruit. Bebo is more popular amongst high school students than Facebook (average user age 25) and MySpace (average user age 35). Perhaps she will need to adapt her strategies and tactics for Bebo or perhaps the demographics are too different and she'll end up abandoning her Bebo efforts. Time will tell.

Lisa's story is inspiring. Too often I hear recruiters and hiring managers bad mouth social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace as being wastes of time. When I scratch the surface a bit most of them either haven't spent any time on the sites at all or haven't invested nearly enough to form an accurate opinion. Lisa took the plunge and continues to invest time virtually every day. She understands that first and foremost these sites are about networking so she networks. She keeps her pages updated so that her "friends" are continually reminded in a soft sell way about her and the opportunities she has available. They may not all have been interested in working in tech support for Sprint six months ago when Lisa first started using the sites and they may not be today but some have been and some will be. And Lisa has hired some already and will certainly hire some more.

Bravo!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 3, 2008 at 7:06 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

We're receiving a steady number of postings to the new Facebook Career Blog application. It is free and takes seconds to add it to your Facebook account.

You'll be asked questions about your career, such as who was your favorite boss and why. Your Facebook friends will be alerted that you've posted answers to the questions and the question and answer will be posted to the CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Candidates Blog.

Share your career advice. Try it. You'll like it.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 2, 2008 at 3:14 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the biggest frustrations in running an Internet job board like CollegeRecruiter.com is trying to accurately measure the value that we deliver to our employer clients. The problem, simply put, is that the most of them don't know either.

The vast majority of medium to large employers use applicant tracking systems and the vast majority of those do not properly track the source of those applicants. Most of them do a fine job of tracking the applicants from the point of application but for an employer to understand where their recruiting dollars are best being spent they also need to track the source of the applications.

The ATS companies and many of their clients insist that a drop down box listing different sources used by the employer suffices. The reality is that these candidate self-identification systems only suffice in providing inaccurate information to the employers. A recent study by Don Firth's JobsInLogistics indicates that self-reporting mechanisms like these notorious drop down boxes result in the misidentification of the source some 83 percent of the time. In other words, five out of six job seekers do not know how they found the employer's on-line career site even though the bulk of them probably just clicked through from a job board like CollegeRecruiter.com, a targeted email, cell phone text message, etc.

So how do we know that Internet job boards are the number one source of hire if employers don't know their own source of hires? Easy. We don't ask the employers. We instead ask the candidates. Because they don't remember the specific sites they come from, we don't ask them for that information because it would likely be misleading. But we can certainly ask them how they looked for information when they were last job hunting and how they intend to look for information when they next job hunt.

Peter Weddle, the executive director of the International Association of Employment Web Sites, recently conducted his annual Source of Employment Survey. Unlike traditional and flawed "source of hire" polls of employers, the WEDDLE's Source of Employment Survey collects data from individuals who are actually in the workforce and actively or passively looking for an alternative employment opportunity. It therefore has the following advantages:

• The Source of Employment Survey collects information directly from the individuals who have found employment during the survey period. Source of hire polls, in contrast, collect information from recruiters and employers who must rely on notoriously inaccurate data collection technology-their applicant tracking systems-to determine where new hires first learned about their position.
  
• The Source of Employment Survey generates findings based on primary rather than secondary data. Source of hire polls, in contrast, average information collected across multiple organizations which can reduce the visibility of key factors and even eliminate important exceptions to the general rule among the findings.
  

• 19.0% were managers;
  
• 16.7% were mid-level professionals;
  
• 15.5% were executives;
  
• 15.1% were senior-level professionals;
  
• 12.3% were entry-level professionals;
  
• 11.0% were skilled tradespersons; and
  
• 10.4% were administrative persons.
  

• 25.1% said they were currently employed, but actively looking for another job;
  
• 22.6% said they were not currently employed and actively seeking a new job;
  
• 20.9% said they were currently employed and thinking about make a job change this year;
  
• 15.7% said they were re-entering the job market after a prolonged absence (2+ years); and
  
• 15.7% said they were employed and not planning to leave their current employer.
  

When asked to identify where they found their last job, the respondents listed the following sources as their top ten (not all sources are listed so the percentages will not total to 100%):

• 13.3% An ad posted on an Internet job board like CollegeRecruiter.com;
  
• 7.0% A tip from a friend;
  
• 6.8% Other;
  
• 6.3% A newspaper ad;
  
• 6.2% They posted their resume on a job board like CollegeRecruiter.com;
  
• 6.0% A call from a headhunter;
  
• 5.8% They were referred by an employee of the company;
  
• 5.2% They sent a resume to the company;
  
• 4.9% At a career fair; and
  
• 4.8% By networking at work.
  

What else did the survey uncover? Respondents gave a thumbs-down to two sources of employment that have generally been viewed more favorably by recruiters. Just 3.9% of the individuals in the poll said they found their last job:

• through the publication of their professional association or
  
• on a social networking site.
  

Where Will Survey Respondents Look for Their Next Job

When asked to indicate where they expect to find their next job, the respondents cited the following top five sources (not all sources are listed so the percentages will not total to 100%):

• 19.0% said an ad posted on an Internet job board like CollegeRecruiter.com;
  
• 7.9% said posting their resume on a job board like CollegeRecruiter.com;
  
• 5.8% said sending their resume into the company;
  
• 5.6% said a call from a headhunter; and
  
• 4.9% said by networking at work.
  

• An ad posted on an Internet job board like CollegeRecruiter.com (cited by 13.2% of respondents);
  
• Posting a resume on a job board like CollegeRecruiter.com;
  
• Sending a resume into the company;
  
• A tip from a family member; and
  
• A tip from a friend.
  

• I agree with Weddle's assessment that it reminds us that there is no silver bullet for sourcing top talent. Job boads like CollegeRecruiter.com are clearly effective but they must be integrated with a range of other approaches to produce a truly effective recruitment strategy.
  
• Beware conventional wisdom. Not only do the country's many fine daily and even weekly newspapers continue to offer effective connections to talent but association publications and social networking sites are much less effective than other talent acquisition methods, despite all of the buzz that they've received.
  

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 2, 2008 at 9:24 AM | Leave a Comment (2)