When evaluating various metrics and tools for tracking social media, what should marketing and communications professionals look for?

First, know what you want to measure. The most complex tools in the world won't do you any good if they don't measure what your business needs to measure. So start with that.

Second, look for tools that simplify your job rather than complicate it. If you can find one tool that measures everything you want to measure, invest in it. The alternative may seem cheaper on the front end, but the amount of work required to manage several tools and a dozen separate data sets may end up costing you more in labor and headaches.

Continue reading "How to Measure Results from Social Media Ads, Efforts" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 20, 2009 at 8:26 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Many newcomers and even some veterans to Twitter find the process of deciding who to follow to be very confusing. The Twitter home page, for example, has a prominent search engine but strongly implies that you search for content rather than people. I believe that both are important. In fact, I prefer to follow people who discuss content which is relevant to me. So how do you decide who to follow if you know the content but then get thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of matches back?

Perhaps the easiest way of adding up to 100 highly relevant people in a flash is a free service from TweepML. You can create lists of people ("tweeple") of your own or, as most probably do, run a keyword search or two to find lists which someone else has already created. You then review the lists of the people, uncheck those who don't seem relevant to your interests, and log into your Twitter account near the bottom of the screen.

At that point, the coolest thing happens. The screen will show you that those people are being added to your Twitter account so you'll now be following them. In just a few minutes, for example, you can follow 100 of the top recruiting experts on Twitter. Very slick.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 19, 2009 at 2:04 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Two of the best and most popular social media services are LinkedIn, the leading business networking site, and Twitter, the leading micro blogging site. And now, like peanut butter and chocolate, they're integrating their services to provide additional value to users of LinkedIn and Twitter.

Watch the video below and you'll see from the words of founders Reid Hoffman and Biz Stone just how compelling this new partnership will be. One great example is the much broader distribution your questions posted to LinkedIn will receive. Rather than just tapping into the collective brain trust of LinkedIn, which is considerable, you'll also be tapping into that of Twitter. Awesome.

Continue reading "Twitter and LinkedIn Now Integrated. Get Your Tweets on LinkedIn Easy, Fast, and Free." »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 11, 2009 at 3:44 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

We've been involved in the world of college recruiting since 1995. In those 14 years, I've heard time and time again that the current crop of college students and recent graduates are poorly prepared for the workplace, they're job hoppers, they're an entitled generation, they don't show up on time, they leave early, they spend too much time texting with friends instead of working, and employers don't want to hire them for those and other reasons.

Only a third of the Class of 2009 has found employment, which is far lower than past years, but most of that decrease is due to the recession rather than to a reluctance by employers to hire Millennials / Gen Y'ers. There are certainly some misgivings expressed by some hiring managers and human resource professionals, but the reality is that every generation exhibits similar traits as they enter the workplace.

Continue reading "Employer Attitudes Toward Millennials / Gen Y'ers" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 11, 2009 at 9:26 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.

Continue reading "Hispanics Respond to Cell Phone Ads 5-10 Times More Than On-line Ads" »

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.

Continue reading "Free Admission to OnRec / Kennedy Information Recruiting Conference" »

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:

Continue reading "Four Tips for Reaching College Students Through Email Marketing" »

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)

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:

Continue reading "Cell Phone Text Messaging (SMS) Campaigns Watched by Direct Marketing Association" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 20, 2009 at 7:42 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.

Continue reading "Why Quantity is Better Than Quality When It Comes to Twitter Followers" »

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

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)

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.

Continue reading "54% of Employers Don't Understand Social Networking" »

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

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.

Continue reading "Why Maximizing Your Twitter Followers is Important" »

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

Never in the history of advertising has there been a tool where virtually 100 percent of the people who receive the ad actually read the ad. Until now. Cell phone text messaging, also known as SMS for short message service, "may be the closest thing in the information-overloaded digital marketing world to a guaranteed read," according to the New York Times.

Cell phone text messaging has grown from nothing to 3.5 billion messages per day in a decade. More texts are sent and received every day, according to CTIA, the wireless industry trade group, the number of cellphone calls or emails. And interestingly, the demographic with the biggest increased usage are people who are over the age of thirty.

Continue reading "How to Successfully Use Cell Phone Text Messaging to Reach College Students and Grads" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 29, 2009 at 12:51 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the pleasure of attending and doing a presentation on the last day of the 2009 annual Pacific West HR Conference in Palm Springs. Attendance was down somewhat from previous years, but that's been the case at just about every recruiting conference since the start of the recession.

This year's conference was held in Palm Springs, California, which was a big change for a lot of the attendees as the conference has been held in Long Beach for the past five or so years. Getting the conference out of the Los Angeles metro area allowed attendees to make a better mental break from their normal work and personal lives and to focus on the presentations, exhibition hall, and networking opportunities.

My presentation was on how employers should use cell phone text messaging and other mobile marketing techniques to help them recruit college students and recent graduates. Attendance at my presentation and others held the last afternoon was pretty light but those who attended were engaged, interactive, and appreciative.

Continue reading "Pacific West HR Conference" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 18, 2009 at 11:07 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Caddy Rowland, our director of sales for employment advertising, and I traveled down from Minneapolis-St. Paul on Sunday to attend the IPMA-HR 2009 annual conference, which is perhaps the biggest conference of the year for government human resource professionals. Here are Caddy's impressions:

Continue reading "IPMA-HR Conference in Nashville, TN" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 15, 2009 at 1:31 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Dr. Phil Gardner of Michigan State University asked if CollegeRecruiter.com could help him (and the college recruiting community) collect some information from employers of college students and recent graduates for his annual survey. I strongly encourage all employers, whether they're clients or CollegeRecruiter.com or not yet client of CollegeRecruiter.com (wink, wink), to complete this survey. If you do, he'll be happy to send a copy of the compiled results to you.

Here is the message from Dr. Gardner:

Continue reading "Employers: Tell Candidates What You Think in This Survey" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 11, 2009 at 3:22 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Think that blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other social media are all the rage these days? You'd never know it by looking at how hiring managers and human resource professionals are doing their jobs.

SmartBlog on Workforce recently polled its readers and found that a whopping 72 percent were not using social media as part of their recruiting efforts. Even given that only 75 percent of Americans can place Canada on a map of North America, that 72 percent is really astounding to me. Well, both are astounding to me but I digressed and am trying to pull myself back to some degree of relevancy.

Continue reading "72% of Orgs Not Using Social Media for Recruiting" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 3, 2009 at 7:47 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've long been a strong advocate that employers should not only blog, but blog on their corporate web sites. Why? Because search engines like Google love blogs. They love blogs for the same reason that people love blogs: they tend to be very current, frequently updated, sources of information. In short, they're relevant and search engines rank pages based upon relevancy.

The logic made sense to me and, I think, most of the people that I talked with about blogging but until now I didn't have the empirical evidence to back up my beliefs. Now I do because a study was just released by HubSpot which found that organizations with blogs on their web sites have:

Continue reading "Metrics Prove Employers (and Other Sites) Need to Blog" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 1, 2009 at 7:21 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Just about everyone has heard the expression, "Actions speak louder than words." But how about, "People may forget what you say, people may forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel." That quote, from David Eckoff on the High Velocity Radio Show, is profound.

Think about it for a while. Can you recall the words that were spoken or written to you during your job interviews and related interactions with prospective employers? Those who can typically remember only a very small percentage of the words. But we almost all remember how we felt during the process. And unfortunately, the way that we were made to feel generally wasn't very good.

Continue reading "Why You Need to Wow Your Candidates" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 25, 2009 at 7:23 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A recent study indicates that 45 percent of employers use social networking sites to background check candidates. Sorry, but 45 percent is non-sensical when over 75 percent of employers also admit to using Google searches as part of their background checking process. Do employers not understand that Google searches many of the social networking sites and that when they Google a candidate that they are therefore including social networking sites in their background checks?

I speak with dozens and sometimes hundreds of employers a month about issues like this and it astonishes me how deliberately ignorant a small percentage are about technology issues. They remind me of Sgt. Schultz on Hogan Heroes -- "I know nothing! Nothing!" In other words, what I choose to ignore can't hurt me. Well, it will. If your firm's background checking company uses Google as part of their process then your organization IS using social networking sites to research job seekers.

Continue reading "35% of Employers Don't Realize They're Using Social Networking Sites When Background Checking Job Seekers" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 21, 2009 at 12:27 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

Anyone who has seen or heard one of my webinar or trade show / conference presentations has likely heard me say that employers and others in the recruiting space who want to enhance their marketing efforts need only look down the hall at the work being done by those in their marketing departments. Those in marketing tend to have far more years of formal training in marketing and much, much larger budgets than those in the human resource or recruiting departments.

I am such a believer in looking to the world of marketing to gain insight into what is likely coming to the world of recruiting that I subscribe to a number of marketing publications, including many of the SmartBrief e-newsletters. In one of yesterday's e-newsletters was a link to an article entitled, How to Persistently Educate Your Customer. The article included a number of great tips for marketers but with just a little effort the same tips can be made to apply to those who market job opportunities either directly to candidates or indirectly through partnerships with other organizations.

Continue reading "How to Persistently Educate Your Candidates" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 21, 2009 at 7:16 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

One of the pleasures of managing a team of talented, dedicated employees is seeing one of their ideas take root and flourish. Case in point: content coordinator Candice Arnold recommended that we resurrect our Ask the Experts questions and answers feature using our blogging software and integrating it with our customer relationship management software, Salesforce.com.

Candice's vision was quite an upgrade over how we used to do it: email the questions to the couple of dozen experts, receive their answers back in the bodies of their emails and sometimes attachments, copy and paste their answers into html templates, and upload the web pages. The entire process took hours for our staff and the experts. The new process has saved everyone a ton of time and led to a ton of great answers by the experts who choose to address the questions being asked by students searching for internships, recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs, alumni, and employers.

Each week, Candice sends out an email through Salesforce to the experts who have agreed to answer questions. None answer all of them. Some answer a lot and others answer a few. The choice is theirs. Here's the email that Candice sent earlier today:

Continue reading "Ask the Experts: Answering Great Questions from Job Seekers" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 18, 2009 at 10:37 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

CollegeRecruiter.com has been a pretty active user of Twitter for almost a year now and it has proven to be a valuable marketing tool for our job board. It is one of larger sources of traffic from college students seeking internships and recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs. It is also proven to be a good source of leads for the employers and consumer marketers who use CollegeRecruiter.com to help them reach those students and recent graduates.

We have two accounts:

1. EntryLevelJob contains links to many of our newest articles, blogs, videos, and job postings. We have about 6,000 followers to that account.


2. StevenRothberg contains some of the same content but is targeted more at our clients than the job seekers. We have about 5,500 followers to that account.

Continue reading "Five No-No's When Using Twitter" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 17, 2009 at 12:19 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

As one of the owners of CollegeRecruiter.com, I feel blessed that we have some really wonderful, blue chip clients. Some of them are corporations and some of them are government. One of our government clients is the Internal Revenue Service. Through our work for them over the years, I've learned a lot of things about the IRS which astounded me and probably would be astounding to most people. For example, did you know that they're the largest accounting firm in the world? And did you know that they are one of the leaders in using virtual world Second Life to recruit candidates.

When I found out about Second Life, I knew that I needed to learn more so I asked Frank Stipe,Virtual Worlds & Social Networking Project Manager, for more information and dropped a pretty strong hint that his response would be blogworthy. Well, ask and ye shall receive. In Frank's words:

Continue reading "IRS Saves Millions by Using Second Life to Market Its Employment Opportunities" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 13, 2009 at 12:29 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

My blog article yesterday about how some corporate recruiters rudely ignore candidates touched a cord. I heard from a lot of candidates and a few recruiters who echoed my sentiments. I also heard from a few recruiters who expressed surprise that candidates actually want to hear that they're rejected and aren't quite sure what to tell them.

Folks, think about your favorite family member applying to a job with your organization. What would you tell them and when? Answer those questions and you've answered your own question about what you should tell all candidates and when for they all deserve the same consideration as you would extend to your own loved ones.

Continue reading "Recruiters Should Treat Candidates Like Loved Ones" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 29, 2009 at 10:01 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I hear that question almost every day from job seekers. "I read their job posting. I'm qualified. I applied through their web site. I hit the submit button and then nothing. No confirmation by email. No 'thank you for applying' email. No rejection letter. Nothing."

Could we as a profession be more rude? Could we as a profession be more short sighted? In addition to these complaints by job seekers, I also hear human resource professionals complain about not having a seat at the table when senior management is making strategic decisions. Could it be that senior management doesn't like how HR treats the biggest fans of their organization -- people who want to work with them? Could it be that the way HR treats those fans -- many of whom are or at least used to be customers -- is the same way that they treat their colleagues in other departments?

Continue reading "Why Won't Corporate Recruiters Talk to Me?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 28, 2009 at 4:53 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Are Today's Employers Ready to Develop the Emerging Adults Joining Them Now Into the Executive Managers of Tomorrow?

Advising employers challenged by a new generation of employees who they cannot relate to, can't retain and who drive up costs related to staffing and productivity, Judy Anderson and Terese Corey Blanck are experts in an emerging, specialty field: they have researched and understand how the millennial generation of 18-28 year olds think, self-motivate and develop while transitioning into adulthood.

Because they are emerging into adulthood later than the boomers and other generations that are employing them, a unique complexity is added to the workplace. So different from those managing them, an understanding of millennial identity, cognitive and brain development is just the beginning.

Continue reading "Workplace Impact of Emerging Adults: Are Today's Employers Ready to Develop Emerging Adults" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 20, 2009 at 7:03 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Why do 18-28 year old "Millennial" Employees, As Emerging Adults, Represent a Unique Challenge in the Workplace That Can Impact Their Employer's Success?

Generational understanding is increasingly valuable as it relates to impacting communication and collaboration among managers and staff within the workplace. However, the Millennial generation is a bit more complex.

Continue reading "It's Not ALL Generational: Are Today's Entry-Level Employees Self-Directed Adults?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 17, 2009 at 5:01 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Yesterday I wrote about our new webinar series for employers and college career service office professionals and discussed in some detail the first of what will be hundreds and perhaps thousands of webinars that we'll deliver over the coming months to:

• Recruiters, hiring managers, and other employer professionals;
  
• College career service office professionals;
  
• Admissions office professionals;
  
• Consumer marketing professionals;
  
• Job seekers / candidates; and
  
• Parents.
  

Continue reading "It's Not All Generational" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 9, 2009 at 8:12 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Job boards fall into two main buckets:

1. General boards like Monster and Careerbuilder and
   
2. Niche boards like Dice and CollegeRecruiter.com.
   

Continue reading "Why Use Niche Job Boards" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 8, 2009 at 10:08 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Last August, CollegeRecruiter.com began to deliver recruiting-related webinars to employers and career service office professionals. I figured we'd get maybe 50 attendees to the typical webinar, with some coming in a little higher and others a little lower in terms of attendance. By early 2009, we were seeing 800 registrations and the conventional wisdom in the webinar industry is that the average connection converts into about two attendees, so we were getting the equivalent of about 1,600 registrations. Not all registrations converted into attendees, of course, as some people registered but didn't show up. But then others watch the recorded versions of the webinars so the no shows were likely offset by those watching the recorded versions. Bottom line: rather than 50 attendees we were seeing well in excess of 1,000 and perhaps 1,500 attendees to many of our webinars.

Fast forward to June 2009. With an incredible amount of work by manager of e-learning Paul Bell, we successfully re-launched our webinar system with brand new technology and a brand new approach. Rather than focusing on satisfying the desires for immediate feedback that most speakers crave, we've chosen to focus on the needs of our clients. Very few employers and career service office professionals are able to set aside an hour to watch any webinar -- especially when the choice of when that hour falls isn't within their control. In addition, many of those people would prefer to watch or at least share the webinar with others and trying to get multiple people together at the same time becomes exponentially more difficult. Solution: record the webinars and send the recordings out to the employers and career service office professionals so they can watch them when they want and share them with anyone within their organizations. You don't quite own the webinars as you can't share them with people outside of your organization, but you can do just about anything else with them that you want. Nice, huh?

Continue reading "Webinar: How Employers Should Develop Gen Y Into the Managers of Tomorrow" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 8, 2009 at 7:46 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 2009 annual conference opened yesterday afternoon with a keynote by legendary CEO, Jack Welch. Most of the 10,000+ paid attendees then made their way from the main presentation room at the mile long New Orleans Convention Center over to the massive exhibit hall to begin their discussions with the hundreds of exhibitors as well as snack on catfish fingers, gumbo, mushroom caps, beer, wine, soda, and more.

The exhibit hall was open from 4 until 7pm yesterday and traffic to the CollegeRecruiter.com booth was pretty good from 4 until about 6:15pm and then dropped off a cliff. By 6:45pm it was much harder to spot attendees than exhibitors but that's pretty normal for these types of events as the reality is that most of the attendees come into the exhibit hall for the free food and drink and then leave to enjoy their evenings at local restaurants and bars. And given that this year's conference is in New Orleans, there's no shortage of either.

Continue reading "New Webinar Service Warmly Greeted at #SHRM09" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 29, 2009 at 7:46 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Spring and fall seem to be the busiest times of the year for recruiting conferences so it is at times like this when I'm most able to connect face-to-face with employers and college career service office professionals. And it is at times like this when I am reminded how -- pardon my French -- idiotic some recruiting practices can be.

Many but probably not most recruiters, hiring managers, and other human resource professionals believe that it is a good thing to force candidates to feel some pain in order to apply to a job. That might mean a lengthy application form, an on-line assessment, or even just the typical refusal of most corporate recruiters to make themselves easily accessible to the very people that they should most want to communicate with.

Continue reading "The Idiocy of Making Job Seekers Jump Through Hoops" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 23, 2009 at 11:17 AM | Leave a Comment (3)

There's been an interesting discussion in the NACE JobPlace discussion list about the perception by many employers that students who do a more effective job of searching for employment opportunities will have a better chance of being hired.

I agree but caution those who believe that the best candidates are those who try the hardest to be hired. It seems to me that candidates who try the hardest to be hired actually fall into two groups:

Continue reading "Don't Make Candidates Jump Through Hoops" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 19, 2009 at 7:52 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've been hearing rumblings from a number of college career service office professionals, employer representatives, and vendors that this week's National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) 2009 annual conference should be a great learning experience for all but there will be far fewer in attendance than in previous years. The reason? The economy has crushed the travel budgets for many organizations.

One career service office director told me that she lost her entire travel budget for the 2009-10 school year and expects to have nothing in her travel budget for 2010-11 either. Nevertheless, I will see her on Wednesday as she is flying in for the day and attending at her own expense. That's the kind of dedication to your craft that you don't see often enough in any profession.

Continue reading "Attendance Way Down at #NACE09" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 8, 2009 at 12:56 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Caddy Rowland, Paul Bell, Lauren Berger, and I will be in Las Vegas from Tuesday through Thursday next week to attend the National Association of Colleges and Employers 2009 annual conference. I'll be doing a presentation Thursday morning on the future of on-line recruiting and CollegeRecruiter.com will unveil our brand new booth in the exhibition room.

Will you be there? If so, drop by and say hello. We'll be making a few heads turn with an announcement and it would be fun to discuss it with career service office professionals, hiring managers, human resource professionals, business partners, and others face-to-face.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 5, 2009 at 10:53 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the seventh in a seven part series. To read the series from the beginning, start with the first article on Mobile Marketing for Recruiters.

I hope that the first six parts of this seven part series has been helpful as you look toward creating or perhaps even improving your mobile marketing recruitment advertising campaigns. CollegeRecruiter.com has been a leader in this space since its infancy four years ago and we continue to lead the industry as seen by our mobile web site, CollegeRecruiter.mobi, being the only mobile version of a major job board that allows candidates to not only search and read job postings, but actually apply to those postings on their mobile devices. Very few job boards have mobile sites and the others which do all require the candidates to find postings of interest and then send links to those postings to their email inboxes. So candidates can search and read the job postings on those other mobile job boards, but to apply to the jobs they must get off of their mobiles and turn on their computers. Maybe it is just me, but doesn't that defeat the purpose of having a mobile job board?

Continue reading "Tips for Mobile Marketing Recruitment Campaigns" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 24, 2009 at 7:57 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the sixth in a seven part series. To read the series from the beginning, start with the first article on Mobile Marketing for Recruiters.

Too many recruiters and other marketers spend an incredible amount of time, energy, money, and other resources deciding what media to purchase to promote their opportunities and then send out their messages but fail to properly track the results. Sticking a drop-down "how did you hear about us" onto your site is not tracking properly as well over 80 percent of self-reported responses to such questions are inaccurate.

Continue reading "Track Your Mobile Marketing Campaigns" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 23, 2009 at 7:51 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the fifth in a seven part series. To read the series from the beginning, start with the first article on Mobile Marketing for Recruiters.

Too many marketers, including recruiters, believe that each new tool that comes along such as mobile marketing will be the silver bullet. They'll pore all of their energies and sometimes budgets into the one tool, it won't solve all of their problems, and they'll walk away disappointed and blame the tool for the failure. But tools are useless and often harmful in the hands of unskilled craftsmen. Don't use a saw properly and you're not going to achieve your objective of cutting through the board but you may cut through your hand. In order to use a tool such as a saw or mobile marketing properly, you must understand how to use it and that always means using it along with other tools for together they'll help you achieve your objectives but alone they'll only frustrate and perhaps harm you.

There are a number of ways to integrate your mobile marketing recruitment marketing campaign with your other marketing campaigns:

Continue reading "How to Integrate Your Mobile Recruitment Marketing Program With Your Other Marketing Programs" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 22, 2009 at 7:36 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the fourth in a seven part series. To read the series from the beginning, start with the first article on Mobile Marketing for Recruiters.

There are six basic steps to planning and executing a successful mobile recruitment marketing program:

Continue reading "How to Start a Mobile Recruitment Marketing Program" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 21, 2009 at 7:25 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

This is the third in a seven part series. To read the series from the beginning, start with the first article on Mobile Marketing for Recruiters.

Although many recruiters without strong marketing backgrounds may cringe at thinking this way, their desired candidates are their target market. The recruiter, rather than trying to sell a product or service, is trying to market a job opportunity. But regardless of what opportunity is being offered, there's no doubt that most and perhaps virtually all of your target audience uses a mobile device like a cellular phone. And if you think about how you use your phone, you'll understand that your target audience probably also has their phone with them 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In short, the mobile devices carried and used by your candidates provide you with the ability to reach them anytime and anywhere. No other device is so ubiquitous.

Continue reading "Benefits to Recruiters of Mobile Marketing Programs" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 20, 2009 at 7:11 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I first thought of roadside billboards when I first heard the term mobile marketing. But I've since come to understand that mobile marketing refers not to the mobility of the person seeing the ad but instead to the device on which the ad is displayed. In other words, marketing messages delivered to or even from your cellular telephone are mobile marketing. So what has this got to do with recruiters? Everything.

Over the past decade, email marketing has grown from a curiosity with scum selling hundreds of thousands of email addresses on CD's for $199 to a fast growing, efficient, and economical direct marketing technique. Rather than display your job ad to everyone like you do in a newspaper or even through a job posting ad, email and other forms of direct marketing allow you to target your audience so that your message is only delivered to those of interest to you. Want to hire engineers in Atlanta? Send your ad via email only to engineers in Atlanta rather than running it on a general job board where retail sales reps in Seattle will apply to it or on a niche job board where engineers in Atlanta will apply to it but so will engineers in Seattle.

Continue reading "Mobile Marketing Tips and Tricks for Recruiters" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 18, 2009 at 4:31 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Organizations which are in business for the long-term, and virtually all are, need to become environmentally friendly (green) for the generation entering the workforce today places a premium on finding jobs with employers which are green. Gen Y doesn't need to work for wind power companies or other such green industries, but they do want to work for organizations which are striving to make the world a better place.

If your organization is focused much more on short-term financials than long-term sustainability, then the days of your organization are numbered because you won't be able to attract the talent that you'll need in order to compete.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 16, 2009 at 12:50 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

There's an interesting discussion going on at ERE about where candidates are going on-line when searching for a job. Caroline Slomski of NAS Recruitment Communications notes that of "all the job searches conducted in December 2008, 42% were conducted through the search engines (Google, Yahoo), 20% on CareerBuilder, 8% on Monster." She then suggested that employers explore pay per click advertising on the search engines as that type of pay for performance recruitment advertising allows employers to only pay for the people who actually click on your ad as impressions are free.

I am a big fan of candidates and employer using the search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN (the big three) but keep in mind that the bulk of the top results for those searches take candidates to job postings on the job boards. Don't believe me? Go to Google and run a search like a candidate would -- so just a job title and location with no organization name. You'll likely see the first pages completely dominated by the job boards.

Continue reading "42% of Job Searches on Google, Yahoo" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 15, 2009 at 10:13 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The lowly mobile phone (remember when we all called them cellular phones?) is on the verge of transforming our society. Think back, way back, to 1994. Few had heard of the Internet and those who used it were almost all government or university employees and a sprinkling of early adopters using services such as Prodigy. But then along came Netscape, Yahoo, Google, and billions of web sites and the world was changed. Porn sites and on-line gambling are changes that many would be happy to do without, but the vast majority agree that the Internet has made the world a better informed, more tolerant, and smaller place.

But holding us back is the need to use a computer in order to properly access the Internet. I love the iPhone but let's not confuse the ability to see a web page properly on your mobile device with the ability to properly access the Internet. Few would trade their laptop or desktop computers for an iPhone if that was the only way they could get their work done. So what happens next? What happens when devices like the iPhone and the networks to which they connect actually become good enough that we prefer to access the Internet on our mobile devices? What happens when we can access virtually all of the information ever created by anyone with a device that slips into our pocket and is always with us?

Continue reading "Mobile Devices Are Our Future. Is That Good or Bad?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 8, 2009 at 7:04 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

I'm getting excited about my trip in two weeks to Las Vegas to attend the western regional conference for the International Association of Employment Web Sites the first day and then Kennedy Information's Recruiting Conference 2009 and Expo on May 20th and 21st. Kennedy also has pre- and post-conference days on May 19th and 22nd but I won't be able to attend those.

Kennedy Information hosts events that recruiters, HR, and talent management professionals travel far and wide to attend because they always provide fresh approaches to old and new problems from delivering brand experience to discovering actionable strategies for developing and integrating a workforce focused on driving performance at the individual level -- Kennedy's expert speakers promise invaluable advice you'll revert to time and time again, throughout 2009... advice that will help you advance your career despite a slowing economy.

Continue reading "Kennedy Info's Recruiting Conference in Vegas Is Almost Here" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 6, 2009 at 1:54 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Our sales people are regularly asked by clients, especially ad agencies, for demographics on our site visitors. These buyers of advertising want to be sure that they'll be running their ads on a site that will help them reach their desired target market, whether that is college students, recent graduates, U.S. residents, or some other group.

But how do you get a rough idea of site demographics if they can't provide them to you, won't provide them to you, or you don't want to ask for them? Try sites such as Quantcast. Their methodology is somewhat flawed as they typically don't have access to the web site's server logs so at best all they can do is estimate the number and make-up of users to whatever site you're researching. Sites such as Quantcast typically do that by adding their tracking software to the computers of thousands of users. These users typically do so in return for being paid or provided some other type of incentive. That system ensures that they're not random and therefore not representative of the overall Internet population so you need to take the results with a grain of salt, but some information is usually better than no information.

Continue reading "Want Demographics? Try Quantcast." »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 28, 2009 at 7:33 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

I'm a big fan of performance-based recruitment advertising, which essentially means that the advertiser only pays for ads which deliver the results promised by the publisher. For pay per click job posting campaigns, that generally means you pay the publisher each time someone sees your ad on the publisher's site and clicks on the ad to go to your site. For pay per lead job posting campaigns, that generally means you pay the publisher each time someone sees your ad on the publisher's site, clicks on the ad to go to your site, and then registers at your site. Employers buying advertising on a pay per lead basis will often refer to these campaigns as pay per resume or pay per applicant because they are paying for job seekers to submit their resumes or otherwise register at the employer's web site.

But what do these campaigns really cost? For those who have never purchased advertising on a pay per click or pay per lead basis, the jargon and math can be a little daunting. First, let's look at a pay per click campaign. If you pay Google, Yahoo, or a job board like CollegeRecruiter.com $0.50 per click (the amounts vary considerably depending on the publisher and your target audience) then for each click you pay $0.50. Easy enough, right? Not so fast. What employers really care about is their cost per hire. In other words, what is their total cost to hire one person?

Let's use numbers gathered by CareerXroads from large employers to help guide us. They reported that the average employer saw about 68,000 visitors reached their staffing pages, about 18,000 of the visitors completed an application for a specific job, about 6,000 of the completed applications were qualified applicants for the jobs they applied for, about 2,000 of the 6,000 became finalists, and the 2,000 finalists turned into 500 hires. So for every hire, the employers had four finalists, 12 qualified applications, 36 applications, and 136 visitors.

Continue reading "What Do Pay Per Click Job Postings Really Cost?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 27, 2009 at 6:20 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Most of our largest employer and consumer marketing clients work with advertising agencies. The employers tend to work with recruitment advertising agencies and the consumer marketers tend to work with consumer marketing agencies. A small number of the agencies send ad campaigns to us for both types of clients. One of those agencies is Minneapolis-based Campus Media Group.

The CEO of Campus Media is Tom Borgerding. I met Tom way back in the 1990's when he was the president of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association and I was a lot younger. Tom and his co-workers at Campus Media have done a lot of work with CollegeRecruiter.com over the years. We receive proposal requests from them often and they're a pleasure to work with. You've heard the expression under promise and over deliver? That's Campus Media. They consistently make the lives of their clients easier and the outcomes of their campaigns better.

Tom recently asked me if some of our recruitment and consumer marketing clients might be interested in a free review of their media strategy and I told him yes. Most? Maybe not. Some? Almost certainly. I asked Tom to send to me a description of the offer so that I could get the word out to our clients:

Continue reading "Free Review of Your Recruitment and Media Strategy" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 24, 2009 at 10:27 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I'm hearing more and more rumbles from college students and recent graduates that Facebook isn't relevant to them. Maybe their passion for it has waned. Maybe it is repulsive for them to go to a social networking site where the fastest growing group of users are Baby Boomer women. But regardless of the rumblings, Facebook is still the most popular site for Gen Y. Consider these stats:

Continue reading "85% of college students active users of Facebook" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 24, 2009 at 8:02 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Brill Street + Company recently conducted a study that asked Generation Y workers about their place in todays workforce. The conversation focused largely on technology and new media as respondents discussed the marketing power of social networks, the amount of time they spend online, and how employers often limit the use of new media tools that could help make a company more relevant.

"The power of this generation in corporate America cannot be underestimated," said Brandi Blades, VP of Marketing for Brill Street. "Our study provides valuable insights into the way Gen Y works."

Continue reading "Gen Y Talks About Their Place in Today's Workforce" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 22, 2009 at 4:58 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've been speaking with employers privately, at conferences, on webinars, and by smoke signals for several years about how and why they should use social networking sites such as Facebook and other social media sites as part of their recruitment strategy. Most of the surveys that I see indicate that about 25 percent of employers admit to using the sites yet about 75 percent admit to Googling candidates, at least as part of their background checking process. What many in that 75 percent group apparently don't understand is that when they Google a candidate, they are searching many and perhaps most of the pages on the social media sites so even if they aren't directly using the social media sites, they are using the social media sites.

The frustration level by employers is pretty high when I talk with them about the importance of sites such as Twitter. Just when they're starting to feel comfortable with the importance of their web pages coming up high in Google search results (search engine optimization), buying ads on the search engines (search engine marketing), and social networking sites such as Facebook, along comes yet another opportunity. They just don't feel that they have the time or mental energy to tackle yet another web-based tool and I don't blame them. Time and energy are limited commodities. If we add Twitter to our daily activities, something has to give. So what's a recruiter to do?

Continue reading "Don't Have Time for Social Media? Hire an Intern." »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 20, 2009 at 10:06 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Starting salary offers to the college Class of 2009 have fallen slightly compared to offers received by the Class of 2008, according to new report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

According to the Spring 2009 issue of NACE's Salary Survey report, the overall average offer to a 2009 bachelor's degree graduate stands at $48,515--down 2.2 percent from the average of $49,624 posted in Spring 2008.

Continue reading "College Class of 2009 Sees Lower Starting Salary Offers" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 9, 2009 at 11:34 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I'd like to offer you a special one-time opportunity for you and a colleague to attend the 2009 Campus Recruiting Forum at a greatly reduced rate. The Forum is the premier 1-day campus recruitment training conference held annually in cities across the country.

I keep hearing from college recruiters that they need to keep hiring, but their budgets have been slashed.

That's what we're hearing from just about every employer these days. So here's what we are doing to save you more than $500 on your Campus Recruiting Forum registrations:

Continue reading "Enhance your campus recruiting skills now - at a huge savings" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 7, 2009 at 3:51 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Why do employers allow the big and some of the niche job boards to get away with telling their employer clients what content they can run in their job postings and what content they can't? I'm thinking specifically of recruitment videos. I've been hearing an increasing amount of frustration by employers who are being told by expert after expert to include their videos in their job postings because they absolutely, positively greatly increase the quantity and quality of responses yet some of the job boards won't allow any videos in their job postings unless the employer client pays thousands of dollars for the privilege. There's no technical reason -- it is all about the money.

It is unfortunate and short-sighted that a number of the highest traffic job boards prevent their clients from including video. The reasons are all financial but the boards should see that the inclusion of video leads to higher quality and quantity of applicants and that's got to be in their long-term best interests.

Continue reading "Niche Boards Allow Videos in Job Postings" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 6, 2009 at 10:10 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Employers expect to increase the pay they offer college students for internships, according to a new study conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Overall, employers taking part in NACE's 2009 Experiential Education Survey say they will offer bachelor's-degree-level interns an average hourly wage of $17.13--up 4.9 percent from the average they offered last year's interns.

Continue reading "Employers Hiring Fewer Interns But Paying Them More" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 5, 2009 at 11:59 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

On March 19, 2009 we hosted the free webinar, How to Interview College Students and Recent Grads to Hire Winners, by Mel Kleiman of Humetrics.

Mel Kleiman is a nationally recognized authority on recruiting, selecting and retaining the best hourly employees. A noted author, professional speaker and consultant, Kleiman's unique insight to employment practices has guided thousands of companies and their managers to successful employment decisions. With more than 30 years of research and consulting work to his credit, Kleiman is known for delivering high impact, practical information and solutions that can immediately spark results and business success. He has appeared on CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and a variety of leading trade and general business publications. Kleiman is the author of Hire Tough, Manage Easy, a step-by-step guide to finding and hiring the best hourly employee. He is also the author of 267 Hire Tough Proven Interview Questions and 180 Ways to Build a Magnetic Company. A dynamic and entertaining speaker, Kleiman's presentations are informative, educational, and motivational. Kleiman delivers more than 70 seminars and keynote presentations each year. Kleiman is a Certified Speaking Professional by the National Speakers Association and a long-standing member of the Society of Human Resources Management. Kleiman is the president of Humetrics, Inc. and managing partner of the Hire Tough Group. Humetrics is a leading provider of automated hiring solutions for the hourly worker, offering customized solutions to increase applicant flow and deliver quality, pre-screened candidates. The Hire Tough Group provides consulting, training and speeches focused on the recruitment, selection and retention of quality hourly employees.

Continue reading "Recording of Webinar on How to Interview College Students and Recent Grads to Hire Winners" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 23, 2009 at 4:28 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

It appears from some conversations occurring on a college recruiting discussion list to which I subscribe that about 40 percent of college seniors have not yet begun to search for a job to go to upon graduation. That's a very similar percentage to what we saw last year, but the world has clearly changed since last year.

Why is the Class of 2009 choosing to behave like the Class of 2008? I haven't seen any surveys explaining the motivations for the late start by those who graduated this year versus the motivations for those graduating this year, but I suspect their motivations are quite different. Last year's job market was pretty strong, so many students graduating then knew they could wait and did. This year's job market is terribly weak, so many students graduating this year are paralyzed or so pessimistic about their employment opportunities that they've given up before they've even started.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 17, 2009 at 12:54 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the greatest thought leaders in the recruitment space is Shally Steckerl of JobMachine. Shally recently wrote a great article about why recruiters need to be using cell phone text messaging and other types of mobile marketing to connect with the best candidates. His article helps to dispel some of the myths surrounding mobile marketing but what I loved most about it was this great top 10 list:

Continue reading "Top 10 Reasons Why Recruiters Need to Use Mobile Marketing" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 6, 2009 at 7:46 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Employers expect to hire 22 percent fewer new grads from the college Class of 2009 than they actually hired from the Class of 2008. The new projections in the National Association of Colleges and Employer's Job Outlook 2009 Spring Update override those employers made back in the fall, when hiring projections looked flat.

"Earlier, employers indicated that they expected to keep their new college graduate hiring levels even with last year," says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. "Our current survey shows that college hiring is as affected by the economy as other types of hiring."

Continue reading "College Hiring Down 22 Percent for Class of 2009" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 4, 2009 at 8:10 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the greatest attributes that Gen Y'ers bring to the workplace is their enthusiasm. This generation is savvy enough to know that when they're looking for a job that they should look not just for jobs which match up with their competencies but also their values and interests. So when they come into your workplace, Gen Y'ers as likely as Baby Boomers to be good at their jobs (competency) but Gen Y'ers are more likely than Baby Boomers to value their work and be interested in it. So it shouldn't be any surprise that they're more enthusiastic about the accomplishments of themselves and their team members. And they shouldn't be criticized for that enthusiasm by their older co-workers, even when those co-workers are NHL hockey legends such as Don Cherry.

Continue reading "Too Many Boomers Like Don Cherry Doesn't Get Gen Y'ers Like Ovechkin" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 3, 2009 at 11:11 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Last Thursday we hosted the webinar, How to Use LinkedIn to Recruit College Students and Recent Graduates, presented by Jason Alba. Over 500 people signed up to join Jason share what he has learned as a job seeker and a career management advocate. Jason took the attendees on a live tour of successful recruiter strategies with LinkedIn, perhaps the most powerful of all of the social networking technologies.

Jason Alba is the CEO of JibberJobber.com and author of I'm on LinkedIn - Now What?. In this humorous, interactive discussion Jason discussed how employers can and should use LinkedIn to recruit today's college students and recent graduates. Learn how recruiters can develop and execute a LinkedIn networking strategy that will help them find new (and passive) candidates, engage with them, develop a relationship, and enrich their candidate pool.

To watch the webinar, just click on the play button below. This is definitely a must see webinar!

Continue reading "How to Use LinkedIn to Recruit College Students and Recent Graduates: Recording of Webinar" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 23, 2009 at 3:31 PM | Leave a Comment (2)

I've got to admit: I've been thinking a lot recently about mobile web sites, cell phone text messaging, keywords, and other types of mobile marketing. CollegeRecruiter.com has been helping clients reach college students, recent graduates, and alumni through mobile marketing campaigns for several years now and we continue to see more and more interest from more and more clients. And as we accumulate more and more experience, we're starting to see some best practices develop.

Valista recommends the following for getting the most value out of each mobile campaign:

Continue reading "Best Practices for Mobile Marketing Campaigns" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 20, 2009 at 3:42 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Last week, more than 400 ERE.net community members tuned in for a webinar on college recruiting with a shoestring budget.

The presenters, Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnett, covered three main areas:

1. Why employers should be doing college recruiting even in a down economy;
   
2. How those organizations can stretch their own time resources by leveraging those offered by others; and
   
3. Tips for some recruiting opportunities which come at little to no cost.
   

Continue reading "College Recruiting on a Shoestring Budget" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 18, 2009 at 7:15 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Time is running out to register for our free webinar this Thursday at 2pm EST / 1pm CST / 12pm MST / 11am PST, How to Use LinkedIn to Recruit College Students and Recent Graduates.

Join host Jason Alba, CEO of JibberJobber.com and author of "I'm on LinkedIn - Now What?" for a humorous, interactive discussion on how employers can and should use LinkedIn to recruit today's college students and recent graduates. Learn how recruiters can develop and execute a LinkedIn networking strategy that will help them find new (and passive) candidates, engage with them, develop a relationship, and enrich their candidate pool. Join Jason Alba as he shares what he's learned as a job seeker and career management advocate, taking you on a tour of successful recruiter strategies with LinkedIn, perhaps the most powerful of all of the social networking technologies.

Jason Alba is the CEO and creator of JibberJobber.com, and author of such as books "I'm on Facebook - Now What???" and "I'm on LinkedIn - Now What???" After a corporate downsizing impacted Jason in 2006, he experienced firsthand the difficulties of conducting a job search. Drawing on his extensive computer software and IT experience, Jason analyzed the job search process and developed JibberJobber.com, the gold standard in career management technology. Jason specializes in social media, with an emphasis on getting professional or business value out of various social tools.

Sound great? It will be. Register today.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 17, 2009 at 4:57 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Joel Cheesman of Cheezhead and HRSEO has just released a new white paper, Why Go Mobile.

The white paper is excellent. About a dozen pages, suitable for beginners or experts, and chock full of excellent tips. Download it for free from mjob.com.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 17, 2009 at 4:28 PM | Leave a Comment (2)

Internships, co-ops, apprenticeships and other such systems have existed for hundreds of years. They help young adults get the experience they need in order to be hired to do interesting, meaningful work by a quality employer that pays fairly. Students are no different from those of us who have been in the workforce for years or even decades. We all want to do work for which we are competent, which we value, and which is of interest to us.

The problem right now, however, for students is that the economy is in shambles. Far fewer employers are hiring interns this year than in years past and those who are hiring are being deluged by applications. With fewer positions and more applicants, more and more employers have re-thought their internship programs. So what adjustments should be made? The Intern Queen recently posted a great list:

Continue reading "How the Weak Economy Has Impacted Internships" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 13, 2009 at 12:22 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

We recently held a webinar in conjunction with the Eastern, Mountain Pacific, Midwest, and Southern Associations of Colleges and Employers on the future of on-line recruiting. Interested? If so, click on the video box below to watch the webinar.

What are the current media options available to today's staffing leaders, and what lies ahead in the ever-changing world of on-line employment marketing? In this highly interactive, humorous presentation, we'll compare the history of consumer marketing with the marketing by employers of their employment opportunities. We'll discuss which on-line opportunities make the most sense today for employers who each are struggling to find the best possible candidates. We'll then peer into the future to see what lies ahead so that you can best market your employment opportunities using the media options of today and tomorrow. What's does the future hold for you in on-line recruiting? This session spells it out!

Continue reading "What Staffing Professionals Need to Know About the Future of On-line Recruiting: Why Job Boards and Facebook Are Only Gateways to What is Ahead." »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 2, 2009 at 3:59 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

By Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler, CareerXroads

Harvard MBAs returning from their holiday were greeted January 13 with an email from Jana P. Kierstead, Managing Director, MBA Career Services who stated right off the bat that "postings in the Job Bank are down 24%." We're sure this factoid doesn't portend anything dire. We can't imagine any of the June crop of grads from Harvard's Business School will go hungry. Most likely it simply means fewer alternatives. But that isn't true everywhere else.

We are beginning to hear about significant numbers of offers being recalled from undergrads in less prestigious institutions of higher learning. This could become an issue and we would encourage firms considering similar actions to think twice. Reneging on young professionals at the very beginning of their careers in the "Age of Facebook" is sure to have lasting consequences. If you must do it, think about investing enough to create a much more positive experience:

Continue reading "Even Harvard Grads Facing Tough Job Market" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 2, 2009 at 10:48 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

One of the most under reported stories of the 2008 election campaign was the incredibly smart use of mobile marketing by Barack Obama's primary and general election campaigns. He understood very early on that he needed to win overwhelming support from three demographics in order to defeat Hillary Clinton in the primaries and then John McCain in the general election:

1. Millennials;
   
2. African-Americans; and
   
3. Hispanics.
   

Continue reading "Obama Uses SMS -- Why Aren't You?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 26, 2009 at 9:44 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

On Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 1-2pm EST / 12-1pm CST, I will deliver a webinar on What Staffing Professionals Need to Know About the Future of On-line Recruiting: Why Job Boards and FaceBook Are Only Gateways to What is Ahead. What are the current media options available to today's staffing leaders, and what lies ahead in the ever-changing world of on-line employment marketing? In this highly interactive, humorous presentation, we'll compare the history of consumer marketing with the marketing by employers of their employment opportunities. We'll discuss which on-line opportunities make the most sense today for employers who each are struggling to find the best possible candidates. We'll then peer into the future to see what lies ahead so that you can best market your employment opportunities using the media options of today and tomorrow.

This webinar will be held in conjunction with the Eastern, Mountain Pacific, Midwest, and Southern Associations of Colleges and Employers. The entire fee $59 for ACE members and $99 for non-members will go to the ACE's. Register today!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 23, 2009 at 8:32 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

On Thursday, January 15th, I delivered a webinar on how employers can and should use cell phone text messaging and other types of mobile marketing to help them hire college students and recent graduates.

Since the days of the AOL, "You've Got Mail," savvy recruiters have utilized email technology to reach current and prospective employees. But is email a dinosaur? Take a look at what Barack Obama's campaign did to recruit their target audience-- and recruit voters. They had a dedicated page for mobile content with wallpapers, ringtones and even an SMS alert service that tells you about local events, updates, and other tidbits to keep you involved and immersed in Obama. Can you do the same for your company through the utilization of mobile technology? Your workforce is global, virtual and tech savvy-- shouldn't your human capital department reflect these trends? Join us to learn the latest, and the future of, mobile technology. We'll decipher the terminology, the costs, and the potential benefits. We'll learn how a little knowledge can keep your company ahead of the curve-- and attract and retain the best and the brightest in the talent wars.

If you missed the presentation or want to watch it again, you can do so here:

Continue reading "Recording of Webinar: Lessons from the 2008 Presidential Campaign: Utilizing Mobile Communication to Reach Candidates and Engage Employees" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 20, 2009 at 4:55 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Geoff Peterson, Managing Principal for General Lead, delivered a super webinar for hundreds of CollegeRecruiter.com employer clients on January 15, 2009 on Twitter: Emerging Online Community for Recruiters and Sourcers. There were a few minor sound problems with the webinar but Geoff's content and manner of delivery were well worth putting up with the minor annoyances.

Did you miss the presentation? Want to watch it again? In this 60-minute webinar, we learned how Twitter is taking recruiting to a whole new level. Geoff fully demonstrated Twitter, walked through it's search capabilities and demonstrated how to build a "following" which benefits recruiters as they promote open positions and search for active and passive job seekers. Geoff also showed backdoor tips and tricks of using other sites and reviewed how recruiters and sourcers can use them to begin building relationships within online communities. Among the valuable takeaways for this interactive seminar were:

• Learned how to utilize Twitter to recruit and source candidates;
• Discovered a fast-growing social networking community online;
• Found active and passive candidates who "live" online;
• Learned how to grow your Twitter networks in seconds; and
• Uncovered hundreds of "leads" in the Twitter community.

Continue reading "Recording of Webinar: How to Use Twitter for Sourcing and Recruiting" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 20, 2009 at 4:45 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

There is little doubt that today's college students and recent graduates use email for communication. They use it a lot and they use it well. A recent study by eROI indicated that two-thirds of students check email at least once a day and 55 percent of those check email more than three times a day.

But students and recent graduates don't prefer to use email when offered a choice between email and cell phone text messaging (SMS). According to the study, the preferred means of communication are:

Continue reading "Cell Phone Text Messaging Preferred Over Email" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 13, 2009 at 10:24 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A strategic advantage for any organization over its direct competitors is to have innovative products. We believe that we have consistently rolled out new products a little ahead of the curve and that allows us to provide our clients with better products, service, and pricing.

An example of one of these new, innovative products is our Facebook Fan Recruiting Page development. In short, we consult with our clients to better understand their needs and then create a home page on Facebook for them so that they can better communicate with the millions of students and recent graduates who use Facebook almost continuously.

Continue reading "Valpak Launches Facebook Fan Recruiting Page" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 7, 2009 at 11:29 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A number of recent studies have reported that the use of email to reach college students is a dying marketing channel because the students are primarily using email to sign up for email alerts from sites such as CollegeRecruiter.com and to sign up with social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.

Our targeted email product is our biggest product by revenue so this is an area that we know a lot about. We've long questioned the validity of these studies as we've seen no drop-off in the response rate to the employment-related emails that we deliver to candidates who opt-in to receive the emails. A new study by eROI supports our experience and refutes the theory that students only use email for alerts and to register with social networking sites.

Continue reading "Students Use Email for More Than Just Social Networking" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 5, 2009 at 7:35 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Is there any doubt by anyone that the way that Gen Y communicates is fundamentally different from the way previous generations communicated? I don't believe that the ways that Gen Y communicates are better or worse but they certainly are different. For example, this is the first generation to have grown up with cell phones.

Think about it. When did you make your first cell phone call? If you're like most adults, it was sometime in the mid-1990's. A small percentage made their first call in the early 1990's. Back then cell phones were typically hard wired into cars or were "portable" in the sense that they were in bags and you could unplug them from one car and plug them into another car. Big deal. Hardly a reason to describe a phone as being mobile.

Continue reading "Mobile Web is About to Boom" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 29, 2008 at 3:32 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Minnesota Public Radio's Jeff Horwich for his In The Loop show about the job market this year for college seniors. It is, without a doubt, the most difficult job market for college seniors in decades.

My portion of the show starts 7 minutes and 14 seconds in, but listen to it all of the way through. As is always the case, Jeff's show manages to be both informative and entertaining at the same time.

Continue reading "College senior? At least the feds are hiring." »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 19, 2008 at 6:40 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

On December 11th, Mike Palmquist and I hosted a free recruiting webinar on the five secrets for how employers should use Facebook to recruit college students for internships and recent graduates for entry level jobs and other career opportunities. It was, by far, our best attended webinar to-date and generated a whole lot of great questions from the attendees. We had over 800 attendees and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

Miss the webinar? Watch it here:

Continue reading "Video of Webinar: Facebook Not Working for You? Learn the Five Secrets." »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 19, 2008 at 3:08 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

It may seem merely intuitive that college students and recent graduates overwhelmingly report that they only act on emails which are relevant to them, but that probably comes as a surprise to some of the organizations out there who are engaged in what can only be generously referred to as email marketing.

Our biggest product by revenue for years has been targeted email campaigns so this is an area that we watch closely. We have an email database of 10 million college students, recent graduates, and alumni (the largest in the industry) which is 100 percent double opt-in (the highest standard in the industry), a single click for unsubscribing (also the highest standard in the industry), and up to 700 fields of data per candidate (far more than our competitors so we can do a much, much better job of targeting than can they). We're good at what we do and it shows: our average response rate is about three times the industry average.

We've seen the industry average response rates to email marketing messages drop and many of our competitors drop out because so many didn't get that email marketing is more than just sending marketing messages out by email. Many of our competitors and some of our clients refer to the product as an "email blast," which always causes me to cringe. That seems to imply that we're delivering emails on behalf of our clients using a shotgun approach: send enough out and something is bound to stick. And then those competitors and clients wonder why only a tiny, tiny fraction of the emails are actually opened (read) and only a tiny, tiny fraction of those are acted upon by the recipients. The reason is that the messages are going to the wrong people, or at least too high a percentage of them are going to the wrong people.

Continue reading "Most College Students Take Action on Relevant Email Messages" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 19, 2008 at 8:15 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

We keep close tabs on how college students and recent graduates use email because our biggest product by revenue is our targeted email campaign product. The trends are interesting and not well understood by many of the employers with whom we speak.

A common misconception by the employers is that the best email address for students is the address provided to them by their schools. Wrong. That is probably the worst address to use when trying to deliver emails. In addition to many of the schools having anti-spam filters that are lousy because they incorrectly identify a lot of legitimate email as spam, the systems are often archaic and sometimes even require the students to login in the on-campus computer labs. Today's students have a mobile lifestyle and are used to much more advanced email systems which are web-based. They simply don't tolerate archaic technology, nor should they. Boston College understands this and just became one of the first colleges in the nation to abandon its email system and is now helping its students shift over to Gmail.

Continue reading "College Students Not Using School Email Accounts" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 18, 2008 at 8:42 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Yesterday we delivered a free recruiting webinar on how the five secrets for how employers should use Facebook to recruit college students for internships and recent graduates for entry level jobs and other career opportunities. It was, by far, our best attended webinar to-date and generated a whole lot of great questions from the attendees.

We've been delivering these free monthly recruiting webinars since August. The highest number of registrations was about 500 and we typically see about half of the registrations converting into attendees. Based on information from other organizations who deliver webinars, we believe that the average attendee equates to two people as it is normal for one person in an organization to register and to watch the webinar with others. Some are undoubtedly gathered around a conference room table with the PowerPoint projected onto a screen and the speaker phone turned on. Can't you just picture a handful of recruiters and other human resource professionals munching on turkey sandwiches and sipping on sodas?

Continue reading "Questions and Answers from Webinar on How Employers Should Use Facebook" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 12, 2008 at 5:33 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

It is no secrets that career fairs have seen better days. With more and more employers directing candidates to apply on-line, more and more candidates are avoiding the hassles and stress of attending in-person job fairs because they're largely unproductive. You wait forever to get in and speak with a recruiter but get only a few minutes and perhaps just seconds of their time. They listen, nod, and tell you to apply at their web site. So why even bother going?

Perhaps the failures of this sourcing tool explain why Monster.com and its partner National Career Fairs seem to have greatly pumped up their volume of unsolicited, bulk, commercial emails. I've gone from rarely receiving emails about career fairs just weeks ago to multiple emails a day. Have a look at my spam folder for today.

One email every once in a while I get. But 16 in a day and still seven hours to go before this day is officially over? Ridiculous.

Is it just me or are these guys spamming the heck out of everyone who moves? I don't have a resume on Monster.com and have never opted in for their mailings. Same with National Career Fairs. I pity those who actually did give permission to these organizations. If I'm getting 16 without having provided my opt-in, I can't even imagine how many emails must be going to those who did provide their opt-in.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 9, 2008 at 4:55 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

Anyone who has been using the Internet over the past few years has noticed the incredible rise in popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. But what many have failed to notice is the accompanying rise in the sites by employers who are always looking for new and innovative ways to exclude candidates from their hiring pools.

That may sound a little harsh but it is true. Too many hiring managers and human resource professionals are looking for the perfect candidate or feel that they have too many well qualified candidates. So what to do? Well, make your job easier by finding ways to eliminate candidates from consideration. I'm not saying I condone that behavior. Quite the contrary. But it happens. Too often. And to the detriment of the candidates and the employers. Recruiting isn't supposed to be easy. The most important things rarely are. But I digress.

Continue reading "More Employers Admit to Using Facebook, MySpace to Background Check Candidates" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 3, 2008 at 8:54 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I'm about to leave for a trip to Washington, D.C. No, I'm not about to be announced as one of the new Obama Administration appointees. Thank goodness. What those people have to put up with is incredible. All the infighting, double crossing, political games, back stabbing. No wonder very little gets done by politicians in the Beltway and what does get done so often seems to be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

My trip will be mostly business and perhaps a little time for a museum or two. I've got several client meetings lined up for Wednesday, I'm speaking at Brainstorm Consulting's very promising college recruiting conference on Thursday, then more client meetings on Friday, then home. This will undoubtedly be one of those trips when I fall asleep on the plane shortly after boarding and don't wake up again until we've begun our descent. It is pretty weird that I'll sometimes wake up and not even be aware that we've taken off. Ah, the romance of business travel.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 2, 2008 at 5:16 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

There are a lot of employers out there today who are faced with a difficult predicament: they're receiving enough qualified applicants for their current openings or they're not hiring or they're laying off staff. In that kind of environment, who would advice them to continue to spend money on recruitment advertising? Well, I would.

Employers who slashed their college recruitment spending in the 2000-03 recession lived to regret it. Actually, some didn't live to regret it in part because they were penny wise and pound foolish.

Continue reading "Don't Change Your Strategy When Faced With a Tactical Problem" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 1, 2008 at 4:09 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

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.

Continue reading "Free Webinar: How to Use Twitter for Sourcing and Recruiting" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 25, 2008 at 4:42 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

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:

Continue reading "Success Story for Targeted Email Campaign" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 17, 2008 at 7:52 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

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.

Continue reading "College Recruiting Conferences in December" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 12, 2008 at 8:15 AM | 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.

Continue reading "Webinar: Best Practices for Boosting Your Brand On-Campus Through the Use of Targeted Email Campaigns" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 29, 2008 at 4:04 PM | 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.

Continue reading "Webinar: Facebook Not Working For You? Learn the Five Secrets." »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 23, 2008 at 3:00 PM | 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.

Continue reading "Webinar: Recruiting Gen Y through Targeted Email Advertising Campaigns" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 20, 2008 at 6:16 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.

Continue reading "Recording of Webinar of How to Use SMS to Recruit College Students" »

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.

Continue reading "Recruiters Say They Want Quality But Actually Want Quantity" »

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)

My conversations with dozens and perhaps even hundreds of employers who hire college students for internships and recent graduates for entry level jobs have led me to believe that about 75 percent are searching social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace as part of their background checking process. But one question that was harder to answer was how many of those employers have declined to hire a candidate because of content on those sites.

Careerbuilder recently surveyed hiring managers and found that of those admit to screening job candidates using Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites, 34 percent admit to dismissing a candidate from consideration because of what they found on the social networking sites. The top areas for concern among these hiring managers were:

Continue reading "Employers Admit to Disqualifying Candidates Due to Facebook Content" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 26, 2008 at 7:37 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Nicole Bodem at HR Search Marketing just posted a play-by-play blog posting of the free webinar that we hosted today on how employers can use cell phone text messaging (SMS) to recruit college students, recent graduates, and alumni.

I'll post the recording of the webinar here within a week but in the meantime, Nicole did a great job of capturing all of the crucial details.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 25, 2008 at 5:43 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of my favorite employers of college students and recent graduates is RSM McGladrey. Unlike the stereotypical accounting firm, the folks at McGladrey are interesting, fun, and not afraid to take some chances. My experience with them is that the chances they take typically pay off but I'm sure that they'd be the first to admit that some have worked out better than others.

The most recent chance that they're taking has very limited downside and I'm excited to see how it turns out. Ben Gotkin, their National Director of Experienced-Hire Recruiting, reminded me earlier this week that a few months back he asked me if I was aware of any company that had created a site, blog, etc. specifically for parents or influencers of college students. In his email, he told me that despite the lack of such sites McGladrey went ahead and built one.

Continue reading "McGladrey Launches Recruiting Site Targeting Parents of Gen Y Candidates" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 25, 2008 at 6:28 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Interesting blog article by Recruiter Guy a/k/a Christopher Hoyt about ways that employers can better engage with today's college students. Christopher identified some traditional routes such as job fairs and college job boards but then spent most of the blog writing about some non-traditional routes.

Two of the non-traditional routes he highlighted are CampusAve and CampusBlvd. Both are quite interesting. CampusAve is a network of classified advertising opportunities on college newspaper and local web sites. Go to any of their partner sites and you'll see classified listings for housing, items for sale, and jobs. So if you're only willing to consider candidates from a small number of specific schools, CampusAve may be a good option.

Continue reading "CampusBlvd Sells SEO Benefits to Employers" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 24, 2008 at 9:34 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

Over the past few years, we've seen an incredible increase in the number of clients and interest by those clients in our second largest product by revenue: cell phone text messaging (SMS) campaigns. On Thursday, we're going to share what we've learned with anyone who cares to listen.

Join us for our free webinar on best practices for using targeted cell phone text messaging campaigns to recruit college students, recent graduates,and alumni. Seats are limited and we already have hundreds of attendees signed up so don't delay. Register today!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 22, 2008 at 4:07 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

There's no question that most college students prefer paid internships to unpaid internships. After all, not many people would prefer to do the same work for nothing than receive compensation for it. But what if you're a student and are weighing competing offers for an okay internship that is paid and a great internship which is unpaid. Which do you accept?

Students whose finances allow them to find a way -- any way -- to accept the unpaid internship should do so. The little compensation that they will likely receive from the paid internship will almost surely pale in comparison to the increased compensation they will receive upon graduation when they're able to convert that great internship into a great entry level job.

Continue reading "Internships: Should They Be Paid?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 11, 2008 at 8:29 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Imagine that you're considering a home remodel and are looking for an architect or designer to help you with the plans and perhaps also the construction. How would you find and choose that design / build residential remodeling firm? If you're like most, you'd talk with your neighbors, friends, and family and also go to search engines such as Google. But either way you're likely going to end up reviewing the remodeling firm's web site to learn more about them. Before they even know you exist, you'll likely know a lot about the projects they've completed and markets they serve.

When you're at the remodeling firm's web site, what would you want to see? Probably testimonials. Lots of them. Lots of quotes from happy clients. Lots of photos. Lots of success stories.

Continue reading "Do Your Employees Love You?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 4, 2008 at 4:28 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Dr. John Sullivan, professor at San Francisco State University, recently posted a great article at ERE about how employers and use smart cell phones for recruiting. Some of his article dealt with your mobile phone as a tool in the hands of the recruiter so focused on ideas such as being able to check email while you're away from your desk but much of the rest was a great check list of strategies and tactics for how to use the phone for recruiting:

Continue reading "How to Use Cell Phones for Recruiting" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 26, 2008 at 4:35 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

A question from several of the 500+attendees to our free webinar last week on how employers can and should use Facebook for recruiting was whether employers would encourage negative comments about their organizations if those employers started blogging, using Facebook, etc.

My advice was that the negative comments will be made whether the employer has a presence or not so they should blog, actively use Facebook, and otherwise participate in Web 2.0 sites. To do otherwise would be to allow the negative comments to be posted without the employer's side of the story. Don't get personal. Don't post comments saying that the blogger is an idiot. But do give your side of the story. If your organization could have done something better, admit it and provide details on what you'll be changing and when in order to rectify the situation.

Continue reading "Blog Comments Should Come Full Circle" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 19, 2008 at 5:13 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

A number of recruiters and other human resource professionals asked what might seem to be a stupid question both during and after last week's free webinar on how employers can and should use Facebook for recruiting. The question was how can they create a Facebook Fan Page for their organizations so they can have a corporate rather than personal page on Facebook.

You'd think that Facebook would make it easy for people to figure out how to create Fan Pages. If so, well, you'd think wrong. I've been to dozens and perhaps hundreds and it is always amazing to me how hard Facebook makes it. Go to any Fan Page and scroll all the way to the bottom. You should see the link there or just go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 18, 2008 at 4:20 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

My daily newspaper reported this morning that Barack Obama's campaign is using cell phone text messaging (SMS) to better connect and motivate his supporters. Want periodic updates on the campaign? Text "obama" (without the quotes" to 62262. Want to know the identity of his vice presidential running mate before the media does? Text "vp" to 62262. Brilliant.

Obama is using an SMS keyword campaign to recruit, retain, and motivate his supporters. So why aren't employers? Well, some are and many more will soon be.

Continue reading "Cell Phone Text Messaging Embraced by Barack Obama" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 18, 2008 at 2:58 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Two of my favorite recruiting experts recently teamed up to shoot a short video. The topic? One which is near and dear to my heart: tactics and strategies that employers should use to attract the best Gen Y / Millennial talent to their organizations.

In the video below, Bill Vick interviews Alexandra Levit. If you've never read Alexandra's work, you'll love it. If you've read her insights before, you'll likely be reminded of some great ideas and learn some new ones.

Continue reading "Alexandra Levit Video: How Employers Should Attract Gen Y" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 11, 2008 at 8:44 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

We'll likely hit 400 registrations later today for next week's free webinar on how employers can and should use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace for recruiting. Some good friends of ours such as Jason Davis at RecruitingBlogs.com and Dave Mendoza at SixDegreesFromDave.com have let their readers know about the webinar and many of them have registered.

We've had a few questions that I thought I should address:

Continue reading "400 Registrations for Free Webinar on Using Facebook for Recruiting" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 7, 2008 at 9:47 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Facebook and MySpace are two of the most popular sites amongst U.S. college students and recent graduates and dwarf the traffic from any job board, including sites such as Monster, Careerbuilder, and HotJobs. Yet very few employers are using the social networking sites for recruiting and very few of those are using them well.

I regularly speak at recruiting conferences and am quoted by national print and broadcast media about how employers can and should use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace to help them recruit college students and recent graduates. If you haven't been able to attend the conferences or want more information than what the media soundbites deliver, then join me for an interactive, humorous, free webinar on Thursday, August 14, 2008 from 2-3pm EDT/ 1-2pm CDT / 12-1pm MDT / 11am-12pm PDT.

During the "How to Use Facebook for Recruiting" webinar we'll discuss how employers can and should use these sites. We'll examine the risks and potential rewards. And we'll look create a best practices check list that will help all employers create or improve their web 2.0 recruiting strategies and tactics.

Space is limited so register today.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 1, 2008 at 8:55 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

One of the best writers for the Wall Street Journal is Sarah Needleman. She writes a lot about employment-related issues and many of those focus on issues related to college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs. Yesterday's article was a beauty but surely read very differently to different readers. Perhaps that was the intent.

Sarah interviewed a number of employers and candidates about the emerging trend of college students and recent graduates using cell phone text messaging (SMS) abbreviations such as "thx" for "thanks" and "4u" for "for you" in their thank you letters and other correspondence to prospective employers and after they've been hired. Not surprisingly, the employers felt that such abbreviations were terrible while most of the students and recent grads understood that the employers didn't like it but also felt that those attitudes were dated.

Now I can understand why an employer wouldn't appreciate receiving a text message full of informal abbreviations as the employer would likely suspect that the candidate would then use the same types of abbreviations when communicating with clients and if the clients aren't likely to appreciate the abbreviations then the use of them will hurt the employer's business. But I was flabbergasted by a couple of the dislikes:

Continue reading "Employers Who Provide Cell Numbers to Candidates Angry Candidates Used Those Numbers" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 30, 2008 at 9:50 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

There's been a significant increase in the number of employer clients would prefer to pay for postings and other recruitment advertising on a for performance basis so that they only pay if they hire someone from the ad. I'd love to get there as well as it would ensure that the interests of the candidate, employer, and CollegeRecruiter.com would be well aligned but we can't get there until the employers make the proper investments in their applicant tracking systems.

Of the hundreds of clients we have, we'd be hard pressed to count on one hand how many of them are properly tracking the source of their hires. It is really pathetic, actually. We have one client who spend $200,000 on an applicant tracking system but didn't spend $20,000 to add the module that would give them fully automated tracking with unique URLs. So instead they have those horrid drop-down boxes. Don Firth at JobsInLogistics.com published a study showing that 83 percent of candidates misidentified their source when they clicked directly from the job board to the employer site and the job board was actually listed.

Continue reading "Pay Per Hire Job Postings" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 28, 2008 at 10:47 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

RSM McGladrey, one of the nation's top accounting firms, is fortunate to have a number of highly skilled recruiters who understand that recruiting is about selling and therefore marketing their opportunities is critical to their ability to hire the best available talent. Yes, efficiency is important but efficiency at the cost of effectiveness is not a good idea as you end up with cheap hires who tend to be poorly qualified and therefore productivity suffers.

So what do new tricks has RSM McGladrey pulled out of its hat? Well, Ben Gotkin, national director of experienced-hire recruiting, just announced that they've joined the recruiting blogosphere with Success starts here: Your view into what it's like to work at RSM McGladrey | McGladrey and Pullen.

Continue reading "RSM McGladrey Joins the Blogosphere" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 24, 2008 at 1:20 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've never been a fan of traditional banner advertising. From the time they were introduced in the mid-1990's through their standardization at the urging of Proctor & Gamble in 1999 through today, banner ads have typically been sold based on the number of times they were viewed. What has always seemed crazy to me is that the Internet lends itself to precise and fully automated tracking of far more relevant statistics, so why would anyone pay for views?

Maybe I'm wrong though. We recently entered into a partnership that I can't yet write about that will allow us to offer our clients the ability to target candidates geographically in dozens of the largest metro areas in the country or by job category (i.e.,. accounting) or both. We've had some early discussions with clients about our impending ability to do more than just display their banners across our site in a completely untargeted manner. The clients are thrilled.

Continue reading "Banner Ads -- Maybe They're Not So Bad" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 23, 2008 at 5:57 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Well, some recruiters are flaky, but what occupation doesn't have its fair share of flakes?

A tip of the hat to Lee Charles of The Hire Sense blog for summarizing 10 mistakes that employers make when trying to hire new candidates:

1. Flakiness.
   
2. Making hiring decisions that aren't based on the right criteria.
   
3. Not distinguishing between what can be taught and what can't.
   
4. Not asking the right questions in interviews.
   
5. Letting candidates get away with superficial, stock responses.
   
6. Hiring too quickly.
   
7. Hiring too slowly.
   
8. Not getting back to candidates.
   
9. Conducting intimidating, high-pressure interviews.
   
10. Not giving an accurate portrayal of the job.
    

Continue reading "Recruiters Are Flaky" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 22, 2008 at 3:15 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Job applications from college students to federal community service programs such as Teach for America are way, way up. The explanations vary, but it is clear that far more of today's college students are applying for positions with AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, Teach for America, and other such organizations than in years past.

According to the Star Tribune, "Teach For America, a two-year program that places college graduates in low-performing schools around the country, the number of applicants fell in 2007 but this year jumped 36 percent to nearly 25,000 would-be teachers. Only 3,700 are placed. When the program began in 1990, 2,500 students applied."

Continue reading "Community Service Applications Way, Way Up" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 14, 2008 at 4:27 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

Late June and July are great seasons for college job boards to connect with their largest employer clients and help them plan and budget for the upcoming college hiring year. One of the big changes that I've noticed this year is that, finally, only a minority of the employers with which we've been talking regard job postings as being cutting edge.

The bulk of the larger employers with which we've been speaking correctly believe that job postings are efficient and effective but if they need to hire dozens, hundreds, or even thousands then a handful of job postings will help but not nearly enough. To get the people they need, these employers are embracing our two biggest products by revenue: targeted email campaigns and cell phone text messaging. I've also been watching with pleasure as many of these same employers embrace products offered by other organizations such as recruitment videos, podcasts, video interviewing, and more.

We're moving into a brave new world here, folks. Some employers will make great use of these new opportunities and thrive. Others will stumble and get hurt. Those who stick to their old ways will fail.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 9, 2008 at 9:49 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

I've heard from a number of insiders at big general job boards like Monster, Careerbuilder, and HotJobs that 90 percent or more of their revenues are derived from the sale of job posting ads and resume searching. If that's true, it is no wonder that they are reluctant to follow our lead by eliminating resume searching in order to help the candidates using our sites obtain the security and privacy they deserve. But that's another topic for another day. Well, almost.

Unlike the big general boards, our niche board has for years generated most of its revenue from non-traditional job board products such as targeted email campaigns and targeted cell phone text messaging (SMS) campaigns. I know that we do a great job for the vast majority of our clients and occasionally fall flat on our faces. But as frustrating as it can be when we can't drive the right traffic to our client's web site, it is even more frustrating when we've driven the right traffic yet they're not seeing it. More often than not, the problem is with the web traffic tracking software they're using or how they're using it.

Continue reading "Why Tracking Software Programs Yield Different Results" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 30, 2008 at 4:25 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

A tip of the hat to Julie Hays Bartimus, Vice President of the Alumni Career Center for the University of Illinois Alumni Association. She tipped me off to a blog article by Business Week's Stephen Baker about resumes and word clouds.

Run your resume, job posting ad, or any other document through word cloud (a/k/a tag cloud) software. The software extracts unique words from the document and increases the size of each word the more often it is used. So the most frequently used words appear as the largest clouds while the least frequently used words appear as the smallest clouds.

Continue reading "Resumes, Job Postings, and Word Clouds" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 25, 2008 at 12:24 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the thought leaders in the recruiting space is third party recruiter, Bill Vick. He interviewed me for XtremeRecruiting.tv about the decision CollegeRecruiter.com made to eliminate resume searching access when we re-launched our site a month ago.

As you'll see in the video, we had two primary reasons for continuing to allow candidates to post their resumes to CollegeRecruiter.com but not making those resumes searchable by recruiters, employers, and others.

Continue reading "Interview With Bill Vick About CollegeRecruiter.com Killing Resume Searching" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 19, 2008 at 3:43 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

Bowling Green's newspaper has an interesting article on how some employers admit to using social networking sites such as Facebook as part of their background checking efforts.

One employer was quoted in the article as saying that if their background checking company spots students who are depicted as partiers then their applications are rejected. The company, a chemical engineering firm, doesn't want to hire people who party in college. Huh? Are they trying to say that none of their Gen X or Baby Boomer employees partied in college or just that they weren't photographed partying? Or are they really saying that the technology didn't exist 20, 30, or 40 years ago to take a photo of your friend while they're at a party and instantaneously upload it to a social networking Internet site?

Continue reading "Did You Party in College? No Need to Apply." »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 5, 2008 at 6:55 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

Generation Y a/k/a Millennials promise to:

1. Hold only productive meetings. Hallelujah!
   
2. Shorten the workday by focusing on productivity.
   
3. Bring back administrative assistants -- even if Gen Y pays for them out-of-pocket and even if they're virtual.
   
4. Redefine retirement by taking multiple mini-retirements.
   
5. They'll find real mentors by teaching older workers about technology and in return be guided through office politics.
   
6. Put human back into human resources.
   
7. Promote people to management based on their managerial skills, not their seniority.
   
8. Continue to value what their parents have to offer because Gen Y respects their parents and their parents respect their Gen Y children.
   
9. Trade off potential raises and promotions for higher starting salaries.
   
10. Re-invent the performance reviews by increasing their frequency from semi-annual or even annual to on-the-spot.
    

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 2, 2008 at 1:52 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

Jennifer Kushell of YSN.com just completed her presentation at the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) annual conference in New Orleans. Her presentation was entitled, "What Students Don't Understand About You, Your Company, Your Opportunities -- and What You Can Do About It."

She had a lot of great tips and thoughts but two really stuck out for me:

Continue reading "Most Grads Don't Want Full-time Employment" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 29, 2008 at 9:52 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Later today I speak about how employers can destroy their brand by incorrect using Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites. Today's presentation is at the University of New Orleans for the annual conference of the Louisiana Association of Colleges and Employers.

One of the interesting things that I've been encountering these past few months about this topic is that the vast majority of employers still have no presence on Facebook and no strategy for incorporating it into their recruiting strategy even though it is far and away the highest traffic site used by Gen Y. But for those employers who are starting to use Facebook, the consensus is that it is not a place to source but instead to network. Makes sense, doesn't it? A social networking site should be used for networking, not directly for hiring.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 27, 2008 at 8:34 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the most frequent statements that we hear from frustrated job seekers is that employers are rejecting their applications because they lack experience. The job seekers typically wonder how it is that they can get experience if no one will hire them.

The answer to that conundrum is that the job seekers should get the experience they need outside of the job market. Instead of looking for someone to pay you and to give you the experience you need, instead look for someone who will only give you the experience you need. That's right, work for free. Volunteer.

But what about those who are employed and struggling to advance? Their paths are frequently blocked or at least delayed by their lack of experience. If their employer won't give them the experience they need in order to earn the sought after promotion, how can they obtain the promotion? Again, work for free. Volunteer.

Continue reading "No Experience? Volunteer. Even After Being Hired." »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 16, 2008 at 7:18 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Most job boards seem to operate under a typical 80-20 rule for revenue generation: about 80 percent of their revenues are generated from the sale to their employer clients of job posting ads and resume searching. The other 20 percent are miscellaneous items such as banner advertising, sponsorships, lead generation, and targeted emails.

CollegeRecruiter.com also operates under an 80-20 rule for revenue generation but for us about 80 percent of our revenues are generated from the sale to our employer clients of targeted email campaigns, cell phone text messaging, and other such non-traditional products. We generate revenue from the sale of job posting ads and for a very limited period of time will also from resume searching, but we've learned over the years how to effectively and efficiently target tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of candidates via double opt-in email and cell phone text messaging.

Continue reading "Subject Lines for Targeted Email Campaigns" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 7, 2008 at 6:40 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conference Spring 2008 - Free!" »

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

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

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

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

Enjoy the video!

Continue reading "Social Networking Interview by Bill Vick" »

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

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

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

Continue reading "Creating Employment Buzz On Campus: Standing Out In A Crowd" »

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

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

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

Continue reading "Why Today's College Students Need Not Fear Exploding Offers" »

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

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

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

Continue reading "Duke University Offers Training for College Recruiters" »

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

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

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

Continue reading "Creating Employment Buzz On Campus: Standing Out In a Crowd" »

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

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

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

Continue reading "Do Employers Really Hire Candidates from Facebook and MySpace? FurstPerson / Sprint Does." »

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "Internet Job Boards Number One Source of Hire" »

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

A tip of the hat to John Sumser of Recruiting.com and Dan Kurt of CareerCam for letting me know about an innovative recruiting program recently implemented by Steve Fogarty's team at Adidas.

Rather than flying a candidate to their corporate office in Portland, Oregon at a cost of about $1,000 a trip plus a couple of days for the candidate and the hiring managers, Adidas instead gives to the short listed interviewees an Adidas-branded web cam and tells the candidates to keep the web cam whether they're hired or not. Candidates are then interviewed in real-time through the CareerCam system.

The result? Faster turnaround for both interviewee and interviewers and I have to believe that Adidas is much more likely to therefore land the best possible hires and build significant good will amongst the candidates who were not hired yet remain in their talent pipeline.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 25, 2008 at 7:56 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Some advice great today about how to recruit the best interns in an article posted to our CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Employers Blog:

1. Tell them they're going to work on interesting, real life projects and follow through on your promises.
   
2. Make offers as quickly as possible. If your organization takes weeks to decide, change your organization because your competitors are extending offers in days and sometimes hours or even minutes after interviews.
   
3. Assign a willing and able mentor to each intern and make sure that the mentors will not be traveling for more than a day or two now and then during the internship season.
   
4. Include your interns in organizational activities as if they were regular employees.
   
5. Hire students who are entering their sophomore and junior years, not just those entering their senior years. And consider hiring as interns those who just graduated. These positions used to frequently be referred to as externships but they're becoming more and more popular amongst recent graduates.
   

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 17, 2008 at 10:31 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Gerry Crispin posted a short but great blog article about how employers sometimes deviate from their standard hiring practices and hire people who aren't qualified on paper yet prove to be exemplary employees. It reminded me that we did something similar about 1.5 years ago thing when we hired Mike Palmquist, our national account executive.

Mike was a good friend of mine and Faith, my wife. We had known his family for years. He happened to mention to Faith that he was looking to get out of his career as a potter (amongst other things he'd also been a sous chef) and really liked cold calling. Faith and I talked and agreed that we should see if Mike would want to work for CollegeRecruiter.com as a sales representative. He was interested and it didn't take long for him to start. And thank goodness that he did as he's been a wonderful addition to our organization.

We joke with Mike that we hired him for all the wrong reasons yet he's one of the best hires we've ever made. Working with Mike is a pleasure and we look forward to doing so for as long as he's willing to put up with me.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 14, 2008 at 11:26 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Those who meet me often quickly detect that I have a strange accent for someone who lives in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis / Saint Paul. Some people here think that I must have grown up in New York while others more accurately put my hometown somewhere up in the Iron Range of northeastern Minnesota. The latter is closer to the truth but not quite there.

I grew up in Winnipeg, Canada and became a dual citizen after moving to Minneapolis for school and the weather. One of the advantages of growing up in Canada is that you realize better than a lot of Americans do just how intertwined the countries are and aren't. Culturally they're pretty similar but they have some remarkable differences. Economically they're even more similar yet are still and probably always will be remarkably separated.

An example of that economic separation are recruiting conferences. Few American recruiters or other human resource professionals have ever ventured north of the border for a recruiting conference. That's a shame because there are some wonderful conferences in world class cities such as Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. And the lack of northern exposure shouldn't be the case because those cities are so incredibly easy to get to from just about every American city.

Continue reading "Search, Employment and Staffing Conference" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 11, 2008 at 3:37 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I was just reading a CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Candidates Blog entry about how to overcome tough interview questions and it caused me to remember an answer that a friend of mine used to give interviewers who asked him what was his biggest weakness. He would answer that it was chocolate. That would end that silly line of questioning for most interviewers but for those who were better prepared and could actually explain what information they were after he would provide them with a more meaningful response.

When I interviewed for jobs in college and after graduation, it never ceased to amaze me how ill prepared both the interviewers and candidates often were. Interviewers often had little to no training and frequently knew nothing about the candidate until they had scanned their resume as the candidate was walking in the door. So rather than asking meaningful questions about the candidate's credentials, they would ask stock, open ended questions like, "describe your greatest weakness." What a waste of time for everyone in the room.

Continue reading "My Weakness is Chocolate" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 7, 2008 at 8:44 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've been trading emails for a few months with Garett Howardson, a PhD candidate at The University of South Dakota. His thesis is on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace and employer selection practices. He needs some employers to take the short survey anonymously and will send the results to any participant who so requests.

According to Garett,

Continue reading "Social Networking Study by PhD Student" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 6, 2008 at 10:13 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the pleasure of attending the Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conference this past Friday. It was again organized by Paul DeBettignies, again located at the Best Buy world headquarters, again sold out, and again attended by well over 100 recruiters and other human resource professionals. About 60 percent were corporate recruiters/HR, 20 percent consultants, 15 percent third party recruiters / headhunters, and five percent oddballs such as me. Next date is Friday, May 16, 2008. Be there or be square.

The first session was by TJ Conley, an attorney with Leonard, Street & Deinard. About the only thing that I can take credit for is that I helped to connect Paul and TJ.

The presentation by TJ covered a fair amount of ground but the area that was of most interest to me was about the legal risks to employers when they use Google or other Internet resources as part of their background checking process. Those risks include:

Continue reading "Reporting from the Minnesota Recruiters (un)Conference" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 3, 2008 at 12:15 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the pleasure of speaking to about 75 students and staff at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York earlier this week. I was invited by the school to talk with the students about how employers are using the web to both include and exclude them from the hiring process. What an impressive group of students.

During the hour long and very interactive discussion we talked how many Gen Y'ers thinks nothing of posting photos and other information to sites such as Facebook and MySpace under the mistaken impression that employers either can't see it or won't care about it. I showed some examples of students using the web to enhance their employment opportunities and others who are killing their chances because of what they've posted on-line. We also talked about what candidates can do to remove harmful information that they've posted or which has been posted by others and to bury information that can't be removed.

Continue reading "Students Not Using LinkedIn" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 27, 2008 at 10:51 AM | Leave a Comment (9)

Jim Durbin recently posted a blog entry about an actress receiving a job offer through a cell phone text message (SMS). He makes a good point: if Hollywood is starting to extend job offers via cell phone text messaging, can the world of human resources be far behind?

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Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 22, 2008 at 8:40 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

There's little doubt that today's college students, most of whom are members of Gen Y, favor interacting with their friends via cell phone text messaging more than by phone and email. Phoning or even emailing a friend is seen as inefficient and even slow as you can't simultaneously and immediately communicate with many people. But does that mean that targeted email campaigns are no longer a great tool for employers and others who want to reach Gen Y? Hardly.

As stated in the Email Insider, we need to remember when we were teens and young adults and the tools that we used. Many of us got everywhere on our bicycles and even skateboards. How many of us still use those tools as our primary methods of transportation? As we age and mature, we change and we change which tools we use to best fit our new lifestyles. Given the reliance by organizations upon email, it is inevitable that Gen Y will use email more and text messaging less as more of them move into the workplace and more of those in the workplace move into positions of greater responsibility.

So what does an employer do if they want to reach a lot of college students about internship opportunities or recent graduates about entry level job openings? Well, several strategies come to mind:

Continue reading "Are Targeted Email Campaigns Dying?" »

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

There are a number of theories for how to write an effective job posting ad but in order to answer what needs to go into the ad, one must first understand what you want to come out of the ad. Is it the most number of responses? Many employers measure the success of job posting ads by the number of responses because their applicant tracking systems are unable to automatically determine the source of the application. That's a travesty given how cheap and easy to implement that technology is today, but that's the subject for another blog entry.

I believe that the best job posting ads are the ones that result in a relatively low quantity but a very high quality of applications. If you want to hire one person, why would you want to receive 200 resumes if only 10 of them are well qualified? Wouldn't it be better to receive 12 resumes and have only eight of them be well qualified? So how do you get there? Write a job posting ad that is long enough so that the candidate understands your industry (first paragraph), your organization (second paragraph), your department or division (third paragraph), and the opportunity (fourth paragraph). That's it. Don't start getting into excruciating details on your wonderful 401(k) or dental benefits. Don't include your lawyer's definition of flex time or sick leave. And certainly don't tell the candidate that their job responsibilities are subject to change. Duh. What job isn't subject to change and even for the very few which aren't subject to change, do you really need to say that in a job posting ad?

Research shows that the best advertisements do not spell out every facet of the product that you want to sell. Less is more. You need to include enough information to peak their interest, but not enough that you bore them or, heaven forbid, turn them off.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 14, 2008 at 7:11 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

What are you doing on March 4th from 1-2pm ET? Want to learn about how the new concept of social networking is impacting the traditional practice of networking? I thought you would.

I'm thrilled to be one of the panelists for the free one hour webinar hosted by Kennedy Information's RecruitingTrends.com and sponsored by LinkedIn. The moderator will be Jeanne Sturges, Managing Editor of RecruitingTrends.com. The other panelists are Lizz Pellet, CEO of EMERGE International; Hank Stringer, Chief Evangelist of ItzBig, Inc., and George Seiters, Senior Director of Marketing of LinkedIn.

You'll learn:

Continue reading "Best Practices in Recruitment Networking" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 13, 2008 at 5:24 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Andy Headworth of Sirona Consulting says has a good reminder for employers who are considering hiring college students for internships or recent graduates for entry level jobs:

Generation Y'ers, with their 'different' approach to work, at the same time are demanding more from their jobs and their working environments. They are really looking for a sense of purpose and worth in their jobs, and because of this, the 'job for life' mentality has gone well and truly out of the window!

Continue reading "Gen Y Not Interested in Job for Life " »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 11, 2008 at 9:14 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

More than four of five hiring managers are willing to view a video resumes according to a survey by HireMeNow.com. Of the 300 human resource and hiring managers, 83 percent indicated that they would view a video resume.

The survey also asked respondents how many minutes long a video resume should be. Some 78 percent said less than two minutes and a plurality preferred under one minute:

• 1 minute or less (54 percent)
  
• 1-2 minutes (24 percent)
  
• 2-4 minutes (18 percent)
  
• 4+ minutes (4 percent)
  

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 8, 2008 at 5:27 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the really nice things about running a job board is that you get to learn what candidates and employers each feel about the same issue. Case in point is internships. Employers typically explain that they want to hire for their internships college students who are well qualified, perhaps have some related experience, and are likely to make great permanent employees upon graduation. But what do students want?

A blog article was recently posted to our CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Candidates Blog that succinctly explains what today's college students want to see when they're looking for an internship. Keep in mind that the article was written by one of our interns so this isn't some old guy like me writing about what a 20 year old college student wants from an internship. This is coming straight from the horse's mouth.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 6, 2008 at 12:09 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the biggest changes occurring right now in college recruiting is the emphasis on so-called green recruiting. College students and recent graduates increasingly favor those employers which demonstrate that they are environmentally friendly over those who just talk the talk. Employers who don't even talk the talk are having an even harder time convincing the best candidates that they're employers of choice.

So what does this have to do with our, ahem, friend Jeffrey Dahmer and other cannibals? Well, not much. At least not much in a serious way. But I was recently thinking about the trend towards a more sustainable, environmentally friendly lifestyle and some of the ramifications that such a shift entails. For example, few would dispute that the world is essentially divided into two sections with North America, Europe, and other industrialized areas creating environmental problems by over consuming and the rest of the planet creating environmental problems through over population.

Continue reading "Why Cannibalism May Save the World" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 5, 2008 at 3:34 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the pleasure this past fall of flying down to Dallas to tape a television show for CTN: The Energy Network. They produce a variety of training and educational shows for the natural gas industry. One of the big concerns for that industry is its rapidly aging workforce. Their recruiters and hiring managers are in the process of learning how to recruit Gen X'ers and Millennials rather than Baby Boomers.

The presentation that I did for them was designed to train their recruiters and hiring managers on how they can and should use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in their recruiting process. Want to watch? Pull up a chair.

Continue reading "CTN Televised Presentation on How Employers Can and Should Use Facebook and MySpace to Recruit College Students and Recent Grads" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 30, 2008 at 3:20 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

We've all heard the stories about how social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook can be dangerous to job seekers when those people post on-line what most people would deem to be embarrassing photos or stories about themselves. After all, what employer is going to trust the judgment of a candidate who posts a MySpace page about herself and uses it to brag about how she likes to get drunk and have sex with strangers?

But what about candidates who make their political beliefs known in a low key way? One of the basic questions that Facebook asks, for example, is your political orientation. Your options include very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative, very conservative, apathetic, liberatarian, and other. Unless you change your default settings, which most don't, your choice shows up for all to see. But what if your employer or potential employer sees your choice?

Continue reading "Employers Looking at Political Orientation" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 29, 2008 at 4:31 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of my favorite marketing gurus is Guy Kawasaki. He recently wrote a blog article with tips for companies wanting to increase their on-line sales. The same rules apply to organizations wanting to increase the percentage of candidates who apply to job posting ads:

Continue reading "14 Ways to Get More Candidates to Apply" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 25, 2008 at 11:34 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I recently received an email from an advertising agency in which they asked on behalf of one of their clients several very good questions about cell phone text messaging advertising campaigns. Underlying the questions, as you'll see below, is the client's concern that they don't want to have us deliver their message to the cell phones of tens of thousands or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of college students and recent graduates and have the message annoy or even offend those Millennials.

Below are the three questions from the client as passed along to me by the advertising agency and my responses to each. Note that I've slightly edited the questions and answers, in part to protect the identity of the agency and its client.

Continue reading "SMS Ad Campaigns Target Students, Not Parents" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 16, 2008 at 7:14 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Thanks to Super Dave Mendoza, I just learned that sourcing mavin Shally Steckerl recently interviewed Jason Davis about the value of the Recruiting Roadshow Unconferences. Jason was a third party recruiter when he started Recruiting.com, sold that business to Jobster, and is now running RecruitingBlogs.com and working to increase the number of recruiters who subscribe to the excellent Fordyce Letter.

Shally's interview of Jason took place this past fall in Atlanta at the second Unconference. I had the pleasure of being one of the keynotes and spoke about how recruiters can and should use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. They mention my presentation a few times during the 11 minute interview, but what I really got a charge out of came at the end when they were interrupted by one of the attendees. Her evaluation of the conference was candid and great. Have a look:

Continue reading "The Value of Recruiting Unconferences" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 15, 2008 at 8:44 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A month ago I wrote about the success stories of five cell phone text messaging (SMS) consumer marketing advertising campaigns. Today, I'd like to share with you three success stories that we had with recruitment advertising campaigns.

Continue reading "SMS Success Stories for Recruitment Advertising Campaigns" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 10, 2008 at 3:30 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Well, that's what I hear from too many hiring managers and recruiters when I speak with them by phone, trade emails, and at recruiting conferences. The hiring managers tend to fall into two groups:

1. Those who are frustrated by Millennials who accept a job offer but then quit within months to take a position that offers a bit more pay from an employer across the street.
   
2. Those who are frustrated by Millennials who won't accept a job offer because the pay isn't enough even though the opportunity is otherwise perfect for them.
   

Continue reading "Millennials Are Driving Me Crazy" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 7, 2008 at 9:55 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the greatest changes that I've seen since we became engaged in the world of college recruiting in 1995 is the rise of the formalized internship program. In 1995, few organizations had interns and those who did rarely made good use of them. It was unusual when you heard about an organization that looked upon its interns as strategic resources and converted even a bare majority to permanent, full-time employees. My position then is the same as it is now: if your organization does not convert at least 75 percent then you are failing your interns and your shareholders.

But how does an organization without an internship program or with a failing internship program reach such a goal? One way is to pick up a copy of Total Internship Management: The Employer's Guide to Building the Ultimate Internship Program and implementing the many views and tips that it includes. The book by Richard Bottner of Intern Bridge, Inc. is based on the New England Internship Study, which was one of the largest internship research projects ever undertaken. The book also is based on the real-life experiences of more than 6,000 college students and 240 employer organizations. It walks you through the steps from understanding if your organization is ready to start recruiting to properly evaluating your existing interns to identifying which ones should receive offers for permanent employment to retaining those future employees.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 24, 2007 at 10:16 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

What goes from zero to number two in a year? If you guessed the Dallas Cowboys then you've got a good imagination but you're way off base. No, what goes from zero to number two in a year is our targeted SMS (cell phone text messaging) campaign product because a year ago we did virtually zero dollars in sales with it and it will close 2007 as our number two product behind targeted email campaigns.

One of the most frequent questions that we get from potential clients of our SMS product is how have other organizations used it with success. Here are some examples of campaigns delivered either by CollegeRecruiter.com or one of our network partners:

Continue reading "SMS (Cell Phone Text Messaging) Success Stories" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 11, 2007 at 12:20 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

One of the only certainties with on-line marketing is that there are no certainties. It is very fluid in the sense that almost everything changes all of the time. That makes on-line marketing fun for those of us immersed in it but at times frustrating.

Fortunately, many organizations are constantly studying the on-line marketing space and sharing their findings. One aspect that is often studied is the best day to deploy a targeted email campaign where the list owner, such as CollegeRecruiter.com, delivers an email on behalf of a client. We deliver multiple campaigns per week and sometimes per day to tens of thousands and sometimes even hundreds of thousands of candidates. All have double opted in, meaning that they signed up to receive the emails and then confirmed that request. All can remove themselves from the list with a single click. Both are the highest standards in the industry. But I digress.

Continue reading "Wednesday Afternoons Best for Targeted Email Campaigns" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 10, 2007 at 9:37 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Small businesses can leverage the recruitment process by integrating successful internship programs into their companies. The process is simple: develop an internship outline with objectives, provide students with career related experience, and recognize students whom excel within the program. The list is quite short, but the most innovative internships withhold these three necessities. Small businesses can use an internship to create a funnel of talented recruiters for future employment with their company.

Develop a program with learning objectives.

The first step to integrating a successful internship is by developing a program with learning objectives. While planning, the company must address its needs by surveying current staff of strengths and weaknesses. The survey will pinpoint aspects of the small business that needs improvement through human resource’s recruiting efforts. The best way to outline learning objectives (or milestones) is by evaluating the staff in each department of the small business. Without an understanding what the small business needs, the recruiting process may become blurred. With this said, successful internships must provide a clear objective so recruits experience career options the company offers.

Continue reading "Three Steps for Small Businesses to Integrate Internships to Develop Candidates for Future Employment" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 7, 2007 at 5:31 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the benefits of our partnership with CareerTV is that I've been able to learn a lot about how employers can and should use recruitment videos to help them hire the best possible candidates. So I was delighted when I recently read in Interbiznet's Electronic Recruiting News some great tips from Helen Luttemo, Director of Public Relations for CareerTV:

Continue reading "Best Practices for Recruitment Videos" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 5, 2007 at 6:40 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the skills that is critical to the success of any entrepreneur or intrapreneur is the ability to see around corners. That is, to be better able to predict the relevant future than your competitors. Those who have the skill are at a huge advantage as they are able to better position themselves and their organizations than are their competitors. Corporate recruiters who want to peer around the corner to see what practices will soon be popular need only look at what the various branches of the U.S. military do, including the U.S. Army.

For decades, the Army has used the promise of money for college as a recruiting tool. But starting this January, their message will change. Rather than promising tens of thousands of dollars in money for college, the Army will instead promise up to $40,000 towards the purchase of a home or the creation of a business. And rather than directing the messages at the potential enlistees, the Army will direct a significant portion of the messages at the parents and other adult "influencers" of the enlistees. "If you want to get a soldier, you have to go through mom, and moms want to know what kind of future their children will have when they leave the Army," Lt. Col. Jeff Sterling, the program's architect, told the Wall Street Journal.

Continue reading "Army Targets Influencers: Why Don't All Employers?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 4, 2007 at 1:43 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Innovative internship programs are the number one concern for students interested in gaining experience in their desired fields. You can integrate a great internship program into your company, but you need to learn the basis of how to succeed with the first intern. In this blog entry, I will review four ways to succeed with the first intern in all sized companies, primarily small or mid-sized businesses.

Continue reading "Four Ways to Succeed With Your First Intern" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 27, 2007 at 8:03 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Many of our largest clients are federal government agencies. They include the Internal Revenue Service, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and all branches of the military. As different as each agency and their respective employees can be, they all share one startling characteristic: their employees are amongst the oldest in the country.

Thankfully though, the situation isn't as dire as it might first appear. Although the oldest Baby Boomers are now able to draw Social Security benefits and therefore retire, there is growing consensus amongst those of us who are fascinated by generational trends that many and perhaps most Baby Boomers will not actually retire but will instead change who they work for, how much they work, and what work they do. Rather than busting their butts to get a promotion, they'll work reduced hours or perhaps even work seasonally. They'll do work that fulfills their emotions rather than fills their pocketbooks. And they'll be joined by Gen Y.

Continue reading "Gen Y Rescues the Fed" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 21, 2007 at 7:14 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

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,

Continue reading "Green Recruiting Becoming a Force in Recruiting Interns and College Grads" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 19, 2007 at 6:57 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

On Wednesday, November 28th, I'll have the pleasure of serving on a panel with Jason Davis, founder of Recruiting.com and RecruitingBlogs.com; Matt Martone, manager at Yahoo! HotJobs; and Craig Silverman, EVP of sales & marketing at HireAbility. Together we'll discuss topics which should be of great interest to virtually everyone in the recruiting space including how to start blogging and increase your candidate flow, how to quickly drive more traffic to your web site, why there are already 100 million blogs, how you can stand out in your niche, and more.

Interested? Follow the instructions below to sign-up today.

Continue reading "Secrets to Blogging for Recruiting Professionals" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 16, 2007 at 6:23 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Gerry Crispin has a great blog article over at ERE about how employers can use social networking sites such as Facebook to source candidates.

Gerry's idea is that, with the permission of the recent hire, the employer would market their employment opportunities to the friends of that recent hire. What he doesn't say but should be made clear to those who have little to no experience with sites like Facebook is that a "friend" on a social networking site is quite different from a friend in the non-digital world inhabited by most Baby Boomers and Gen X'ers. To those of us who are from those older, non-Millennial generations, our friends are usually in the dozens. To Millennials or those less discriminating older users of social networking sites, a list of friends can easily reach into the hundreds or even thousands.

Continue reading "Using Recent Hires and Facebook to Source Candidates" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 7, 2007 at 7:25 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

It has been pretty well documented that about 75 percent of employers admit to looking at information that candidates post to Facebook, MySpace, and other web pages as part of the hiring process. In other words, today’s college students and recent graduates are often finding in their race to find career opportunities that the finish line is being blocked by the risqué photos or stories about drunken parties that they or their friends posted on-line. What has not been as well documented is that the this same generation is often finding that the starting line is also blocked.

A recent study by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth found that 25 percent of college admissions offices admit to using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN to research potential students and that 20 percent look for the same information on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. The reality is that the percentages must be even higher because colleges and universities have little incentive to overstate their reliance on these digital dirt web searches but they have a significant incentive to understate their use due to a fear of negative public relations and likely backlash from many Gen Y candidates who view information that they post to MySpace and some of the other social networking sites as somehow being private even though it is accessible through a quick Google search.

Continue reading "College Admissions Officers Using Facebook, MySpace, and Other Social Networking Sites to Block Students" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 2, 2007 at 12:17 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

My friend and fellow recruiting blogger, Jim Stroud, posted an article earlier this week that contains a list of the top 200 universities worldwide as ranked by recruiters. Thankfully Jim didn't indicate his agreement with the list or even that such a list is relevant to anyone who is actually recruiting at universities.

Jim is a smart guy and a great recruiter so I trust that he understands that how one organization's recruiters rank a school bears little relationship to how that school will or should be ranked by another organization's recruiters. Let me explain.

Continue reading "Recruiters Rank Top 200 Universities: What a Load of Crap" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 1, 2007 at 7:06 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Open source software, including web sites, allow customers, vendors, partners, and other third parties to add onto or customize the software that your firm offers. Think Facebook. Until this past spring, Facebook was closed source so any modifications or enhancements to their web site needed to be done by their developers. Then they moved to open source and within weeks doubled their traffic. Why? Because their millions of users became even more engaged with Facebook because Facebook became even more relevant to the needs and wants of its individual users. Call it mass customization.

Now Google and some partner sites are getting in on the act in an apparent attempt to fight back against the massive traffic moving to Facebook. As amazing as it is, Facebook, which didn't exist just a few years ago, is now the sixth most popular web site in the world. Google and its partners are opening some of their source code to encourage third party developers to create applications that will be able to run on any web site anywhere in the world. So unlike Facebook's strategy, which allows third parties to develop software to run on Facebook, Google's strategy seems to be in line with the adage of a rising tide lifts all ships. The more sites that use these new apps, the more engaged we'll all be with those sites. And because so many commercial web sites, including CollegeRecruiter.com, use Google to sell at least some of their banner advertising inventory, those rising ships will generate more traffic which will generate more ad impressions for Google to sell.

So why do I feel that Gen Y is largely responsible for this? Because they're powerful advocates of transparency. You can see it in how they approach their careers. They're going to post their nasties to their Facebook and MySpace pages and if you as the employer don't like knowing that they get drunk on the weekends, too bad. That just means that you weren't a good fit for them anyway. If Gen Y doesn't like your site or some aspects of your site, they're going to modify it through your open source program or they're going to abandon you. Anyone remember Friendster? While it continues to be popular overseas, it was replaced by MySpace and now Facebook as the social networking site of choice by Gen Y. And that move was due in large part to Gen Y being able to customize their presence on MySpace and Facebook more than they could on Friendster.

Transparency. Scary but exciting. Embrace it or perish.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 31, 2007 at 9:21 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Mark Liston, the director of recruiting and new franchise development for Valpak, just posted a great blog entry to CollegeRecruiter.com.

Mark argues that the problems that Boomers like him and Gen X'ers like me (had to get that jab in -- sorry Mark) have with recruiting and managing Gen Y are due to our behaviors, not theirs. Mark lives and breaths these issues day after day for our valued client. If you want to benefit from the insight of someone who is in the trenches, read his entry.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 30, 2007 at 10:05 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A tip of the hat to Rich McIver for bringing to my attention a great blog article on how to attract, retain, and leverage talented women. For any organization which is struggling in one or more of those areas, which means virtually all organizations, this is a must read piece. Enjoy!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 26, 2007 at 6:36 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A tip of the hat to my friend and Recruiting Roadshow Unconference buddy, Ami Givertz, for alerting me (and other readers of his blog) to a great YouTube video that explains how social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace can help people find new jobs, mates, and other connections.

Continue reading "Social Networking in Plain English" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 25, 2007 at 4:25 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

On-line social networking utility Facebook just received a $240 million investment from Microsoft for 1.6 percent of Facebook's stock. That values Facebook at some $15 billion. Wow. Keep in mind that this site didn't exist four years ago and was started by a few college kids in a dorm room at Harvard. Heck, they didn't even have their own web server initially as they stole space and bandwidth from Harvard.

So what does this mean for candidates? More of the same. Facebook and sites like it provide tremendous opportunities and threats to college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs and other opportunities. But any financial rationing that Facebook was experiencing will now disappear so it will now be more free than ever to market itself, enhance its infrastructure, hire more staff, enter into more partnerships. The investment will, in short, accelerate Facebook's already tremendously accelerated growth. Students, recent graduates, and other candidates will find Facebook even easier and more enjoyable to use.

Because Facebook has virtually 100 percent penetration on-campus and is expanding its reach into people who graduated a few years ago or even many years ago, look for the average age of its user to increase from the current 25 years of age. The risque photographs and other content that caused Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers to tut tut their Gen Y children and grandchildren will now creep into the profiles of those same Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers, although probably not to the same degree. Employers who winced at seeing content that they traditionally have self-shielded themselves from will see more and from a broader cross section of candidates. The days of not seeing the face of your candidate until the interview are long past, so employers who are still clinging to that quaint tool to fight racial, gender, and other forms of discrimination better find other arrows in their quivers because like it or not, they'll be seeing more and more of those photos from an increasingly broad range of candidates.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 25, 2007 at 7:41 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

John Sullivan recently posted a great article to ERE in which he described the 13 ways to identify the best interns, 18 approaches to best sell your internship opportunities, and 10 ways to design a compelling internship experience.

Continue reading "41 Ways to Recruit the Best Interns" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 9, 2007 at 6:33 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A month ago I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Wagner of Accord Management Systems at the Valpak annual conference. He and I were there to speak to their 300 franchisees. Bill did a masterful job of explaining to the franchisees why they should hire as independent sales representatives people who are entrepreneurial. He also discussed with some candor their strengths and weaknesses, explained what makes them tick, and why they are able to start businesses while others simply dream.

If your entrepreneurial or merely wondering if you are, then pick up a copy of Bill's book, The Entrepreneur Next Door: Discover the Secrets to Financial Independence. You won't be sorry.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 7, 2007 at 8:12 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Dave Lefkow, formerly of Jobster, then his own consulting firm, TalentSpark, and now Bacon Salt entrepreneur, is featured prominently in this television interview about on-line recruiting.

The piece covers the gamut from revenues earned by job boards last year ($1.3 billion) to tips about how to find candidates or employers on-line including in virtual worlds such as Second Life. One great tip: if you're pulling a virtual resume out of your virtual pocket to hand to a virtual recruiter, make sure that you don't instead pull out a virtual beer.

Continue reading "Job Board Revenues and Second Life Recruiting" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 6, 2007 at 4:23 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've written and spoken so many times about how employers can and should use social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook for recruiting purposes that I had begun to believe that most college students now understood that employers are using these sites for background checking, reference checking, and other practices that could do serious harm to a student's chances of being hired. It now appears that I was wrong.

Brenda Fabian, the director of the Center for Career Services at Susquehanna University in Georgia recently asked a class of students how many were using Facebook. Almost all raised their hands. She then asked "how many knew that employers were reviewing Facebook for hiring purposes. No hands were raised, and their faces revealed the students' surprise."

I counsel employers not to use Facebook to exclude candidates from the hiring process as there is so much bogus information on it planted sometimes by the candidates themselves for kicks and giggles with their friends but other times by third parties, such as disgruntled ex-boyfriends. But candidates must understand that not all employers will listen to that argument and some will simply disagree and plow on ahead. Students searching for internships and recent graduates looking for entry level jobs need to be sure that their Facebook and other such profile pages are G rated if they want to maximize their employment opportunities.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 4, 2007 at 7:37 AM | Leave a Comment (3)

Retailers often state that their location is a more important determinant of their likely success than any other factor. Now it appears that the same may be true for employers.

A recent survey of 1,000 Gen Y recent graduates by the Segmentation Company indicates that 65 percent prefer to "look for a job in the place that I would like to live" rather than "look for the best job I can find, the place where it is located [being] secondary." For those of us who are Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers, that may come as quite a surprise as our generations were far more likely to look for the best possible job and then use factors such as location as tie breakers.

For employers, this means that to successfully recruit college students searching for internships or recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities, you need to target those who are most interested in working in your geographic area and then target within that group those who have the skills needed for your opportunity. In other words, it is becoming even more important than ever to really understand the needs and wants of your candidates. They have more choices than previous generations and employers can either wish that wasn't the case and perhaps even act as if it wasn't or they can modify their recruiting practices and actually succeed in recruiting and retaining their next generation of star employees.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 3, 2007 at 7:30 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

I'm flying to Dallas tomorrow to tape a show for Corporate TeleLink Network (CTN), a premier business television network for the energy industry and a leading provider of natural gas and energy-related distance learning events since 1992. CTN delivers programming via:

• Digital Satellites (Broadcasts)


• Web Conferences


• Webcasts


• Audio Conferences

Continue reading "Energy Industry Recruiting Woes" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 2, 2007 at 8:05 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Virtually every organization that recruits college students for internships or recent graduates for entry level jobs and other career opportunities has the same problem: students either don't know what your organization does or they don't know what opportunities your organization offers. Either way, you've got a branding problem. Some tried and true methods of building brand on-campus are to recruit on-campus year in and year out, hosting information events in conjunction with your on-campus interviews, and creating and enhancing your long-term relationships with the staff and faculty.

Another great way of building brand that isn't so tried and true is to participate in career exploration programs through the college career service offices. At Kennesaw State University in Georgia, for example, the career service office brings in professionals from a variety of fields and industries to talk with students about their careers. The speakers typically aren't recruiters. Instead, they're recent graduates, line managers, and others who speak from first hand experience. So if your organization is struggling to recruit electrical engineers, you'd send in a recent graduate from your electrical engineering program or perhaps a manager in that department.

Continue reading "Use Career Exploration Events to Build Your Brand On-Campus" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 2, 2007 at 7:17 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The use of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace for recruitment purposes falls into two main buckets: using them to include and exclude candidates from the hiring process.

Virtually all candidates are happy to be included. Use the sites like quasi-resume banks by searching for education, experience, and other relevant skills.

Candidates expect employers to use a non-password protectes site like MySpace more than they expect them to use Facebook, but I recommend extreme caution when using either and it is probably best just not to use either. There is a lot of bogus info on both sites, some of which is posted by the candidates themselves for kicks and giggles with their friends. Some is posted by third parties such as disgruntled ex-boyfriends. If you must use the info, at least afford the candidate an opportunity to explain should you find anything damaging. There may be a very good explanation that will prevent you from declining to hire a true star.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 1, 2007 at 8:25 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Deloitte & Touche USA LLP recently launched the first-ever Deloitte Film Festival. The employee-generated content that flowed from Festival was designed to bolster the accounting and consulting firm's Gen Y recruiting activities and drive workforce engagement.

What made this effort different from some of those by other firms?

• All of Deloitte's personnel were encouraged to participate. Over 370 short films were submitted by teams of Deloitte personnel with each team being made up of one to seven individuals.


• The videos were first posted on an internal YouTube-like intranet site where they were viewed and ranked by fellow Deloitte employees.


• The best will be integrated into their campus recruiting programs.


• Deloitte planned to buy production equipment for 250 teams but ended up buying it for 350 teams. The equipment will be donated to non-profit organizations, including FilmAid International.


• Most importantly, each video offers a candid and unfiltered view of Deloitte's culture of inclusion, leading edge talent and innovative workplace. Did someone say, "transparency?"

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 21, 2007 at 2:38 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

What horror stories have you heard about or perhaps even happened to you as a result of information that was posted to blogs or social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook?

One of the worst that I've heard was from a friend of mine who was hiring a technology sales representative. He ran a Google search on her name after he and everyone else at his firm had decided they wanted to hire her. Although she had been careful not to include her name on her page, her friends weren't so smart and created a link from her name on their pages to the candidate's MySpace profile page. Google is smart enough to have understood that although the candidate's MySpace page didn't have her name on it, because her friends linked using her name that people searching for the candidate by name will want to go to the candidate's MySpace page.

The problem wasn't that she had a MySpace page. The problem was that the content indicated that she likes to get drunk and have sex with strangers. My friend declined to extend the job offer to her not because of that (he doubted she'd get drunk and have sex while on the job) but because her posting of that information on-line indicated a lack of good judgment.

Continue reading "MySpace and Facebook Career Horror Stories" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 21, 2007 at 12:21 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

I was honored to receive an offer from Ami Givertz the organizer of the Atlanta Recruiting Roadshow Unconference, to speak at the conference. I had just spoken at the first of the Unconferences in Minneapolis, had a great time, and was happy to participate in the second of the events.

Ami's plans built on what was delivered in Minneapolis by making the conference all day rather than half a day and by adding multiple tracks rather than using a single track model. As a result, I was confident that Ami would have a good turnout but never would have guessed that the conference would be sold out 1.5 weeks early. Awesome.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 14, 2007 at 5:16 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

When I was in college way, way back in the 1980's, very few students had internships. Heck, we were just happy to find a job that paid us enough money that we could buy some pizza at the end of the week. The thought of finding a position, paid or not, which was career-related was beyond the realm of comprehension for most of us.

Fast forward to today's college students. The vast majority graduate with at least one internship and often multiple internships. They are, without a doubt, far better qualified when they graduate than my classmates and I were. But as great as that is, it isn't the whole story. Not only are internships far more prevalent amongst college students today, but many others are also interning. The real story is that the internship has now also become popular amongst high school students, recent graduates of colleges, masters students, recent graduates from masters programs, and more.

Wow. A world (or at least a country) of even better qualified candidates. Can there be a downside?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 14, 2007 at 3:27 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Well, I do. And so does one of our clients whose identity will remain anonymous for reasons which will become apparent a little later in this blog entry.

I recently learned from one of our clients that they've hired several thousand outside sales representatives since 2000 but only seven percent are still employed by the client. Of the 93 percent who turned over in the past seven years, an astonishing 70 percent left within a year and 96 percent within three years. Ouch.

The average sales rep at this client generates a little over $150,000 in gross revenues in their first year. They're paid a 15 percent commission so receive about $23,000 per year. The top third make about $35,250 and the bottom third make about $15,000. Double ouch.

Continue reading "Who Says You Need to Recruit Entry Level People for Entry Level Jobs?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 10, 2007 at 4:13 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I wrote yesterday about how the U.S. Army, one of the top employers of college students and recent graduates, is using a new $20,000 "quick ship" bonus to greatly reduce the amount of time between the day on which someone enlists and when they actually report for basic training.

In the past, the time between enlistment and the start of basic was measured in weeks and often months. Because of the quick ship bonus, 92 percent of enlistees are now reporting within about a week. The effect has been to greatly increase the current number of enlistees entering basic training because those who enlisted in June and were scheduled to start basic training today still will but those who enlisted a week or so ago are also starting today rather than in two or three months as they would have before the bonus was implemented.

Continue reading "More Thoughts on the U.S. Army's $20,000 Quick Ship Bonus" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 28, 2007 at 11:19 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

The U.S. Army, one of the top employers of college grads, created a $20,000 "quick ship" bonus in July to accelerate the process between the date on which an enlistee commits and the date on which they start basic training. That time period used to often be measured in months. The new bonus has reduced the delay to days, an astounding achievement for the Army.

An average soldier coming out of basic training receives $17,400 per year so the $20,000 quick ship bonus more than doubles their first year pay, a significant incentive to those who enlist at least in part because of financial considerations. So where's the problem? Well, the problem isn't today or even tomorrow. The problem is next month and next year. Let me explain.

Continue reading "Army Borrows From Tomorrow to Pay Today" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 27, 2007 at 9:08 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Mark Liston, director of sales recruiting for CollegeRecruiter.com client Valpak, just joined the recruiting blogosphere. Mark is blogging on the Employee Evolution site.

Continue reading "Valpak Joins the Recruiting Blogosphere" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 22, 2007 at 12:00 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've always believed that the most powerful retention tool that an employer has to offer are its other employees. We stay with our employer far longer if we enjoy those we work with. But to Gen Y, the other employees can also be a powerful recruiting tool. They want to know who they'll be working with because they've been raised to work effectively in teams. If their team members aren't up to snuff, their work product will suffer and they'll be unhappy and looking for a new gig.

Jennie-O Turkey apparently understands these needs of its Gen Y candidates so in addition to using Facebook as a recruitment tool, it is using its Facebook ads to highlight the faces of its interns. When you click on the photo of any of the employees, you're taken to an on-line photo album showing all 15 employees and from there you can click to their Facebook recruiting profile page. That page includes more photos, videos, company information, email links, etc. Nice soft sell.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 21, 2007 at 7:13 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

What is your firm doing to promote its internship program? Job postings? Resume searching? On-campus interviews? Great. Really, that's all great. But what about something different that really speaks to Generation Y. Something like CollegeRecruiter.com client Sodexho is doing to promote its Future Leaders Internship Program.

Give your interns a video camera and let them get creative. The results might not be as polished as what you'd get from professionals, but I bet the results will be better with the intern produced product as your future interns will listen better to a video produced by their peers. Have a peak:

Continue reading "Sodexho Future Leaders Internship Program Video" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 10, 2007 at 9:18 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

What is it that entry level employers want the most when they're interviewing to fill an internship or entry level job? Some will say experience and others GPA, but overall the most important factor is the major of the college student or recent graduate.

A recently released survey indicates that 42 percent of employers of college students and recent graduates ranked the major of the students being interviewed as the top priority for hiring consideration. A year ago, 37 percent ranked the major as being the most important factor so while majors continue to be important, they are becoming even more so. Running second and third are interviewing skills and a student's internships and experience, respectively.

Continue reading "Major is Most Important Hiring Criteria for Employers Hiring Interns and Entry Level Employees" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 10, 2007 at 8:25 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

David Lefkow's excellent musings on ERE (The Rise of the Social Networks), was a reminder about the fundamental changes percolating through the staffing industry. Two days later Kevin Wheeler's enthusiastic ERE article on a new player in the job board/contact management space: Itzbig, A Sourcing Network on Steroids, reinforced our growing conviction that 2007 will be a time when staffing is reinvigorated with new models, new ideas and more employers willing to use them.

We've already been to three countries, more than 15 national/international conferences, three Colloquium meetings, as well as two of the most unusual gigs we ever attempted (one was a series of focus groups for another country interested in examining US career management practices and the other was an audit of the challenges facing the US Intelligence Community in hiring first and second generation US citizens- but that is another story). And the year is only half over.

While we are still preparing for the remainder of 2007, we cannot remember ever seeing an industry as ready for change since the inception of the Internet. The convergence of angry and increasingly scarce job seekers with disappointed but energized employers that are willing to spend for results has created a raft of new products and services for recruiters to spend their $$ on.

New models, some quietly developing for years, others newly bursting on the scene or quietly developing a proof of concept are proliferating in record numbers. It also doesn't hurt the impetus for change that we are now in the midst of the demographic shifts everyone has touted for twenty years - the staffing pain is plain to see and growing daily.

Here's a short list of what has been bubbling and boiling so far in 2007. Five observations/predictions that we have commented on privately:

Continue reading "2007: A Watershed Event" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 8, 2007 at 4:55 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Although today's college students and recent graduates are under far more financial pressure than those of previous generations, an increasingly large number of them are bypassing the opportunity to make big money after graduation by going to work first for service-oriented organizations such as AmeriCorps, Teach for America, and the Peace Corps.

Want some numbers to crunch on? I thought so. Consider these:

Continue reading "Grads Bypassing Money for Skills and Meaning" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 26, 2007 at 7:41 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I was contacted recently by one of the recruitment advertising agencies with a question: which employers are viewed as the most desirable by undergraduates? In other words, which employers have the strongest brand on-campus by today's college students and recent graduates? Universum Communications compiles data such as this and they recently put out a list of the employers with the strongest brand on undergraduate college campuses:

Continue reading "Most Desired Employers by Undergraduates" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 24, 2007 at 7:28 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Is the term "talent management" a fuzzy new catchphrase for tired, old concepts? Or is it a term that defines a dynamic way of thinking about managing key personnel that drives better performance? According to a recent Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) study based on responses from 524 business professionals, the answer depends on how companies use it.

Continue reading "Talent Management: Business Buzzword or Performance Panacea" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 23, 2007 at 8:05 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Those worried that their Facebook or other social networking data can come back to haunt them in the employment context can take heart: employers can get in trouble as well if their use of such data is unauthorized and runs afoul of employment discrimination or privacy laws. Examples cited by George Lenard in an interview with ZDNet are:

Continue reading "Employers Get In Trouble Too With How They Use Facebook, MySpace, Etc." »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 17, 2007 at 6:28 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Dave Lefkow of TalentSpark and author of the Director of Recruiting blog, posted an interesting blog entry in which he wondered why so many recruiters blog and then answered his own question:

1. Recruiters know the hiring process better than anyone.
2. Recruiters know that publishing interesting content helps them get found by employers, helps add context to their resumes and provides interesting fodder for discussion during an interview.
3. Recruiters know that blogs help them connect with other people with similar interests that can help them find gigs down the road.

But I think the more interesting question is why don't more recruiters blog?

Continue reading "Why So Many Recruiters (Don't) Blog" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 12, 2007 at 12:11 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Now that the Vancouver (British Columbia) Police Department has started to recruit new police officers using virtual world Second Life, you know that the technology has gone mainstream.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 10, 2007 at 2:08 PM | Leave a Comment (0)