As we enter the final days before the Tuesday, November 4th elections, I am flabbergasted at how brainwashed the voting public has become. Case in point: Joe the Plumber. Now I realize that stories about real people or situations make arguments more persuasive. That's why I try to work in as many real-life examples into my recruiting webinars and other presentations as possible. But the stories should make sense, shouldn't they? And if they don't make sense, then shouldn't the story teller suffer for failing to respect their audience?

The latest example is the use by the McCain campaign of Joe (the Plumber) Wurzelbacher, the plumber who reportedly isn't licensed as a plumber, has unpaid back taxes, and thinks that it is un-American to "spread the wealth." Give me a break. Spreading the wealth has always been part of the American way, as it is in every other nation and community. Humans and many animals "spread the wealth" in every society because doing so makes us all better off. We "spread the wealth" when we pay taxes to fund schools, roads, police, fire, military, and every other function of government. We "spread the wealth" when we use governmental services. We "spread the wealth" in our places of work as some days we are more productive than those around us and other days they are more productive than are we. We "spread the wealth" in our families, as seen in families where one spouse is the primary moneymaker while the other primarily takes care of raising the kids.

To claim that "spreading the wealth" is the death of small businesses is, pardon my French, total crap. I am a small business owner and have been one since 1991. I have voted Republican more often than I've voted Democrat or Independent and plan to vote for Republicans, Democrats, and an Independent next Tuesday. So don't read this blog article and think to yourself that this guy is a die hard Democrat and he's only bashing the Joe the Plumber story because it is coming from the McCain campaign. But do read this blog article and hear the frustration of a small business owner who is tired of those in politics claiming to understand our needs and wants. They don't and we don't expect them to. We don't expect our friends or family members to either. Unless you've run your own small business, you can't possibly understand the good, the bad, and the ugly inherent in doing so. But every small business owner that I know understands that many times during the day we receive more than we give and many times during the day we give more than we receive...and we're fine with that.

It is not un-American to "spread the wealth." What is un-American is to have such little respect for the intellect of American voters that you would even think that "spreading the wealth" is un-American let alone voice such nonsense let alone use it as the cornerstone of a political campaign. John McCain, I think you're a great guy and the country could do a lot worse than having you in the White House for the next four years. But show some respect and admit that you and your advisors are so desperate that you made a serious error in judgment in making this "spread the wealth" argument.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 30, 2008 at 1:30 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

National Account Executive MIke Palmquist and I recently delivered a free webinar to hundreds of recruiters and other human resource professionals about how to use targeted email campaigns to hire college students for internships and recent graduates for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

In our one hour webinar, we discussed topics such as building versus buying a list, keeping your emails out of spam folders, maximizing the number of people who read and respond to your emails, how to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns, and how to design effective ad creatives. We were pleased that the feedback that we received from the attendees of the webinar was exceptional.

In an effort to help our employer clients hire better, faster, we decided a few months ago to host a free recruiting-related webinar about once a month. We've successfully completed a few so far. They're listed on our webinars page.

Our next free webinar is scheduled for Thursday, December 11, 2008 from 2:00-3:00pm EDT / 1:00-2:00pm CDT / 12:00-1:00pm MDT / 11:00am-12:00pm PDT. The topic will be, "Facebook Not Working For You? Learn the Five Secrets." Seats are again limited so please register today. You're going to want to join us if you're frustrated by your inability to successfully use Facebook recruit college students for internships or recent graduates for entry level jobs or other career opportunities. If that describes what you're going through then you're not alone. For all of the media attention paid to Facebook, very few employers have generated any solid number of applications, let alone hires, from this potential goldmine. So do you want to learn the five secrets for how to successfully use Facebook as part of your recruiting efforts? If so, join us.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 29, 2008 at 4:04 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 28, 2008 at 7:53 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of my favorite days of the year is Halloween. I love going to pumpkin patches but they have to be real -- not just some farmer's field where pumpkins grown hundreds or even thousands of miles away are dumped so unsuspecting kids will think that the over priced pumpkins they're picking out were locally grown.

This year we didn't have time to go to a pumpkin patch but there was a nice assortment at one of our local grocery stores and the price they were charging was right: $4.99 for any pumpkin. Naturally I had to take the largest one. We weighed it when we got home: 90 pounds. Wow.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 28, 2008 at 11:23 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A number of Canadian employers have apparently decided that if they can't fight it, they should join it. That is, they have come to expect that many of their Gen Y candidates are going to involve their parents in the minutia of their career decisions. Although many of the employers likely shake their heads at how some Gen Y'ers go so far as to bring their parents to interviews and don't accept such behavior, those same employers have come to realize that if they don't expect such behavior and learn to deal with it then they won't be able to hire and retain the best of Gen Y.

Expect it but don't accept it. That is a new line that my wife and I are using as we enter the teenage years with our kids. We understand that they're going to do some things that don't make sense but that doesn't mean that we are going to let them get away with doing those things. They need to make mistakes in order to learn and it is our job to help them learn from those mistakes. Likewise, it is the job of a good employer to make their employees better. Expect that your employees, especially your less experienced ones, will make mistakes. But don't accept those mistakes. Teach them. Help them to grow. And then enjoy watching them mature into the fine, upstanding, highly productive employees they will become.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 27, 2008 at 7:48 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

Frustrated by your inability to successfully use Facebook recruit college students for internships or recent graduates for entry level jobs or other career opportunities? You're not alone. For all of the media attention paid to Facebook, very few employers have generated any solid number of applications, let alone hires, from this potential goldmine.

Want to learn the five secrets for how to successfully use Facebook as part of your recruiting efforts? Join Steven Rothberg, President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, and Mike Palmquist, National Account Executive, for a free webinar on Thursday, December 11, 2008 from 2:00-3:00pm EDT / 1:00-2:00pm CDT / 12:00-1:00pm MDT / 11:00am-12:00pm PDT. Since we started hosting these free monthly webinars this fall, we've always had hundreds of attendees but the number of attendees is limited so register today.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 23, 2008 at 3:00 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

A frequent complaint that we hear from college students searching for internships is that they can't find any. There are a number of variations but some of the more typical are:

• "Employers aren't hiring."
  
• "Employers are telling me that I'm overqualified."
  
• "Employers are telling me that I don't have the requisite qualifications."
  
• "How can I get experience if no one will give me a chance?"
  

Solution? Don't just look for paid internships. Also look for unpaid internships as unpaid internships are stepping stones to paid internships and those are stepping stones to entry level jobs.

Can't find an unpaid internship either? Then volunteer your time. If you're an accounting major then volunteer to do the books for a non-profit or small business for a few months. Invest a few hours a week in yourself to get the experience that you need to convince those employers offering those accounting internships that you are capable of doing the work they need done. Or sit around and apply to hundreds of job openings for the next few months and still not find anything. The choice is yours.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 22, 2008 at 10:43 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

It always amazes me how critical of Gen Y are a number of thought leaders in the recruiting industry. You hear words being thrown around like lazy, selfish, misguided, under educated, and worse. There's no doubt that some of those words are entirely appropriate to describe some members of Gen Y but then the same words also apply to some members of Gen X and some Baby Boomers.

I recently read an article by Sarah Welstead of Head2Head and she makes the point that rather than complaining about the motivation, skills, or other attributes of Gen Y, those who complain would be much better served by directing some of that negative energy into helping members of Gen Y improve. Do you know a member of Gen Y who is unmotivated? Rather than bemoan their lack of motivation, give back to the community by investing in that young adult and teach them how to become better motivated. Do you know a member of Gen Y who struggles with oral communication skills? Give back by teaching them how to better articulate their thoughts.

Criticizing something is easy. Being part of the solution is hard. I wonder -- are these critics willing and able to become part of the solution? I hope so.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 21, 2008 at 10:25 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

If the Family Feud asked for "The Top 5 Ways People Communicate," the number one answer would be email. Email has been the killer form of communication since the commercial dawn of the Internet 14 years ago. Virtually everyone has an email account and many have several. And everyone is wise to spam - unsolicited, bulk, commercial emails.

On Thursday October 23, 2008, join me as I present a 60-minute, Kennedy Information sponsored interactive webinar that will show you how recruiters can and should leverage the phenomenal power of the huge candidate databases available today with the proven effectiveness of email and how to stay out of the spam folder.

In this fast-paced, 60-minute presentation, you and your team will learn what the most effective top criteria for determining whether targeted email campaigns are right for your organization, how they fit within your recruitment marketing mix, and creative approaches that break through the clutter and instantly grab the attention of today's entering workforce

PLUS extra savings - the Kennedy Info fee for each seminar is $149 OR register for this program AND register for the Recruiting Gen Y through Targeted Cell Phone Text Messaging seminar for one fee of $249 -- a saving of $49!

To register or for more information please go to http://www.kennedyinfo.comProfessionalDevelopment/detail/20250.

Can't make this date? Register now and receive access to the full recorded event following its conclusion. Listen at your leisure from anywhere with web access!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 20, 2008 at 6:16 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

To read the first of this six part series, go to Part I.

Follow-up

Many of the major job boards will keep track in your account of the jobs to which you've applied and many also email a copy of the jobs to you. Use those records to follow-up with each and every employer to which you've applied. Give them four or five business days to review your resume and then email or call using any contact information included in the job posting ad. If there is no such information in the ad, and there often isn't, then go to the employer's web site and use the Contact Us or other such page to contact the Human Resources office. All you want to know at this stage is if they received your resume and when they'll likely review it. Be polite but firm in getting that information. Any good employer should be able and willing to communicate that to you. If they tell you five business days, call or email them back on the sixth business day to ask for an update and the timing of the next step. If they tell you that they'll be setting up interviews in 10 business days then call or email them back on the eleventh day. Keep repeating the process until you've been excluded from consideration or, hopefully, hired.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 19, 2008 at 1:16 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I posted a question to the NACE JobPlace discussion list a few weeks ago asking the college career service office professionals and other readers of the list to let me know the web page addresses (URL's) of blogs written by college career service office professionals. I did so in part because I regularly hear at NACE and regional ACE conferences that many of the offices have blogs yet I was unable to find most than a handful of them despite a lot of searching. It was almost like Big Foot. A lot of people were sure of the existence but no one actually had seen it.

Fortunately, a number of JobPlacers replied with links to their blogs or blogs written by other career service office professionals. Even more replied asking me to publish the list. What we decided to do was to essentially create a central location where you can read all of the blogs in one place.

What we came up with was the CollegeRecruiter.com Insights By Career Services Experts Blog. College career service office professionals have more training and experience than anyone in advising college students and recent graduates on how what jobs to seek and how best to advance their careers. But no student or recent grad has the time to find all of the blog articles by the career service office professionals let alone also figure out which of those articles are the most relevant. Good thing that we do because we've gathered the best of career service office blogs in this one place and have excerpt each of their blog articles so you can quickly and easily get the best advice from the best advisors.

Blogs which are updated most frequently appear most frequently because we excerpt only the most recent blog articles.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 18, 2008 at 8:54 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

To read the first of this six part series, go to Part I.

Fraud Alert

There has been a small but increasing number of instances of fraud being perpetrated against job seekers who post their resumes at job boards. Most of the major job boards derive the vast majority of their revenues by selling job postings and resume searching access to employers so they're loath to eliminate resume searching as a product. Yet they'll also admit that there is a real problem with keeping out those who want to buy resume searching access simply to download hundreds or even thousands of resumes for identity theft purposes. Also problematic are legitimate organizations who purchase access in order to call and sell products or services to candidates.

Protect yourself by posting your resume anonymously at the job boards that offer that option so that employers and fraudsters who search the resume bank can't see your name, email, or other contact information. Better yet, patronize the small number of major job boards like CollegeRecruiter.com which do not sell resume searching access to employers so as to better protect the candidates who are using the sites.

(continued tomorrow)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 18, 2008 at 1:14 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

To read the first of this six part series, go to Part I.

Be Neat and Tidy

Remember that the bulk of large employers will not actually see your resume before calling you for an interview, but keep in mind that some will. If you have an opportunity to do so, submit your resume without any formatting in plain text and also attach a copy as a Microsoft Word or, better yet, PDF document. Some employers don't want to look at attached resumes but some do. Even within some employers you'll find that some recruiters want to only look at plain text resumes while others only want to look at the formatted attached resumes. Rather than trying to guess, give them both and let them choose.

When you submit your plain text resume, be sure that you spend some time cleaning it up. Don't just copy from a Word document and paste the text into the "paste your resume here" box. That will result in a poorly formatted resume that is hard to read. Take five minutes and use a program like TextPad or WordPad and clean it up so that it is easy to read even if it isn't as pretty to look at as the Word version of your resume.

(continued tomorrow)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 17, 2008 at 1:12 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

To read the first of this six part series, go to Part I.

Keywords Also Matter When You Apply

Candidates who apply to jobs which are advertised on job boards or who post their resumes to job boards in the hopes that an employer will find the resume and contact the candidate with an interview offer are often shocked to learn that most large employers don't really read resumes anymore. Instead, resumes are added to the employer's database of resumes. That applicant tracking system allows the employer to more efficiently manage the flow of candidates and also all but ensures that when employers review your resume they will likely only find it if your resume contains the keywords that the employer uses when she searches for the resumes which are likely to best fit her needs. Just like you typed in keywords to find the employer's job posting, so will that employer type in keywords to find your resume.

To ensure that your resume is reviewed by an employer who may not be as skilled at keyword searching as you are, make sure that you include in your resume all of the possible keywords that the employer may use to find a resume such as yours. Don't include irrelevant keywords because the trick isn't to get your resume noticed. The trick is to get your resume noticed by the employer when they are reviewing resumes submitted for a job for which you are both qualified and interested. Rather than referring to your previous experience just as an "Account Executive," also include the word "sales" if that's what your function actually was. Rather than referring to yourself as a "Registered Nurse," also include the acronym "RN" as some employers will search one way and others the other way.

(continued tomorrow)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 16, 2008 at 1:10 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had a very interesting conversation today with a corporate recruiter who wanted to connect with me so that we could compare our thoughts on some of the new tools available to recruiters such as social media and mobile marketing. Our social media discussions were primarily about blogging, Facebook and Twitter and how to integrate those with each other so they work together and support each other. Our mobile marketing conversation was all about how employers can and should use cell phone text messaging (SMS) to help them recruit candidates.

The recruiter made a lot of very good points about a lot of issues, but one that I wasn't happy to hear but glad that I did was that even though he is a fan of CollegeRecruiter.com and knew that we offered the leading mobile marketing product for recruiters, he had a lot of difficulty finding it on our site. I say (write?) that I wasn't happy to hear it but glad that I did because that kind of feedback is invaluable.

We re-launched our site five months ago with an almost entirely new back-end (database, software, etc.) and a brand new front-end (the look-and-feel). Our traffic increased and complaints decreased. Almost all of the feedback we have received to-date has been positive. Until now. His critique was spot on. It is too hard for our employer clients to find product and pricing information on our site. But that's going to change. Real fast. I promise.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 15, 2008 at 4:13 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

To read the first of this six part series, go to Part I.

Keywords Matter When You Search

Virtually every job board allows candidates to search by a combination of keywords and geographic parameters. If you're looking for a sales position in New York, you can enter "sales" into the keyword field and "New York" into the geographic field but most of the larger boards are going to return hundreds and perhaps thousands of job matches to you. If that happens, narrow your search by adding keywords or refining your geographic parameters or both. Are you actually looking for a retail sales position in Manhattan? Then search using the keywords "retail sales" and the geographic parameter Manhattan. Your results will be of much higher quality as most of the potential matches you'll see will actually be of interest to you.

(continued tomorrow)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 15, 2008 at 1:07 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Job boards have been around almost since the dawn of the Internet and became popular in the mid-1990's with the birth of some of today's biggest and best job boards. They're wonderful tools for both job seekers and employers yet like all tools can be dangerous in the hands of someone who misuses them. The following are tips for those who want to use job boards in a way that will maximize their chances of finding a great new job as quickly as possible:

Come, Use, Go Away

Although I'm the President and Founder of job board CollegeRecruiter.com and therefore have a vested interest in getting job seekers to use job boards, I also recognize that far too many job seekers spend far too much time on job boards. There are some 50,000 job boards that primarily serve candidates in the United States and another 50,000 that primarily serve candidates elsewhere. No one can use all or even most of them. And don't even try to use many of them. '

Just about every job seeker will be well served by using the big three general boards (Careerbuilder, Monster, and HotJobs), two or three niche boards which target your occupational field or experience level, and two or three niche boards which target your geographic preferences. One great way of finding good niche boards are to search Google or Yahoo and seeing which job boards come up first. If you're looking for entry level jobs, type in "entry level jobs." If you're looking for engineering jobs, type in "engineering jobs." Another great way is to look at the sites which are members of the International Association of Employment Web Sites as these sites tend to be larger, well established, and have agreed to a set of ethical principals.

Once you find the general and niche sites that best fit your interests, go to each of them, register by posting your resume, apply to all of the advertised jobs which are qualified and which are of interest to you, set up job match agents (sometimes called alerts) and then go away and don't come back until you receive an emailed alert telling you about a job which is of interest to you has just been posted. You should spend at most one day on the job boards and then at most an hour a week after that.

(continued tomorrow)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 14, 2008 at 1:03 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

The yo-yo economy that we're suffering through has everyone running scared right from the highest levels of largest organizations the lowest levels of small organizations. Everyone either is or should be concerned with what is happening to the economy as a whole and how those happenings impact their own families.

Our organization is no different and I wouldn't expect it to be any different. Some of our employees are actually optimistic and have increased their 401k purchases. Other employees have paused those investments. Some employees look at our sales and profits to-date for 2008 and see that we're in the same ballpark for both as we were in 2007. Sales are a little down yet the number of large, pending proposals is higher than it was a year ago and gross profits are up.

Today one of my employees suggested that I better communicate to all of our employees how we're doing. The suggestion was a great one and I did so right away. Our culture is to be open, transparent, and honest. If we're struggling, I want our employees to know. If we're kickin' butt, I want our employees to know. But to only tell them when we're struggling or only tell them when we're kickin' butt isn't open enough, isn't transparent enough, and isn't honest enough for us. Is it for your organization?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 13, 2008 at 5:35 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Regular readers of this blog know that I grew up in Canada and even though I moved to Minneapolis for the weather, I still hold an affinity for some of the finer things that Canada has provided to the world.

But now it seems that the immigration trends are reversing and many Americans, at least many affluent Americans, are strongly considering moving north to Canada. Perhaps it because of a new program put into place by the Canadian government:

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 10, 2008 at 5:18 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Charissa Cowart, the WALA FOX10 News Daily Dot Com Reporter, is quickly making a name for herself in the recruitment blogosphere by doing a great job of quickly summarizing a few job search resources at a time for her viewers.

A couple of weeks ago she provided her viewers with some great information about JibberJobber, which is essentially a web-based, job search organizational system for candidates that allows them to easily and accurately track the jobs to which they've applied, been interviewed, received offers, etc.

Yesterday's segment again featured JibberJobber but also GreatPlaceJobs and CollegeRecruiter.com. I didn't know much about GreatPlaceJobs but within about 10 seconds of listening to Charissa, I had a really good handle on the neat niche they've carved out for themselves. GreatPlaceJobs offers offer a large collection of job listings exclusively at companies that have been verified and approved as award-winning great employers. Indeed, each of the companies listed in GreatPlaceJobs has been officially recognized as a "great workplace" by one of the various organizations that conduct workplace assessments. The site's creator, Asher Adelman, told FOX10 News, "There are usually more than 150,000 new open jobs in the GreatPlaceJobs database, and there are over 1,300 companies from across the U.S. that have been approved by [GreatPlaceJobs] as great employers."

On behalf of job seekers everywhere, thanks, Charissa!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 8, 2008 at 1:36 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

There are many plagues which afflict humans. Another is unemployment and underemployment. That's where job boards like CollegeRecruiter.com come in. Job boards help make matches between candidates and employers by providing a common meeting place where candidates can advertise their availability by posting their resumes and applying to job postings and employers can advertise their hiring needs by searching resume banks and posting job openings.

But does the world really need more job boards? Some estimates put the number at 40,000 and others at 60,000 but my best guess is that there are some 50,000 job boards in the United States and another 50,000 in other countries for a total of 100,000 job boards internationally. To qualify as a job board, multiple candidates must be able to advertise their availability and multiple employers must be able to advertise their job openings. Some or all of that may be done for free or a fee.

The vast majority of job boards have virtually no traffic and generate virtually no revenue. Many are not designed to have huge amounts of traffic as they are part of a network of job boards. That's the approach that we've taken with most of the domains that we own. Our flagship brand is CollegeRecruiter.com but we have a number of other sites that generate candidate and employer business in various niches. We acquired some of the job boards in our network such as EntryLevelJobs.net, we created others such as StudentRecruiter.com, AlumniRecruiter.com, 800-Go-Guard.com, and Adguide.com, and Resume-Database.com, and we partnered with the owners of others to provide them with job posting data so that they will have more postings available to their visitors and thereby improve the experience for their visitors while increasing the number of responses that our employer clients receive from their job posting ads.

So, does the world need more job boards? Nah, of course not. But can the successful launch of another new job board help some candidates and employers find each other and help generate some revenue for the owner of the board? Absolutely. The world is a very big place and as long as there are job boards, there will always be room for another good job board.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 7, 2008 at 2:09 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

There aren't too many heroes in the financial crisis currently gripping Wall Street and, as the politicians are too fond of saying, Main Street. But one of the few is Wells Fargo & Co. Why? Because they've proven time and time again that they're one of the best managed banks in the country.

I was interviewed by a journalist a few days ago and she asked me for examples of industries where college students should look for internships and recent graduates should look for entry level jobs. It was a difficult question to answer given the severity of the crisis and the lack of hiring by most organizations right now -- even healthcare is seeing layoffs. My answer was that the federal government looks like a safe harbor right now for those who want to maximize their chance of being hired while minimizing their chance of being laid off. But I should have pushed back on the question a bit and reminded her that job seekers don't apply to work for an industry. They apply to work for an organization and that there are many very good organizations which are hiring.

Wells Fargo is an example of one of those very good organizations. My wife used to work for Wells when it was Norwest and headquartered in Minneapolis but now we're just customers and shareholders. One of the primary reasons that we've retained stock in Wells all of these years is that we have a tremendous amount of respect for its management and the current financial crisis is reinforcing our feelings. While many competitors of Wells made stupid bets on stupid mortgages and then cried for a federal bailout after seeing their stocks plummet like rocks, Wells instead stayed conservative like a good bank should and has been rewarded by seeing its stock price climb this year. That's right. They're up for the year. Remarkable.

A week ago, Citigroup seemed poised to take over Wachovia at a deep discount made possible through the forced generosity of taxpayers like you and me. Then on Friday Wells stepped in and made a far superior offer. Citigroup litigated but today it looks like the feds are going to try to mediate so that Wachovia doesn't get tied up in litigation for months or years. If Wachovia's stupid loans didn't kill it, the litigation would.

If only there were more financial institutions like Wells Fargo. If there were, this country and even the world wouldn't be in the financial mess that it is in right now. Wells is in business to make a profit and should be, but their management understands the old adage that pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. Unfortunately, there were a lot of bankers in a lot of organizations who were hogs and now we're picking up the tab for their slaughter.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 6, 2008 at 5:36 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Heather Huhman, the careers writer for Examiner.com, has some great suggestions for internship and entry level job candidates regarding how you should negotiate your starting salary and other compensation in these tough economic times.

First of all, during tough economic times like we are in now, all candidates, but especially entry-level candidates, should understand that employers will be less likely to be willing to negotiate compensation packages because they face an abundance, not a shortage, of well-qualified candidates. The employer holds the negotiating power. That said, here are five tips:

1. Know what the salary range for the position should be. Don't know? Use our salary calculator.
2. Request the offer in writing and at least one business day to consider and decide upon it.
3. Tell the employer that you're interested when they make the offer, but don't commit.
4. Ask if negotiation is possible.
5. Consider all benefits, not just salary. Especially in tough economic times, employers may be willing to provide their new hires with more value by providing them with non-budgetary, soft benefits such as flex time or an increased number of vacation days.

   Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 3, 2008 at 7:14 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A week ago, Mike Palmquist and I hosted a free webinar for hundreds of recruiters and other staffing professionals on the best practices for employers using cell phone text messaging (SMS) to recruit college students. Although the technology for using SMS is there today and is successfully being used by many of our clients and other organizations, the technology for getting a good audio recording of the webinar wasn't quite there. It isn't terrible but definitely could have been a lot better. Want to see what I mean? Click on the video at the bottom of this blog entry.

October's webinar is on the Best Practices for Boosting Your Brand On-Campus Through the Use of Targeted Email Campaigns. The webinar is scheduled for Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 2:30-3:30pm EDT / 1:30-2:30pm CDT / 12:30-1:30pm MDT / 11:30am-12:30pm PDT. As was the case with our SMS webinar, we'll spend some of the hour providing some strategic reasons to use opt-in (permission-based) email marketing to recruit college students but much of the hour will be spent in the trenches discussing specific campaigns and pointing out reasons why the employers that deployed those campaigns were successful in boosting their brand on-campus. Stronger brands allow employers to make more effective use of their limited recruitment advertising dollars. At the end of the hour, you'll know why you should use email marketing to brand your organization on-campus and how to make that happen.

We will again record the webinar but this time the audio should be much better due to some significant software improvements by the webinar vendor. Remember, the number of attendee spots for our webinars is limited and we always give away a free bonus to all attendees so please register today.

Below is the video with accompanying, ahem, audio for last week's webinar. The audio isn't great but should be good enough for everyone to understand what we were saying. Again, next month's audio should be great. I've got my fingers crossed. Do you?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 2, 2008 at 4:36 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

My thanks to Peter Clayton of Total Picture Radio for making available the recording of the talk we had at the recent International Association of Colleges and Employers (IAEWS) conference in Chicago. Peter and I had a fairly short but wide ranging conversation about how corporate recruiters are compensated for hires but should be compensated for the performance of their hires.

Peter and I also talked about how many corporate recruiters tell CollegeRecruiter.com and other job boards that what they want out of their recruitment advertising campaigns more than anything else are quality candidates. Yet when those same recruiters talk with us and the other job boards about whether to try our sites and whether to renew with our sites the conversation is almost always about the number of clicks to their web sites or resumes they generated as a result of their job postings, banner ads, targeted email campaigns, cell phone text messaging campaigns, or other ad campaigns.

Why do these recruiters say one thing but reward another? Often because they have no choice. Their tracking systems are typically confined to their applicant tracking systems and those systems tend not to accurately track the source of resumes. Virtually every employer web site that has any tracking at all, and most don't, asks the candidate to self-identify their source. Yet studies show that well over 80 percent of candidates don't accurately identify their source so employers would do better not asking at all. If an employer is using an applicant tracking system that cannot issue unique web page addresses (URL's) for each sourcing tool for each job posting then that employer needs to find themselves a new applicant tracking system. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 2, 2008 at 11:20 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the opportunity to sit down prior to the International Association of Employment Web Sites (IAEWS) conference with Jonathan Goodman, Vice President of Business & Membership Development, and Mark Willaman, President and Founder, of FISHER VISTA, LLC / HRmarketer.com.

For part of the meeting, Jonathan recorded his interview with me during which we discussed the economy, the future of the job board industry, the conference, and some assorted other odds and ends. HRMarketer did a really nice job cleaning up the audio. If only they could have made some of my answers a little more intelligible.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 2, 2008 at 6:51 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) has for years advocated for the use of technology by its college career service office members but like those members, NACE is often left with bigger dreams than budgets. While budgets in all organizations will always be limited, it appears that NACE is loosening the purse strings a bit on its technology budget and moving towards revamping its web site and even how it communicates with its employer, career service office, affiliate, and other members.

Case in point: I received an email from NACE asking me to view at YouTube the September 2008 message from NACE President, Manny Contomanolis, PhD. I had the pleasure of getting to know Manny in Saint Louis a couple of months ago at the Midwest Association of Colleges and Employers (MwACE) annual conference. Without a doubt, he's one of the brightest and most energetic people in the industry and I suspect that he's used those assets to help guide NACE towards this new and exciting approach.

Now, if only NACE could be consistent about how it implements its vendor neutral policy. My beef? At last spring's NACE annual conference, NACE set up the exhibition room in a completely vendor neutral fashion except for the placement of the booth for NACELink, the job board that NACE and its corporate partner run on behalf of hundreds of college career service offices and employers who pay to advertise their job openings on it. There's little doubt that NACELink is a vendor as it charges employers to use its services and that NACELink is a direct competitor to CollegeRecruiter.com and other job board members of NACE. Yet NACELink's booth was located near but outside of the main exhibit area. No other vendors were allowed into those hallowed grounds and the advantageous position given to NACE's job board at the expense of its other vendor members was startling and not well received by the dozens of vendors who paid for their booth space and were not given the same placement opportunity as was NACELink.

Many of the job board and other vendor members in attendance were furious and I couldn't blame them. We made a mistake by not exhibiting but plan to in June 2009 when the conference will be in Las Vegas. But just as we recognized our honest mistake and are taking steps to correct it, I sure hope that NACE is doing the same. The one placement this past spring may in time be forgiven as an oversight. Repeated placements like that will not be tolerated by many and perhaps most of the vendors who suspect that NACE feels that its vendor neutral policies are good for the gander but not for the goose.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 1, 2008 at 11:22 AM | Leave a Comment (1)