It is probably of no surprise to anyone involved in college recruiting that new college graduates who had internships prior to or even after graduation fared far better in their efforts to find permanent employment after graduation than did their counterparts who didn't intern.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) just released its 2009 Student Survey. The report shows that just 19.7 percent of the Class of 2009 who had applied for jobs had one by the end of April. As dismal as that one in five percent may be, it was even worse for those who had not completed an internship. Just 14 percent of those landed jobs as of April as compared to 23 percent of their classmates who had interned. In other words, completing an internship prior to graduation made members of this year's class 64 percent more likely to land a permanent job by graduation.

"It's not surprising that employers look first to their interns -- who have a track record with the company -- when they have jobs to fill," says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. But students need to remember that an internship with an organization does not automatically lead to an offer for permanent employment with that organization. Although more than half of the seniors who responded to NACE's survey reported having completed an internship, just under one-quarter received a job offer from the organization for which they interned.

"The Class of 2009 saw significant cuts in hiring, and even an internship is not a guarantee of a job offer," says Mackes. "However, the numbers show that, especially in a tough job market, the student who has an internship has a distinct advantage over students who don't have that experience."

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 30, 2009 at 12:48 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

The job board operated by U.K. newspaper The Guardian was reportedly hacked this past weekend and about 500,000 resumes and other information valuable to identity theft scum walked out the door. The response from The Guardian? Pathetic. They recommended that their users buy fraud prevention services. I wouldn't be surprised if The Guardian received commissions on the sale of those services, which would make this intolerable situation even worse as The Guardian would be profiting off of the inadequate security measures that it chose to put into place.

A number of job boards have been hacked and many, many more will be. The information contained in a job seeker registration is quite valuable to those who want to profit by stealing the identity of others. Many job seekers include their entire work history, educational background, contact information, and even social security numbers. Anyone with access to that information can take out a credit card in your name and then use that card to fraudulently buy products. They're stealing from the retailers in some cases and the banks in many other cases, but they're also stealing from the job seeker even if the job seeker ends up not being saddled with the bill because the fraud will inevitably harm the credit score of the job seeker.

This is one of the primary reasons why 1.5 years we became the first major job board to kill its resume searching tool. The risk of hacking and identity theft is too great and increasing. Job boards cannot properly secure their resume banks while at the same time making them easy to log into for their employer clients. When I.T.'s security interests are pitted against marketing's sales interests, guess who tends to win?

The International Association of Employment Web Sites (IAEWS) meets next week in Chicago. Hopefully this issue will (again) be raised and hopefully more job boards will choose to follow our lead. We followed the lead of RecruitingNevada.com. A representative from that site talked about how and why they never allowed resume searching. I was convinced their approach was correct so we killed resume searching shortly afterward.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 29, 2009 at 10:42 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Attending a name-brand college or university will give you the following professional advantages over those who attended schools which are less well known:

1. It will be easier for you to get interviews and job offers at prestigious big companies.
   
2. Big companies will offer you more favorable starting positions and higher salaries.
   
3. People at big companies will have a more positive initial impression of you even if they haven't yet seen your work.
   
4. It will be easier for you to get involved in a more promising start-up company.
   
5. It will be easier for you to get admitted into name-brand graduate schools.
   

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 29, 2009 at 7:00 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the under reported aspects of cell phone text messaging (SMS) and other forms of mobile marketing is that it is not a level playing field. The conventional wisdom is that younger people tend to use their cell phones more and be more receptive to receiving ads on them than older people. While that is certainly true, there are also significant socioeconomic and racial differences in usage.

One of the key reasons that Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton in the primaries and then John McCain in the general election is that Obama had an extremely well thought out and integrated mobile marketing strategy. Clinton and McCain did not. Obama understood that it wasn't just the key demographic group Gen Y who used their cell phones more than the average eligible voter, but also the African-Americans and Hispanics. A year after the election, it is hard to remember that our first African-American president did not have the support of African-Americans early in the primaries. Clinton did. So Obama needed a way to reach and get out the vote amongst his supporters and part of that strategy was sending his message to the only device that we almost all carry around everywhere we go: cell phones.

Now we're seeing corporations follow suit. The latest example is United Airlines. Their recent "Volver por un rato" campaign encouraged Hispanic-Americans to enter a contest by texting a keyword to a short code or clicking on a link within an SMS alert. According to Mobile Marketer, entrants could win a trip for two anywhere in the world, worth some $2,500, by submitting a video and what they missed most about going back home.

United ran ads on TV, on-line banners, search engine ads, out-of-home, radio, and mobile -- both SMS and WAP. The result? Their interactive ads (mobile and on-line) were more effective than their off-line ads but, most interestingly, the mobile ads were five-to-ten times more effective than on-line advertising.

If you're looking for a cost-effective way of reaching Gen Y, African-Americans, or Hispanic-Americans, look no further than cell phone text messaging and other forms of mobile marketing. We've delivered hundreds of successful mobile marketing campaigns for our clients and know, like Obama and United, that mobile has come of age.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 28, 2009 at 7:33 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

OnRec and Kennedy Information have teamed up to produce one of the biggest recruiting events of the year. The OnRec and Kennedy Recruiting Expo is being held in Chicago from Monday, November 2nd through Wednesday, November 3rd, 2009. Monday is a pre-conference workshop day but veterans of these recruiting events know that the information they glean in the workshops is often priceless.

One of the innovative strategies that OnRec and Kennedy Information have adopted is to make the event accessible even to those who cannot get to the conference in Chicago through the Virtual OnRec Recruiting Expo produced by HR.com - completely online from your desktop. We invite you to attend the upcoming Virtual OnRec Kennedy Recruiting Expo 2009 for free. The regular price to attend is $150 per day so that's pretty sweet.

Join the event on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday and watch the online sessions, visit the virtual trade show booths in the on-line Expo, and network with your peers. Your free pass provides you with all day access. To take advantage of this opportunity, simply click on this link and enter your information. An access link will be emailed to you on the morning of the day you have selected to attend, just prior to the conference opening.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 27, 2009 at 9:52 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 27, 2009 at 7:25 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A question was recently posted to one of the discussion lists operated by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. The college career service office professional started by writing that she remembers from the Golden Parachute books that about 10 percent of job openings were advertised and then asked if that number was still correct.

I suspect that the percentages must be far higher now because virtually every organization of any size has a web site and the cost of publishing a job to those web sites is essentially zero. In addition, there are a number of high traffic job board which accept postings for free, including Indeed, SimplyHired, and most of the Craigslist sites. Then there are sites such as LinkUp, which takes postings from many corporate employer sites and aggregates them so they're all available in one place. Of course, virtually every posting everywhere is also a click away at search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. In addition, employers who want to post their jobs to CollegeRecruiter.com may now choose to pay $175 for 60 days or pay only when they receive qualified applications under our new pay-per-resume job posting option.

My best guess is that about 75 percent of job openings are now advertised, although many of those are advertised for free. From the perspective of the candidate, whether a job posting is paid for or free isn't very important.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 26, 2009 at 8:07 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Email marketing is regarded by many as the real killer application when it comes to social networking. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and the other so-called titans of social media have no where near the number of users and amount of usage as does email. It is amazing that in just a couple of decades, we've gone from a world where the vast majority could email only within their organizations or not at all to a world where we take email for granted.

Our biggest product by revenue for years has been targeted email campaigns. We typically deliver multiple campaigns a week and often a day on behalf of our employment and consumer marketing clients. That's not to say that every campaign is an incredible success. Some simply are destined to fail right from the beginning. When they do, it is usually do to one of four problems:

1. Wrong Target Audience. The best offer and creative in the world can't overcome an improperly targeted audience. If you're a relatively unknown, small accounting firm and you're trying to hire accounting interns, be realistic and target the students who attend the schools in your area rather than the schools which top the national rankings. If you're trying to sell vacation packages to sophomores and juniors, target those with the financial means to buy those packages, not those whose household incomes are $15,000.
2. Wrong Offer. Christopher Golec of Demandbase summed this one up well when he wrote, "E-mail marketing has the most success if the message provides immediate value and personally connects to the recipient. The message should help readers either to learn through educational content, news or tips, or to gain savings of either time or money."
3. Poorly Designed Creative. We see this over and over again. Clients often take weeks and even months deciding whether to run an ad campaign and how to deliver it and then they throw together the actual ad and are shocked when the results are disappointing. You can't effectively communicate without a well designed message. Your offer and call to action such as "click here to register" should be at the top of the creative and therefore within the preview pane of the message. Link only to specific landing pages designed to convert the interested users into registered users, applicants, customers, etc. Keep your subject line free from all caps and any punctuation and make the from name field the name of your organization if we or any other third party are sending the emails on your behalf.
4. Wrong Day and Time. We have found over and over again that the vast majority of campaigns perform the best when delivered on Tuesdays followed closely by Monday afternoons and Wednesdays. Some but not many perform best on Fridays or even on the weekends but we get our big red flags out when campaigns arrive on a Thursday and the client pushes for a Friday deployment. We'll typically ask them why they want the campaign to go out and the response is usually that they're in a rush. Yes, but give me an actual good reason, okay? Isn't it better to wait one business day to get twice the response rate? When phrased that way, most clients will take the deep breath they should have taken before placing the order, agree, and thank us for pushing back on them. Similarly, it doesn't make sense for the vast majority of campaigns to push them out the door at 5pm when we could easily deliver them the next day at 1pm. And the time zone matters too. Although people on the coasts often forget that there are people who reside in the Central and Mountain time zones, don't forget that a campaign delivered at 3pm Pacific hits people on the east coast at 6pm. That late arrival is typically the kiss of death as that email will sit overnight and be just one of dozens of emails sitting in the inbox when the recipient sits down to work the next day. What's the easiest way to deal with such unexpected and usually not terribly important emails? Yup. The delete key.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 23, 2009 at 9:02 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Employees need to be careful about what they posted to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. It amazes me how many will complain about their bosses, places of work, etc. and then are shocked when they're disciplined and sometimes even terminated due to their lack of discretion. Perhaps the poster child for this is Kimberly Swan, who wrote on Facebook that her job is boring...after only three weeks on the job. She was terminated. To hear her explanation and why her boss fired her, watch this video:

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 22, 2009 at 8:42 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

1. Friending your manager on Facebook and then complaining about your job.
2. Putting your personal brand in front of your company's brand.
3. Complaining that your company blocks social networking sites.
4. Attracting the wrong attention to your company's brand because of your own.
5. Announcing your new job on Twitter when you're still employed.
6. Thinking you're superior to older workers because you're tech literate.
7. Wearing rags to work because it's part of your brand.
8. Posting inappropriate photos on Facebook, forgetting that your profile is public.
9. Spending more time on yourself than being productive during work hours.
10. Calling in sick, when you're not, so that you can focus on your brand.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 21, 2009 at 8:34 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

1. Education / Training Consultant
2. Physical Therapist
3. College Professor
4. Software Developer
5. Technical Writer
6. Telecommunications Network Engineer
7. Speech-Language Pathologist
8. Software Architect
9. Occupational Therapist
10. Civil Engineer

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 20, 2009 at 9:40 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) is finally acknowledging that many of their members market products, services, and other opportunities to businesses and consumers and that those advertising and other marketing campaigns should and now do fall under the purview of the DMA. No longer will members of the DMA be able to apply different standards to an ad campaign sent to the mobile phone of a consumer than to the same consumer's email address. That nonsensical "the same rules don't apply to difference devices" policy was used by a number of less ethical members of the DMA in order to circumvent the DMA's consumer protection policies. No more.

According to Direct Marketer, the five big highlights of the new rule are:

1. Marketers need for prior express consent for marketing communication that is business-to-consumer (b-to-c) or even business-to-business (b-to-b).
2. Notice regarding consumer preferences should be offered in the privacy policy of the mobile marketer.
3. Mobile marketers should use appropriate suppression files such as the DMA wireless lists and the federal Do-Not-Call registry.
4. The new guidelines also cover location-based marketing messages, mobile subscription services, and mobile premium-rate products and services.
5. Members must abide by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, including obtaining prior express consent from parents before sending marketing messages to their children and to offer opportunities for those parents to opt-out.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 20, 2009 at 7:42 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

My wife and I have three kids, one of which attends an elementary school and the other two attend a middle school. Both schools recently notified the Minnesota Department of Health and the parents that at least five percent of students were out sick the same day with "flu-like symptoms." In other words, at least one in twenty kids probably has the H1N1 virus as the seasonal flu has yet to make its appearance here. And note that I wrote "at least," because it is likely that many parents are reporting their kids absent due to illness and not providing the information about fever, cough, etc. required to include the kids in the "flu-like symptoms" bucket. How many more than one in twenty is anyone's guess, but based on what my kids are telling me it seems that it is more like 10 percent.

If 10 percent of your employees were to call in sick at the same time and for a week, what impact would that have on your productivity? What if 10 percent of your key employees were out sick for a week and then another 10 percent the next week and then another 10 percent the next week?

For employers, the big college hiring season is happening right now. Recruiters are swarming over college campuses all over the country. What if 10 percent of those people called in sick this week and another 10 percent next week and so on?

What preparations has your organization made to minimize the threat of mass illnesses amongst your employees and to deal with the productivity problems if those illnesses occur? And what can we learn from this process about how to deal with other disasters, be they natural like influenza, man-made like terrorism, or a lot of both like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 19, 2009 at 11:54 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Keith Luscher wrote an interested blog article about why it is better to have a smaller but more engaged group of Twitter followers than a larger but less engaged group of followers. Keith is great and I normally agree with his opinions, but on this one we diverge.

There are definitely two schools of thought on this issue and both have merit. One group follows Keith's opinion and emphasizes quality versus quantity when it comes to Twitter followers. They believe that the results they see from having a smaller but more engaged group of followers is greater than if they had a larger but less engaged group of followers. I respectfully disagree.

We have two Twitter accounts. The first one, http://www.Twitter.com/StevenRothberg has close to 10,000 followers and the second, http://www.Twitter.com/EntryLevelJob, is closing in on 20,000 followers. Combined, we therefore have close to 30,000 followers. We tweet links to articles and jobs on our site and other sites one to two dozen times per day and those tweets generate dozens and sometimes hundreds of links to our site a day. Google sees those links and understands that we are an authoritative source of information about careers so ranks us higher in the search results for those search terms. In addition, the tweets and re-tweets from our almost 30,000 followers generates a lot of traffic to our site. Twitter is one of our highest sources of traffic and the thousands of visits we get per day don't cost us a dime.

Would we have all of that benefit if we had 100 very passionate followers? No way. What if we had 10,000 very passionate followers? Sure. A large number of very passionate followers is likely better than a slightly larger number of passive followers, but the choice usually isn't so marginal. It is usually between a lot of passive followers or a few passionate followers. It is kind of like a rock band having the choice between playing in front of 10 very passionate fans in a backyard or 18,000 somewhat interested fans in an arena. Almost every band will take the arena any day and I suspect that Keith would too if faced with that choice.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 14, 2009 at 9:32 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

It was fun to see that Business Week's annual, 25 of America's Best Young Entrepreneurs 25 and Under included someone who the team at CollegeRecruiter.com knows and likes quite well: Lauren Berger, better known as The Intern Queen. The winners are determined based on the number of reader votes they receive. I just voted for Lauren. Will you help by voting for her also?

The Intern Queen match potential interns with more than 500 companies from across the U.S. that pay to list their internship opportunities on her web site. According to Business Week, "Berger says what sets her service apart is the personal attention--she and her small band of interns review every application and Berger calls each company to make an introduction. Potential interns can apply for one slot gratis to get a feel for the service. They pay $3 for every subsequent application; employers pay an annual fee of $50 for unlimited listings. In the four months the firm was running last year, Berger says she had about $100,000 in revenue and expects to double that to $200,000 next year. A regular on the college speaking circuit, she is also planning to expand into Canada and is exploring endorsement deals with Microsoft (MSFT) and Payless Shoes."

If you're as impressed as I've always been, vote for Lauren today!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 12, 2009 at 2:24 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

If your plans for the first week in November include improving the recruiting skills of your organization and team members, then join hundreds of staffing leaders in Chicago for the Kennedy Information / OnRec Expo 2009. And if you want to save $100 on your registration fee, go to the conference information page at http://www.onrec.com/expo2009 and enter wnGYrz as your discount code.

See you there!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 8, 2009 at 12:04 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

In a sign that companies are preparing now to meet post-recession talent needs, nearly one-third of professionals in recruiting and human resources roles say that hiring is already underway, according to a new survey. Eighty percent of these professionals on the frontlines of hiring activity expect that recovery recruiting will begin by the second quarter of 2010.

The survey - conducted by talentRISE, a Chicago-based talent acquisition and talent management consulting company - also found that 85 percent of respondents believe that improving processes for identifying great talent is a top priority in the near future. This indicates that companies are now looking beyond just filling empty seats to ensure that they are hiring the best people, with the best skills, in the most effective manner possible, said Carl Kutsmode, Senior Partner at talentRISE. "As the economy recovers, companies know that they need to hire top talent ahead of their competition," Kutsmode said. "But many, having downsized their human resources function dramatically during these past two years, today lack the process, technology and people to attract and recruit top talent. Unwilling to re-build internal capabilities, they are looking for solutions that require few investments and little commitment."

As the economy recovers, companies know that they need to hire top talent ahead of their competition. Many also need to fill gaps in expertise and will find it very beneficial to bring in outside help. In fact, over three-quarters of respondents (78 percent) said that employers are likely to use external or interim recruiting staff to meet increased hiring demands. Half said they will use contingency recruiters. "Companies are clearly seeing the advantages of 'on-demand' recruiting assistance to deal with hiring spikes or specialized critical hiring needs," added Kutsmode. "Many also need to fill gaps in expertise and will find it very beneficial to bring in outside help."

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 8, 2009 at 7:34 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've been a proponent of social networking and media sites almost since they came of age earlier this decade. Early sites such as Friendster hardly made a dent in our collective consciousness but MySpace and then Facebook blew the lid wide open and now we have LinkedIn and Twitter being used as common household words. Thank goodness. People are finally understanding that their relationships need not be face-to-face like they were in the 1800's but they can be more than that. They can be real and tight yet across many miles and even continents. So if regular people get that, why don't most employers?

Our friends at Robert Half International recently surveyed employers and found that 54 percent ban social networking from the workplace even if the networking is directly related to the work assigned to the employee. Some employers who read this blog article may argue that people should not be doing anything at work unless it is work-related. Yet I bet that most and probably virtually all of those employers have no problem providing their employees with plane tickets which require travel on evenings and weekends, BlackBerry and other PDA's so those employees can stay in touch on evenings and weekends, and even phone meetings when employees are out sick. In short, employers are asking their employees to walk the walk but those employers aren't even talking the talk.

Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of rewarding and sometimes even requiring employees to work during personal hours while prohibiting those same employees from doing personal tasks during work hours, those employers are really doing themselves far more long-term damage than they probably realize.

Put yourself in the shoes of an employee who is prohibited from using even a professional networking site like LinkedIn during work hours. What your employer is telling you is that they don't trust you. They don't trust you to get your work done. They don't trust you to put in enough hours. They don't trust the content that you may post on-line. They simply don't trust you. Now fast forward a year or two. The economy is strong again and that employee is ready to advance their career. They're considering looking for a promotion within your organization but also prepared to make a move to a competitor. The competitor trusts its employees and so allows them to use social media while on the job. They have policies in place to provide guidance to their employees but there is trust flowing from the employer to its employees. How likely do you think it is that you'll be able to retain that employee? If you're honest, the likelihood is probably a lot less than 54 percent.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 7, 2009 at 2:20 PM | Leave a Comment (2)

Economic indicators are always tricky as some are seemingly inconsistent. My favorite example in the recruiting space are the payroll and unemployment numbers. They often seem to move in opposite directions and therefore, to some, seem to be inconsistent. Yet they measure very different aspects so they can move in opposite directions and be consistent. Payroll numbers measure the number of people who are working while unemployment numbers measure not the number of people who are unemployed but the number of people who are actively searching for employment. During economic recoveries, people who weren't actively searching often re-start their searches so the unemployment numbers tend to increase before declining due to many finding work and it is during that decline that payroll numbers tend to increase.

The numbers that we're seeing at CollegeRecruiter.com are something like that. We just ended one of the best Septembers that we've ever seen, at least as far as revenues go. Yet we just posted a rather gloomy looking press release that indicates that the number of job posting ads on our site declined in almost every state in the country. How can both be true? Well, one reason is that the bulk of our revenues come from targeted email and cell phone text messaging campaigns and those don't show up in the job posting counts. Employers who purchase targeted email or cell phone text messaging campaigns tend to be hiring dozens, hundreds, or thousands of candidates or at least are planning to do so in the near future. Employers who rely exclusively on job posting ads tend to be recruiting one or two people right away. Postings simply don't generate the quantity or quality of response that targeted email and cell phone text messaging campaigns generate.

So, if you're a glass half empty kind of person then pour some whiskey into your morning coffee and tell yourself that there are potentially some very dark days ahead. On the other hand, if you're a glass half full kind of person, then this is some pretty good news at the start of this week and near the start of the new month.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 5, 2009 at 9:39 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I first became interested in social media service / lifestyle Twitter about a year ago. I created an account without a clear vision for what it was, how I wanted to use it, or what were my goals. In short, I was like pretty much everyone else. It was interesting but no one really knew what it was and therefore how it should be used.

Over the past year, a couple of prominent camps have emerged. Some, like my friend Jim Stroud, believe that Twitter is best used as a niche marketing tool. Jim, with 6,600 followers, feels that it isn't about how many followers you have, but the quality of your followers. I've heard Jim say that having a lot of followers is worthless if no one is listening to you. To an extend, I agree but I favor the other approach.

The other approach is probably best described by legendary venture capitalist and Apple evangelist, Guy Kawasaki. He believes, and I agree, that you want to view Twitter as one of the greatest mass communication tools ever. Guy, with 180,000 followers, says that you shouldn't even try to use it for two way communications. Tools like Facebook and even email or "real" conversations are better suited for that. If you have 10,000 followers and only 10 percent care about what you tweet (post), that's still 1,000 people who are listening. Isn't that better than having only dozens or a few hundred followers even if all are listening? Also, the reality of Twitter is that very, very few people read or care about all of the tweets posted by anyone. People sample. They read a few here and they read a few there. To believe that anyone is going to read and care about all of your tweets is pretty unrealistic.

If you agree with Guy's approach then the goal is to maximize the number of your followers because inevitably a decent percentage of those will care about what you tweet and they'll pass your messages along to their network (re-tweet your posts) and when they do that, the magic starts to happen. Re-tweets mean that your messages are important and you gain followers very quickly with re-tweets. At least as importantly, search engines like Google look at the links posted in the tweets and re-tweets but understandably value those in the re-tweets more because they're not self-serving. And if you get someone like Guy re-tweeting your posts, those are more important in the eyes of Google than someone like me re-tweeting your posts because Guy has more followers and so what he tweets is therefore more likely to be relevant to more people and Google search results are all about relevancy.

CollegeRecruiter.com has two official Twitter accounts. Some of our employees have their own, personal Twitter accounts and some of them post CollegeRecruiter.com information to those accounts and we're fine with that, but the two official accounts are Twitter.com/EntryLevelJob and Twitter.com/StevenRothberg. The EntryLevelJob account is used largely to promote a sampling of the newest job postings, blogs, articles, press releases, and other content from our site. The StevenRothberg account has some of that, but I also personally post a sampling of articles from other sites that I feel have particular merit and should be of interest to my followers. As of the writing of this blog article, the EntryLevelJob account has almost 15,000 followers and the StevenRothberg account has almost 8,500 followers, so together we're able to reach almost 23,500 people multiple times a day by automatically and sometimes manually posting links to various content items. A small but significant percentage of those content items are clicked on, which generates about five percent of the traffic to our site, and a small but significant percentage of the content items are re-tweeted by some of our followers, which gets us some serious love from Google.

We got serious about Twitter last winter and in the spring we started to really focus on it. We increased our followers from a couple of thousand to the 23,500 followers in just a few months. How? By following others, particularly those whose profiles indicate that they have similar interests to ours. You see, we aren't just out to maximize the number of followers. We're out to maximize the number of relevant followers. We're happy to have anyone following us, but if we're going to spend time and/or money on attracting new followers -- and we do -- we'd rather spend that on people who will actually care and therefore will be likely to click through to our site and re-tweet some of what we write. Ready for some serious transparency? Here are some snapshots from today's weekly report for the EntryLevelJob account. You're seeing what I see each week when I check-in to monitor how many people we're following, how many people are following us, who is following us, etc. Bon appetit!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 2, 2009 at 10:23 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 1, 2009 at 5:57 PM | Leave a Comment (0)