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I was interviewed last week at the Kennedy Information 2008 annual conference in Orlando by Chris LaVoie of Recruiter Earth. He asked me to provide viewers with an overview of the origins of CollegeRecruiter.com, where we're at today, and also where we're headed. Interested? Watch the video:
Tomorrow is American Thanksgiving. My favorite holiday.
May you and your family have a wonderful and memorable Thanksgiving!!
I'm pleased to announce that Geoff Peterson will be the guest presenter for an upcoming CollegeRecruiter.com webinar on how employers should use Twitter for to source and recruit candidates.
Geoff is the Managing Principal for General Lead, a national provider of talent delivery, advanced sourcing services, and custom recruitment training. In addition, Geoff is also the Editor for StaffBytes, a news site dedicated to recruiting industry tips, techniques and instructional videos. Geoff has eight years of full life-cycle recruiting, Internet sourcing and research experience nationwide, having fulfilled successful engagements with small organizations and Fortune 500 companies alike. Geoff brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table including Technical Recruiting, Executive Recruiting, Internet Sourcing, Name Generation, Competitive Intelligence, Internet Research, Job Search Strategy and Recruitment Marketing.
Through his site, StaffBytes, Geoff provides high-quality recruiting information such as Internet site reviews, step-by-step techniques, expert tips and demonstrations for a variety of industries. In addition, Geoff also creates original instructional videos for StaffBytes that coach recruiters and Internet sourcers on a wide range of recruiting strategies and sourcing methodologies. Geoff holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Small Business Management/
The webinar will be entitled, "Twitter: Emerging Online Community for Recruiters and Sourcers." In this 60-minute webinar, learn how Twitter is taking recruiting to a whole new level. Geoff will fully demonstrate Twitter, walking through it's search capabilities and demonstrating how to build a "following" which benefits recruiters as they promote open positions and search for active and passive job seekers. Geoff will also show backdoor tips and tricks of using other sites and review how recruiters and sourcers can use them to begin building relationships within online communities.
Among the valuable takeaways for this interactive seminar are:
So join us on Thursday, January 15, 2009 from 2:30-3:30 pm EST / 1:30-2:30 pm CST / 12:30-1:30 pm MST / 11:30am - 12:30pm PST. Register for free today as seats are limited and this promises to be one of our most popular webinars to-date!
George Lenard, one of the foremost experts on employment law issues as they pertain to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, just posted a detailed and very interesting analysis of a recently decided court case in which a federal district (trial) court ruled that a school district's non-renewal of a teacher's contract was lawful due to his activities on MySpace.
In a nutshell, the teacher created a number of MySpace pages including some under aliases. He posted nude photos of men to those pages and engaged in on-line communications with his high school students in a manner that the court felt was more akin to peer-to-peer than student-to-teacher communications. He was warned by his employer to stop but didn't. Intrigued? Check out George's Employment Blawg.
I just returned from the Kennedy Information 2008 annual conference in sunny Orlando. Perhaps it was the very pleasant weather or something in the water, but all of the doom-and-gloom in the economy didn't seem to have much of an impact on the vendors who exhibited at this year's conference.
We had our first booth there ever and plan to return next year. We weren't overwhelmed by the business that we generated but were quite pleased. We were able to get some valuable face time with some clients, have a private dinner with a large client that should become much larger, and meet with 15 to 20 potential clients. We also had the pleasure of speaking with dozens of representatives from other organizations whose hiring needs are not a good fit for our college job board and that's fine as you never know when the people that we met on Monday or Tuesday may change places of employment and then be in a position where we can help them with their staffing needs. Or they may stay with their current organizations and those organizations may change and start to hire college students for internships or recent graduates for entry level jobs.
Mike Palmquist, one of our national account executives, and I represented CollegeRecruiter.com at the conference. We took an informal poll of many of the exhibitors and their experiences seemed to be pretty consistent with ours. Many reported having had more success at some shows but much less success at many. We didn't talk with any exhibitors who were very unhappy but a couple indicated that they expected that they would have more traffic to their booths.
On a personal level, I had a lot of fun moderating a panel on Monday about ethics in recruiting. Panelists were Susan Burns of Talent Synchronicity, Kevin Wheeler of Global Learning Resources, Dennis Smith of WirelessJobs.com, and Steve Lowisz of Qualigence.
I also had a lot of fun doing a presentation on Tuesday about the future of on-line job boards. What made them so much fun? The attendees. They were great. Really interactive. Asked lots and lots of really great questions. The more interactive an audience, the better. They learn more and so do I.
Kudos to Kennedy Info!!
We're often asked by employers who are considering purchasing a targeted email campaign for the results that they should expect to see. They're asking a good question because the reality is that our clients don't purchase targeted emails or any other type of recruitment advertising product from us for the sake of running those ads. What they're really buying are the hires that come out of those campaigns. Although we have little to no control over the quality of the creative (the words and images in the emails) and certainly not the employment opportunity itself, we are able to provide our clients with some reasonable expectations.
The industry average response rates for an opt-in targeted email campaign purchased from a list owner such as CollegeRecruiter.com are about five percent of the recipients will open (read) the email and about five percent of those will click through to the employer's web site or otherwise take action. Our response rate tends to be two to three times as high, meaning that employers only need to have us deliver 1/3 to 1/2 of the emails as our competitors in order to get the same results, because of several factors:
So what types of results have we seen? One example was a campaign that we ran in February 2007 for a federal government agency which came to us weeks ahead of an application deadline to find out how many candidates we had which fit their desired profile. The skills required were fairly broad so we had 1.2 million students and recent graduates who fit their requirements. Then the agency sat back and waited to see what their already running efforts would produce because if those other efforts bore enough fruit then the agency could save the taxpayers some money by not buying our email list. A week before their deadline they knew they were in trouble.
The agency still needed 8,000 applications, they needed a much higher number of diverse candidates than they were getting, and the application took an average of two hours to complete. Not an easy chore for any employer. The agency had us deliver a very clean, simple, and powerful creative on their behalf to 500,000 of the 1.2 million students and recent graduates. The result? They were able to track 5,000 completed applications from our email blast in the last five days of the campaign. We also received anecdotal feedback that a couple of thousand of additional applicants started to apply but didn't get through the two hour ordeal prior to the deadline.
So what are our typical metrics? Let's assume that the campaign is to 50,000 candidates. That's our minimum size in the sense that you pay the same whether we deploy an email to one person or 50,000 people. You'll typically see about 7,500 opens, which is 15 percent and about three times industry average. Of those, about 1,000 will click through to your web site. That's a click through rate of 13.33 percent and about 2.67 times the industry average. At that point, the employer's metrics take over but we hear from many clients that about 20 percent of these pre-qualified candidates will apply. If so, then you'll see 200 applications. Many employers also tell us that they hire about 10 percent of these pre-qualified candidates. If so, they'll hire about 20 people. The cost of an email campaign to 50,000 candidates is $2,250 and if you hire 20 people that works out to a cost per hire of $112.50. Not bad. Not bad at all.
There's little doubt that the last year has been a miserable one for most employers and employees. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been shed and virtually every sector is hurting. About the only sector that has seen any employment gains is government hiring.
The layoffs and lack of new hiring make for difficult times for the job board industry. Although most outside of the industry assume that it is good for job boards when more people are looking for work, the opposite is actually true because the vast majority of job boards generate revenue from sales of recruitment advertising to employers. And when those employers aren't hiring, they aren't spending money on recruitment advertising.
Despite the problems in the industry, we just hired two new sales people. Caddy Rowland will be our second National Account Executive and working alongside Mike Palmquist in helping our employer clients. Betsy Larson will be our Consumer Marketing National Account Executive. The advertising that she will sell will be used by organizations to help sell their products and services to the college students, recent graduates, and alumni who use our site. Welcome aboard!!
One of the most frequent sources of frustration that we here at CollegeRecruiter.com hear from students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs is that they can't get their foot in the door of organizations for whom they want to work. The candidates are told over and over again to network with people in the organizations but if they don't know anyone within those organizations then how can they network with someone there?
Keith Luscher, author of Prospect & Flourish and publisher of Prospecting Weekly, has the answer: if you can't get your foot in the door then use a wedge. The approach of wedging your foot in the door is a step-by-step approach that should be used only with a limited number of highly targeted prospects at any given time. It can be used to get interviews or other appointments with key decision-makers in organizations of all types and sizes.
But what is the wedge? It is a metaphor that Keith uses for creating influence through value. You need to identify the value that you bring to the people and organizations you're targeting. You need to prioritize those people and organizations so that you first contact those for whom you provide the highest value as they're the ones most likely to say yes to your requests. Send a letter to the targeted people that in the first paragraph greets them, identifies others in the organization who you also are contacting, and dangles a carrot in front of them. In the second paragraph, identify an issue that is painful to them and then tell them briefly that you can eliminate that pain and back it up with compelling testimonials. Deliver your letter, by hand if possible, in a package that stands out and then follow-up with a phone call a few business days later and then once or twice a week after that.
Want to know more details? Read Keith's excellent, detailed explanation of how to drive a wedge at Prospecting Weekly.
I've had the pleasure of presenting at a number of college recruiting conferences. CollegeRecruiter.com occasionally even exhibits at or sponsors these events. One of the best conferences is the Brainstorm Consulting's Campus Recruiting Forum. If you're itching to learn what's new in campus hiring - from social networking sites to hiring trends to the changing nature of Gen Y -- then have a look at your calendar in early December because there will be a Campus Recruiting Forum in San Francisco on Tuesday, December 2nd and in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, December 4th.
You'll find that the Campus Recruiting Forum is focused entirely on increasing the skills and expertise with which organizations like yours hire students and graduates. It features several workshops, plenary sessions, and panel discussions in one full day.
The Campus Recruiting Forum is your opportunity to hear from top experts on topics critical to your success:
Want to know who will be attending? Here are some titles of those registered who have already registered:
Some of the employers registered:
I look forward to seeing you there!!
The National Association of Colleges and Employers periodically surveys its employer members, most of which are large organizations, about their plans to hire college students for internships and recent graduates for entry-level jobs. A year ago, those employers planned to increase their hiring by 16 percent. That number later dropped to about five percent and is now at just 1.6 percent.
"Overall, hiring looks flat for now and some employers are indicating some movement to cut back," says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. "In August, approximately one-third of employers said they were going to trim their college hiring; in our current poll, however, 52 percent said they were going to adjust their college hiring downward."
The bright spot? The government continues to hire as fast as it can, in large part because of the disproportionately large number of Baby Boomer employees that it employees. Reports indicate that about 25 percent of government workers plan to retire within the next five years and almost 70 percent within the next 10 years. If those projections hold true, then the government will either be woefully understaffed or have to replace those retirees with younger workers. There simply aren't enough Gen X'ers to fill the empty seats so the government is doing what any employer would in its position: it is hiring as many Gen Y'ers as possible and hoping to retain them when the Baby Boomers retire.
Great blog article today at The Talent Buzz about the massive resources invested by Careerbuilder into its Facebook strategy and the less than stellar results seen to-date.
Careerbuilder has invested an incredible amount of time and money into its Facebook strategy yet its Fan Page only has 8,613 "fans" which are to the Fan Pages set up by organizations to what "friends" are to the personal pages set up by individuals. Let's put that into perspective. The "I have more Foreign Policy Experience than Sarah Palin" group has over 250,000 members and "My Pet Rock is more Qualified than Sarah Palin to be Vice President" has almost twice as many as does Careerbuilder's Fan Page.
Maybe part of the problem is that Careerbuilder's strategy seems to be to charge its employer clients at least $15,000 to build a Fan Page for them and then to drop onto those Fan Pages big "built by Careerbuilder logos" and the a feed of the employer's job postings linked not to the employer's web site but to the postings on Careerbuilder. So Careerbuilder's clients are, effect, paying $15,000 to drive their candidates to Careerbuilder with no guarantee that those candidates will apply to jobs from the employer rather than jobs being advertised on Careerbuilder by other employers.
In the spirit of transparency, let me point out that CollegeRecruiter.com is also building Facebook Recruiting Fan Pages for its clients and that some of those clients have chosen to have us include job postings on their Fan Pages that would drive the candidates to CollegeRecruiter.com. But I'm not being hypocritical in my critique of Careerbuilder's product. We aren't dropping "built by CollegeRecruiter.com" logos onto our client's pages. And we aren't requiring our client's job postings to link to their postings on CollegeRecruiter.com.
The reason that some of our clients are choosing to have the job postings on their Facebook Recruiting Fan Pages link to their postings on CollegeRecruiter.com is that the applicant tracking systems (ATS) used by those employers typically don't the RSS or other such technology built-in which would allow the postings to automatically appear and stay current on their Facebook page but CollegeRecruiter.com and most other premium job boards do. Until the ATS companies start including RSS feeds as a standard feature, employers who want their postings on Facebook or other sites will likely need to continue to drive those candidates to Careerbuilder, CollegeRecruiter.com, or other premium job boards.
You better believe that it does. Thankfully it appears that Gen Y turned out at the polls in droves two days ago. Early indications are that this election saw the highest percentage of under 30 voters in history. That's really important given that Gen Y will likely need to fix some of the messes created by the Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers.
One of the excuses that some people make for not voting is that their votes don't really count. They typically don't mean that their votes aren't counted but rather that their votes aren't needed. Well, remember eight years ago in Florida when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by about 500 votes? Here in Minnesota we're seeing the about the same margin of victory for the U.S. Senate race between the incumbent, Republican Norm Coleman, and the challenger, Democrat Al Franken. We've lived through one of the long, nastiest, and most expensive senatorial races in history and after 2.91 million voted the margin of "victory" for Coleman is 471 votes.
Under Minnesota law, the re-count is automatic unless Franken waves that right and that's not going to happen. It will likely be December or even January before all of the ballots are reviewed. Ballots like mine which were properly completed will be re-scanned and that should go pretty quickly. But the Secretary of State is guesstimating that there are about 6,000 ballots which weren't completed properly because the voter circled the candidate's name or put a check or X into the oval rather than filling it in. There are also allegations that some of the ballots weren't counted at all. In any case, the election will likely come down to a very, very small number of votes.
Remember these elections each time you have the opportunity to vote and never, ever waive that right. Millions have fought and died for democracy and our right to vote for our leaders. To waive that by failing to show up is an insult to their memories.
Virtually all major job boards encourage candidates to post their resumes so that the minority of employers who search the resume banks can search the database, find your resume, and contact you to see if you'd be interested in being considered for one of their employment opportunities. There are certainly pros and cons to posting your resume to a public database such as a resume bank. For example, although potential employers will be able to see your resume and that will increase your chances of finding a new job faster, others will be able to see your resume as well. We at CollegeRecruiter.com became so concerned about the threat of identity theft from hackers and annoying phone calls from those who search resume banks to find new customers that we no longer allow employers or anyone else to search our resume bank.
If you decide to post your resume, do so carefully. Use a disposable Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or other such email address and a post office box rather than your home address. Never include on your resume information such as your birthdate or social security number. Employers don't want that information when they're considering you for a position and because of the risk of identity theft you don't want to ever hand that information over to anyone who doesn't absolutely need it. Don't include the name of your current employer as that will reduce the likelihood that they or someone acting on their behalf will find your resume. If you work for a large national bank, identify your current employer as "Large, National Bank" where you would normally list the name of the organization. If you think that your employer may find you by your name, use your first initial and last name.
At the end of the day, you are not owned by your employer. If they find out that your resume is on-line they should look upon that finding as an opportunity to try harder to keep you. If they terminate your employment or take other disciplinary action, then they'll only have confirmed for you that they are not an employer of choice and that you made the right decision to seek out a new place of work.
One of the most thoughtful voices in the recruiting blogosphere is Jim Stroud. Today he has given job seekers a true gift: a free, one hour webinar in which he walks those who are searching for a new job through the process that they should follow. Download the materials and then watch the video here:
Randall Hansen of QuintCareers asked me to participate in a group blogging effort to help empower workers and job-seekers to examine and improve their careers in a struggling economy. At least a dozen bloggers are posting entries today, Job Action Day, about these topics. While our efforts will certainly not solve all of the problems afflicting today's workers and job-seekers, efforts like this should make a difference to some and, at the end of the day, that is enough.
Randall left the choice of topic up to each of us so that we could each write on something for which we felt some passion and, hopefully, in which we have some expertise. I will write a few words about the overuse of job boards by job seekers. Now that may seem like an unusual topic for an owner of a job board, but I've seen far too many candidates delay their entry or re-entry into the workforce because they hide behind their monitors. Do spend a day on the job boards at the beginning of your search but after that you should spend a few minutes per day max.
On your first day, first register with the three big general boards: Monster, Careerbuilder, and HotJobs. Post your resume and apply to all of the advertised jobs for which you are qualified and which are of interest to you. Set up resume match agents / alerts so that the boards email you whenever a new job is posted which matches your interests. Then repeat with one or two boards that target your geographic area (i.e., MinnesotaJobs.com) then repeat with one or two boards that target your occupational field (i.e., EngineerJobs.com), then repeat with CollegeRecruiter.com if you're a college student or recent graduate.
On your second, third, fourth, and additional days only go back to the job boards if you receive an email from them telling you that a position has been posted that matches your interests and then only spend as much time on those sites as is necessary to review the posting and apply to it if you are qualified and interested in the position. Spend all of the rest of your time setting up and going to informational interviews, volunteering, and otherwise networking.
Your job search will be more stressful and difficult than will be similar searched conducted by your friends who rely on the job boards, but long after you've been hired and are happy in your new job, they will continue to be pounding away at the job boards and, probably, their keyboards, monitors and anything else that is connected to their computer.
