Green Recruiting Becoming a Force in Recruiting Interns and College Grads
Earlier this week I had the pleasure of participating in the Kennedy Information 2007 recruiting conference in Orlando. Virtually every employer engaged in the recruitment of college students for internships and recent graduates for entry level jobs and other career opportunities was focusing their attention on two topics: recruitment videos and green recruiting.
As eloquently stated by John Sullivan,
The new thrust of green recruiting is proactive and focuses on making "greenness" a major element of your employment brand. Some of the reasons why green recruiting is becoming more essential include:
- Gen Y demands it. This generation has learned about the importance of the environment and recycling in classes since elementary school. They filter both product purchasing and job selection choices with their green mindset.
- College grads demand it. Al Gore is a hero on most campuses. Students, while they are on campus, demand that every aspect of their campus life leave a minimal "environmental footprint." On my campus, San Francisco State University, even the most conservative of all schools, the College of Business is developing a "sustainability" major to satisfy the student demand for integrating business and the environment. It has become so important that even starting salaries take a back seat behind "greenness" when students evaluate potential employers.
- Many job candidates care about it. Although no one has yet quantified the impact that being environmentally friendly has on recruits, if you ask candidates whether working for an environmentally friendly company is important to them, a vast majority will respond with an affirmative.
- Global candidates can be passionate about it. Some countries around the world are extremely passionate about the environment (Germany, Australia, and Finland to name a few). As a result, if you expect to recruit the best from around the world, you must be prepared to meet a growing set of eco-expectations as an employer.
More and more recruiters understand that recruiting is selling. It is selling the candidate on how compelling are the opportunities provided by your organization. And right now in the world of college recruiting few things matter more to candidates than the opportunity to good for their community and living and working green are inherent in that.
If your firm is green or if it can start to become green, then your firm will have a huge advantage on-campus if you are able and willing to communicate that (sell that) to your target market, the students and recent graduates. But don't tell them you're green if you're not because today's candidates are far too savvy to be fooled and far too likely to ridicule your organization in well read blogs and other forums that likely rank higher in search engine results than does your organization's own web site.
As Sullivan stated, "green recruiting is a chance to differentiate yourself in a recruiting marketplace where standing out from the crowd is already extremely difficult. Incidentally, not only does green recruiting improve your chances of attracting and selling candidates, it's also your chance as a recruiter to do your part to improve the environment by showing senior management the dollar impact it has on recruiting, retention, and product sales."
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