I had the good fortune of attending the OnRec / Kennedy Information recruiting conference in Chicago this week. I was both a panelist on a session about how employers can use mobile marketing for recruiting and CollegeRecruiter.com had a booth in the exhibit room.

The session was well attended and seemed to be well received by the attendees. Most had little to no experience with cell phone text messaging, keyword advertising, mobile web sites, or any other components of mobile marketing. Virtually all, however, seemed to realize that the future of on-line recruiting will be on web-enabled mobile phones.

Continue reading "One Speaker and Exhibitor's Impression of OnRec / Kennedy Information 2009 Fall Conference" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 4, 2009 at 3:46 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

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

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

Continue reading "Another Job Board Hacked" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 29, 2009 at 10:42 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)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 27, 2009 at 7:25 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)

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 love success. Who doesn't? We're often asked by potential clients for testimonials from satisfied clients and those are fine, but I find actual success stories to be more compelling because they provide the context that testimonials lack.

I asked Caddy Rowland, our director of sales for employment marketing, to assemble a few success stories for targeted email campaigns they've worked on for our clients. I wasn't terribly surprised when she and her account manager, Lisa Colbert, came up with three very representative yet great success stories:

Continue reading "Success Stories for Targeted Email Campaigns for Employment Advertising Clients" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 25, 2009 at 5:19 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)

Anyone who has ever been unemployed or even under employed can appreciate the frustration that builds and needs to be vented. One of the places where that frustration is now being vented is against the job board industry. Many, although I don't think most, pundits believe that job boards are dead. According to Peter Weddle of the International Association of Employment Web Sites, "a recent Google search of the phrase "job boards are dead" identified 31,900,000 documents. Allowing for the search engine's mistakes (for example, including the Knock 'em Dead Job Search Guide), that's still a lot of fatal references to an industry that just five years ago was considered the state-of-the-art in employment."

Peter and I agree that the drastic change of opinion about our industry is in large part due to the repeated publication of bogus statistics. For example, the CareerXroads Source of Hire Survey found that job boards only account for 10 to 15 percent of hires made by employers yet those employers spend a far larger share of their sourcing budget on job boards.

Continue reading "Are Job Boards Dinosaurs?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 27, 2009 at 3:13 PM | Leave a Comment (3)

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)

Do you like coffee, tea, or just about any other beverage? I thought so. And do you live or work near a Starbuck's? Again, I thought so. Would you like to win a $10 gift card to Starbuck's? Who wouldn't?

All you need to do is watch the two minute video below and post a comment to this blog entry. We'll announce the winner on September 1, 2009 and then contact them offline so we can mail the gift card right out to them. Enter soon and enter often. Good luck!

Continue reading "Win a $10 Starbucks Card for Finding a Mobile Job Board" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 14, 2009 at 2:07 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I enjoyed the opportunity to speak with Kenrick Chatman on his Career Catalyst radio show about how college students searching for internships, recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs, and experienced candidates searching for higher level positions should use job boards such as Monster, Careerbuilder, Dice, Jobing, and CollegeRecruiter.com.

Interested? Listen to the conversation and many excellent questions asked by Kenrick's listeners.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 12, 2009 at 3:18 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)

We just launched a great new service on CollegeRecruiter.com, the leading job board for college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs and other career opportunities.

For years we've been selling career-related books for $9.95 through our bookstore but we just entered into a partnership that will allow us to buy gift certificates from Restaurants.com at such a significant discount that we are now including in every book purchase a $25 gift certificate from Restaurants.com. You can use that gift certificate at any of thousands of leading restaurants. That's right -- buy a book for under $10 and you'll get the book AND the $25 gift certificate with no strings attached.

Sound good? I thought so. Head over to our bookstore and get your book and $25 restaurant gift certificate today for $9.95.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 16, 2009 at 11:46 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The conventional wisdom is that 90 percent of job seekers are typically spending almost all of their time chasing after the 10 percent of job openings which are advertised. What that also means is that only 10 percent of job seekers are chasing after the 90 percent of job openings which go unadvertised.

So if you're searching for a job, which bucket would you prefer to be in? The second, of course. But how do you get into that bucket? Network, network, network. Want some examples of three job seekers who were hired because of their networking efforts? Listen to this podcast by Kevin Donlin of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Guerrilla Resumes as he interviews Candice Arnold, our content coordinator, and me.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 14, 2009 at 3:19 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Wednesday 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 "Webinar: Everything Internships For College Career Services Professionals" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 10, 2009 at 8:30 AM | 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)

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)

Jennifer McClure did a few minute long video interview of me at the Society for Human Resource Management 2009 annual conference in New Orleans. We talked about CollegeRecruiter.com in general; our new partnerships with America's Job Exchange and TwitterJobSearch; our new webinars for students, career service office professionals, and employers; and my impressions of the SHRM conference.

Want to watch? Click the video below.

Continue reading "Interview With Jennifer McClure at #SHRM09" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 2, 2009 at 2:21 PM | 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)

I've been to several of the annual conferences put on by the Society for Human Resource Management and they've all been huge. Hundreds of exhibitors and thousands of attendees. Did I say huge? This year's show promises to be almost as big as those of the past couple of years but the layoffs and budget cutbacks have hurt SHRM's numbers just like they have virtually every other organization out there. Yet even with those cuts, SHRM still expects 10,000 paid attendees to descend upon the conference in New Orleans. Wow.

CollegeRecruiter.com will be well represented at this year's annual SHRM conference. Paul Bell, Caddy Rowland, Intern Queen Lauren Berger, and I will be manning our booth and wandering the exhibit hall doing the old meet-and-greet. It should be great to reconnect with old friends and clients and hopefully make some new ones.

Continue reading "10,000 Attendees Expected for #SHRM09" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 24, 2009 at 4:14 PM | 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)

The people who brought us diversity job board LatPro.com just launched JustJobs.com, a new job search engine intended to simplify job search. JustJobs.com is a vertical job search engine somewhat like Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com in that it searches positions from other job boards and employers' websites.

According to LatPro CEO Eric Shannon, "JustJobs.com is about creating as much value as we can for job seekers -- our goal is to show clear immediate value to job seekers, job boards and employers. In my annual review of the Top 100 Job Site Niches, I see that's what ties together the job sites that are perennial leaders -- they show job seekers immediate value."

Continue reading "CollegeRecruiter.com Joins the JustJobs.com Network" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 2, 2009 at 4:49 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I'm pleased to announce that we just completed our integration with Broadbean Technology, which provides global job ad distribution and response tracking solutions to many of the world's largest staffing companies, recruitment advertising agencies, technology vendors, Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) businesses and major employers. Broadbean's success has been built on technical innovation, great customer service and a culture that rewards hard work and entrepreneurial spirit.

30,000 recruiters use Broadbean's flagship AdCourier system, which distributes in excess of 1.5 million job ads and processes up to 3 million candidate applications every month. The technology records the source of every application providing clients with management information that allows them to monitor return on investment from their online spend. This facilitates better buying decisions and is proven to save users money.

Continue reading "Integration With Broadbean" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 31, 2009 at 12:08 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)

We successfully launched the new, cleaner design for the interior pages of CollegeRecruiter.com earlier this week. We had two columns: the main one for content such as job postings and articles and a much narrower one on the right side (the right rail) for ads and navigation. That right rail had become very cluttered with some ads which were graphical, some graphical and animated, some text, some navigation, and more. Basically, it had become a mess.

We cleaned up the right rail, moved the job search out of the top navigation, added a left rail where we have the search and tile (small) ads from employers, and a few other tweaks here and there. Much better, I think. Do you agree?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 14, 2009 at 1:42 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

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)

Despite the weak economy, I am discovering that some employers are having significant new challenges with their recruiting. Two weeks ago I presented at the Campus Recruiting Forum in Chicago and heard some interesting comments from some of the employers there about the challenges of recruiting in this economy.

Some referenced the fact that they are still hiring students, but that they're expected to do so with a much smaller budget. Others mentioned that many highly qualified students appear to be avoiding the job search process altogether because they have heard such discouraging reports about the job market. The career center reps at the Forum echoed this sentiment and said they should be busier than ever helping students in this market, but the students are not coming -- they've given up!

Continue reading "Los Angeles College Recruiting Conference" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 4, 2009 at 6:27 PM | Leave a Comment (2)

The Wisconsin Dells is an area which has incredible natural beauty, is very close to Madison and a few hours northeast of Chicago, features many hotels with incredible waterparks, and may have the highest concentration of billboards of any town in the U.S. Get outside of the town and you are in heaven.

If you go to the Dells and drive through the town, you feel that you are almost literally in an obnoxious carnival. It is really unfortunate that the town leaders didn't have the foresight decades ago to limit or even prohibit the massive store signs and billboards which visually pollute their town and give you the urge to move your wallet from your back pocket to your front pocket or perhaps even a money belt.

Continue reading "Making CollegeRecruiter.com Less Like the Wisconsin Dells" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 30, 2009 at 11:26 AM | 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)

One of the greatest resources for corporate and third party recruiters is ERE.net. Today was certainly no exception. ERE published a great article by Jeff Dickey-Chasins about features that job board clients want and don't want in the job boards they use:

Continue reading "Great Wish List for Job Boards" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 14, 2009 at 1:24 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

In response to recent reports that job seekers are struggling to find jobs, CollegeRecruiter.com compiled lists of the five best and worst states for finding internships and entry level jobs. The data was gathered through a state-by-state search on the site; the lists will be updated every month to help students and entry level job candidates know how many opportunities are available to them and in which states. The results? Very encouraging.

We were very pleased to see that almost every state, large and small, recorded significant increases in the number of internships and entry-level job openings. There has certainly been a lot of doom-and-gloom related to the economy over the past year but an increase in the number of advertised job openings means that more employers are finding it difficult to attract the talent they need to fill the openings they have. Historically, increased entry-level hiring is one of the earliest signs that an economy in recession is recovering.

For more details, see the press release that we just posted.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 8, 2009 at 9:09 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)

Our new manager of e-learning, Paul Bell, and I are traveling today to San Diego for the ERE Expo 2009 recruiting conference. I've attended their excellent conferences before but this will be the first year that CollegeRecruiter.com will have a booth.

I'm really looking forward to the conference, for a number of reasons:

Continue reading "Heading to the ERE Expo 2009 Conference" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 30, 2009 at 11:21 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Our friends over at Graduate Degree Blog recently put together an excellent list of the 100 best web sites for job seekers.

Some of the sites recommended should be of no surprise. Those included LinkedIn, Twitter, Indeed, SimplyHired, Careerbuilder, and Monster. Some of the sites listed aren't as well known. Those include NetParty, Ryze, and Peekface. And some were just plain nice for me to see. Those included CollegeRecruiter.com.

Thanks, Graduate Degree Blog!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 19, 2009 at 5:28 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

Jeff Horwich of Minnesota Public Radio led a roundtable discussion with a group of 10 college seniors to better understand their thoughts on what it is like to graduate into the worst job market since the Great Depression. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the discussion when the show was recorded yesterday evening.

Almost all of the students were pessimistic about their job opportunities but apparently their views were not representative of the views of many other students at campuses from around the state. Want to learn more? You'll need to listen to the show.

The edited version will be broadcast tomorrow at noon Central on Midday with Gary Eichten. For those outside of the MPR listening area, listen on-line.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 12, 2009 at 4:05 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Our sales team had a great strategic planning meeting earlier today with our management consultant, Keith Thorndyke of Remergenz Management. We've done this a couple of times now but the every time we all walk away feeling enlightened and invigorated.

Keith has a gift for listening well and encouraging every participant to, well, participate. Most meetings with half a dozen or more people tend to be dominated by extroverts but Keith's meetings are always well balanced. Every member of the team gives ideas and feedback in a positive environment. What is really awesome is how easy Keith makes it all seem. That's the mark of a real star: when they make the work they do look simple.

Continue reading "The Need for Strategic Planning by All Employees" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 10, 2009 at 5:45 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)

One of the best bloggers to emerge over the past year or two is Willy Franzen of One Day, One Job. Last June he posted a blog article that listed the 10 blogs which, in his opinion, are the best written by college career service office professionals.

Like Willy, we here at CollegeRecruiter.com want to see more blogs written by those in career services because we know that they have tremendous wisdom to share with their students but also with students, recent graduates, and alumni from all schools. In an effort to make it easier to follow what is being written about at all of the career service office blogs, staff writer William Frierson compiled and recently updated our blog of blogs: the CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Career Services Experts Blog.

Is your school's blog on our list? If not, let William know. We'll be happy to add them right away!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 5, 2009 at 4:27 PM | 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)

It is always nice when you get a slap on the back for a job well done.

Late last week we were notified by the Kim Komando Show that we would be their Cool Site of the Day on Sunday, February 15, 2009. They warned us that the additional traffic could be 200,000 visitors over the course of a couple of days but we weren't concerned as our new site is built to handle well over that traffic level.

Continue reading "Kim Komando Cool Site of the Day" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 17, 2009 at 7:06 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of these days I'm going to have to set aside half or preferably a whole day when I'm in the Denver area to meet up with Eric Shannon. For those who have not yet had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Eric, he's the President of INTERNETinc.com, InternetRecruitingNews.com, DiversityJobs.com, and LatPro.com. More importantly, he's widely known and respected in the job board industry as a caring veteran who understands that to succeed over the long-term, which he has, your treatment of your clients and job seeker visitors needs to be the same whether the times are good, bad, or ugly.

Eric just posted to his site a list of online recruiting and job board professionals who stand up for something, make ourselves accountable on their websites, and move our industry forward. Eric then took it a step further by creating an authenticity badge "for online recruiting leaders who use their names on their websites, who tell their story, make themselves accessible, write a blog and generally raise the level of confidence a notch in our industry. These are leaders who clearly put their heart into their work."

I'm honored to be on his list. Thanks, Eric!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 12, 2009 at 4:51 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

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)

On Thursday, January 22, 2009, I delivered a webinar on What Career Service Office Professionals Need to Know About the Future of On-line Recruiting: Why Job Boards and Facebook Are Only Gateways to What is Ahead. Interested? Watch the webinar by clicking on the video below.

What are the current media options available to today's students and 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 candidates of their skills and by employers of their employment opportunities. We'll discuss which on-line opportunities make the most sense today for students and employers who each are struggling to find the best matches. We'll then peer into the future to see what lies ahead so that you can best help your students market their skills and employers with whom you work market their employment opportunities using the media options of today and tomorrow. What does the future hold for your stakeholders in on-line recruiting? This session spells it out!

This webinar was held in conjunction with the Eastern, Mountain Pacific, Midwest, and Southern Associations of Colleges and Employers.

Continue reading "What Career Service Office 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 11:49 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I'm excited about hosting the free webinar, College Seniors CAN Thrive in This Job Market, by Susan Kennedy, principal partner of Career Treking LLC.

Hiring in 2009 is projected to decrease eight percent for newly minted college graduates and 10 percent for MBAs, from 2008 levels. An abundance of qualified, experienced talent and the largest number of graduating seniors ever present stiff competition for fewer openings. Despite the above-mentioned doom and gloom, there are some encouraging industry projections. In this webinar, you will learn where the jobs are for college graduates as well as specific steps you can take to manage your job search in this challenging job market.

Continue reading "Free Webinar: College Seniors CAN Thrive in This Job Market" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 28, 2009 at 1:28 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

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)

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)

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)

One of the benefits of having a full-time content coordinator like Candice Arnold is that we are able to keep a close eye on what type of content is of most interest on our site. We track which blogs, videos, Q&A's, podcasts, etc. are generating the most clicks from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN and then try to add more of that productive content and reduce the types of content which have proven to be of less interest to college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs.

We recently noticed that many of the most popular articles on our site included information specific to certain metro areas, states, or other regions. After Candice and I discussed the finding, we agreed to invest some resources in the creation of a new blog. The CollegeRecruiter.com Career Locations Blog features articles about great places that you may have never considered before, giving a brief overview of various places where students and recent grads can go to live, work and study. Enjoy!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 16, 2008 at 3:54 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

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)

I just found out from Mike Palmquist, one of our national account executives, that almost 700 people have registered so far for our webinar this Thursday, December 11th on how employers can and should use Facebook to recruit college secrets and recent graduates. During the webinar, I'll discuss the five secrets that those with more experience don't want revealed to those with less experience.

There's still time to register. We have a limited number of "seats" so don't delay. Register today even if you can't attend as we'll email a link the video recording out to all registrants.

Mike and I look forward to delivering another of our free, monthly webinars. See you there this Thursday from 2-3pm EST / 1-2pm CST / 12-1pm MST / 11am-12pm PST!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 8, 2008 at 11:48 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 was interviewed last week at the Kennedy Information 2008 annual conference in Orlando by Chris LaVoie of Recruiter Earth. He asked me to provide viewers with an overview of the origins of CollegeRecruiter.com, where we're at today, and also where we're headed. Interested? Watch the video:

Continue reading "Recruiter Earth Interview About the Past, Present, and Future of CollegeRecruiter.com" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 28, 2008 at 7:52 AM | 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)

There's little doubt that the last year has been a miserable one for most employers and employees. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been shed and virtually every sector is hurting. About the only sector that has seen any employment gains is government hiring.

The layoffs and lack of new hiring make for difficult times for the job board industry. Although most outside of the industry assume that it is good for job boards when more people are looking for work, the opposite is actually true because the vast majority of job boards generate revenue from sales of recruitment advertising to employers. And when those employers aren't hiring, they aren't spending money on recruitment advertising.

Despite the problems in the industry, we just hired two new sales people. Caddy Rowland will be our second National Account Executive and working alongside Mike Palmquist in helping our employer clients. Betsy Larson will be our Consumer Marketing National Account Executive. The advertising that she will sell will be used by organizations to help sell their products and services to the college students, recent graduates, and alumni who use our site. Welcome aboard!!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 14, 2008 at 7:07 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

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)

Great blog article today at The Talent Buzz about the massive resources invested by Careerbuilder into its Facebook strategy and the less than stellar results seen to-date.

Careerbuilder has invested an incredible amount of time and money into its Facebook strategy yet its Fan Page only has 8,613 "fans" which are to the Fan Pages set up by organizations to what "friends" are to the personal pages set up by individuals. Let's put that into perspective. The "I have more Foreign Policy Experience than Sarah Palin" group has over 250,000 members and "My Pet Rock is more Qualified than Sarah Palin to be Vice President" has almost twice as many as does Careerbuilder's Fan Page.

Continue reading "Sarah Palin Has Facebook Figured Out Better Than Does Careerbuilder" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 10, 2008 at 8:47 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

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)

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)

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

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

Continue reading "Blogs by College Career Service Office Professionals" »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "War. Famine. Disease. " »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 7, 2008 at 2:09 PM | 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)

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)

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)

Our search engine optimization expert friend, Joel Cheesman, recently posted a congratulatory note to some of the fastest growing job boards as ranked in the annual Inc. 5000 awards.

The winners that Joel highlighted were:

Continue reading "Fastest Growing Job Boards" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 5, 2008 at 1:48 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I'm in Chicago on Monday for the International Association of Employment Web Sites Congress. Many and perhaps most of the member job boards will be represented there but certainly a number of the boards will be unable to send anyone or perhaps will only able to send some of the people they would have sent in an ideal world.

For those members unable to attend, I'll be writing frequent blog entries on the association web site. The blog provides an opportunity for you to participate in the dialogue and tap into the content of the conference from your own desktop or laptop, wherever you might be. We'll miss not having you there in person, but at least you'll have real time access to both the program and the views of your peers.

Continue reading "Attention IAEWS Members" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 5, 2008 at 8:38 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Know of anyone who is looking for a well paying, legitimate, home-based, media sales opportunity? CollegeRecruiter.com is hiring inside sales representatives to sell recruitment advertising such as targeted email campaigns, cell phone text messaging campaigns, job postings, and banner ads to our employer clients.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 4, 2008 at 12:22 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Last month we hosted a free webinar on how employers can and should use Facebook to recruit college students and recent graduates. We were very pleasantly surprised to have well over 500 attendees so we decided to make this a regular thing but we're adding a bit of a twist to the second.

The topic for our second free webinar will how to use cell phones for recruiting college students and recent graduates. The date will be Thursday, September 25, 2008 and time will be 2-3pm EDT / 1-2pm CDT / 12-1pm MDT / 11am-12pm PDT.

So what's the twist? We're auctioning the sponsorship for the event on eBay and will donate the proceeds to the clean-up efforts for Hurricane Gustav and other natural disasters. If your organization is looking for a great way to get wonderful exposure to hundreds of leading human resource and staffing professionals while also making positive contribution to a very worthwhile cause, then bid on the sponsorship today.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 3, 2008 at 7:04 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Ever heard the expression that if you ask me to speak about something for an hour that I can be ready in five minutes but if you ask me to speak about something for five minutes that I won't be ready for an hour? Twitter is kind of like that. Rather than posting a blog article of any length, Twitter only accepts blog articles (Tweets) of 140 characters or less. Try condensing your next multi-paragraph piece of advice or thought into one or two sentences. It isn't easy. You really have to focus on what is the most important pieces.

If you're not yet using Twitter, see what it is like at my Twitter page. If you are using Twitter, I invite you to follow my Tweets. I'll be notified that you're following and promise to check out your Tweets as well.

Oh, and it doesn't really take me an hour to write a Tweet. Five minutes is pretty typical.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 2, 2008 at 10:16 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Inc.com, which bills itself as the daily resource for entrepreneurs, each year releases its list of the 5,000 fastest growing, privately held companies in the U.S. This year, CollegeRecruiter.com made the Inc. 5,000 list as the 1,403rd fast growing company, 17th in the fast growing education companies (apparently job boards fall into the education category), and 23rd in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area.

According to Inc.'s analysis, our rapid growth is due to two primary factors:

• In 2004, we added new products and candidate-friendly software. Our innovative products include:
  
  • Pay per click job postings;
    
  • Pay per lead job postings;
    
  • Targeted email campaigns to our double opt-in database of 10 million college students, recent grads, and alumni; and
    
  • Cell phone text messaging (SMS) campaigns to the same database of 10 million college students, recent grads, and alumni.
    
  
  
• We found new ways to advertise its site to job seekers by creating CollegeRecruiter.com Facebook applications and even a Youtube channel with more than 350 career-related videos.
  

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 20, 2008 at 6:37 AM | 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)

Yesterday we had well over 500 attendees to our first free recruiting-related webinar. The topic was how employers can and should use Facebook for recruiting. It was such a success that we've already scheduled the next webinar. Join us.

Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008

Time: 2-3pm EDT / 1-2pm CDT / 12-1pm MDT / 11am-12pm PDT

Space is limited. Reserve your seat now.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 15, 2008 at 7:15 AM | Leave a Comment (3)

We had well over 500 attendees to our free webinar on how employers can and should use Facebook for recruiting. Within minutes, HR Search Marketing posted a fabulous recap. A tip of the hat to Nicole Bodem!

Our next free webinar will be on how employers should use cell phone text messaging to recruiting college students. It will be on Thursday, September 25th. Seats are limited. Register today.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 14, 2008 at 2:46 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

We've all seen billboards, television shows, print ads, and on-line ads urging us to use our cell phones to text a keyword such as "college" to a cell phone short code number such as 876289. In fact, do just that. Text the word "college" (without the quotes) to 876289. You'll instantly receive an automated response from CollegeRecruiter.com and we'll instantly receive an emailed notification that you sent that request.

Think about your ability to engage with your target market as you add this incredibly engaging response option to some or even all of your ad campaigns. Just pick a keyword that best identifies the opportunity you wish to promote, every one of those ads becomes interactive, and tracking the responses to those ads becomes automatic. Put the keyword and short code on your brochures, business cards, web site, billboards, emails, print ads, job postings. Anywhere you put your web site address, put the keyword and short code.

Continue reading "Text "College" to 876289" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 14, 2008 at 7:21 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

Since job boards essentially came into existence 14 years ago, the pricing model has overwhelmingly been a flat rate for a specified period of time. For example, we charge $175 for a job posting ad for 60 days. Many sites charge more and many sites charge less.

Vertical job search engines such as Indeed and SimplyHired should take a bow as they have been instrumental in educating the recruiting industry that there is a better way to pay for advertising than on a flat rate basis. The job board industry loves flat rate because the clients assume all of the risk if the postings don't work. But what is in the best interests of the client is also in the best interests of the job board so we're excited to announce that we've become one of the first premium job boards to allow clients to post jobs on a pay per click or pay per lead basis.

Continue reading "Pay Per Click and Pay Per Lead Job Postings" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 13, 2008 at 5:03 PM | 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)

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)

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)

I'm looking forward to spending a couple of days in beautiful St. Louis next week. I'll be there with national account executive Mike Palmquist for the Midwest Association of Colleges and Employers (MwACE) annual conference. It is at the Millennium Hotel from Monday, July 28th through Thursday, July 31st.

Mike will man our exhibit booth from Tuesday through Wednesday. I'll deliver the keynote presentation on Thursday. It will be the first time that I've done a presentation on "The Future of On-line Recruiting: Why Job Boards and Facebook Are Only Gateways to What Lays Ahead." Should be a lot of fun.

I've got some great ideas percolating on how best to deliver the material but, as always, I'm happy to consider input from readers of this blog. If you were doing the presentation, what would you want to be sure to include?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 21, 2008 at 4:35 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of my biggest frustrations with helping college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs is that many don't yet know how to network. It isn't that they're stupid or lazy. They simply haven't been taught. So how do you get a Gen Y'er who grew up with computers and can hardly remember a time when the Internet wasn't at their fingertips how to network? One way is to guide them to the best on-line tools and remind them to use those tools over and over again.

Today we added a new feature to CollegeRecruiter.com that will provide the students, recent graduates, and alumni who use CollegeRecruiter.com to help them find internships and entry level jobs with easy access to one of the best on-line networking tools: LinkedIn. Now when a job seeker applies to a job, they're taken to a page that shows the candidate who they know at the organization to which they applied and, perhaps even more importantly, who the candidate knows who knows people at the organization.

Continue reading "We're Helping College Students and Grads Get LinkedIn" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 17, 2008 at 2:30 PM | Leave a Comment (3)

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)

We've been receiving a steady diet of questions from college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities since we re-launched CollegeRecruiter.com five weeks ago. The number of questions haven't been overwhelming but many are the same or very, very similar. Time to get more efficient.

We just added a short Frequently Asked Questions section to our Contact Us page. Now rather than the candidates having to wait hours or perhaps even a day or two to get an answer back about some issue, they will normally be able to have their question answered even before they ask it of us. That's better for us and better for them.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 26, 2008 at 5:31 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)

CollegeRecruiter.com has made many significant enhancements over the past weeks and months, including our successful re-launch over the weekend of May 16, 2008. Some of the changes have been obvious such as our completely new Google-esq look-and-feel while others aren't as obvious.

One of the changes that wasn't as obvious to a casual observer was the rapid expansion of the other sites in our network of career sites. When an employer posts a job to CollegeRecruiter.com, that job runs on our site as well as on the thousands of other career sites in our network. We recently updated the page listing those sites to reflect the 2,707 four-year colleges, two-year colleges, and technical schools which run our postings.

The obvious and not-so-obvious changes to our site have proven to be a huge success. Rather than about 10 percent of candidates who view a job applying to it, about 50 percent now do. We've received a lot of very positive feedback from our clients about the quantity and quality of those applicants. More changes are in store. Hopefully they will add additional value to the employers and candidates who connect with each other through CollegeRecruiter.com.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 18, 2008 at 11:52 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

One of my favorite job board industry people, Peter Weddle, contacted me about an opportunity where I could help the members of the International Association of Employment Web Sites (IAEWS). The messenger and message were both great so I immediately said yes and I'm even more excited now.

The IAEWS has a strong, engaged membership base comprised of virtually every major job board and dozens of small niche players as well. The Association has been hosting two Member Congresses a year but some of the feedback that Peter has been receiving from members is that they'd like to participate but aren't always able to attend. In short, can the IAEWS find a way to bring the Member Congresses to the offices of its members in a virtual manner? Peter, always looking for ways to say yes rather than ways to say no, figured out that an attendee could blog about each session in real-time and solicit feedback from those who are attending virtually.

Continue reading "Blogging at Job Board Association Meeting" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 13, 2008 at 7:49 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The feedback continues to flow in from stakeholders in the job board industry regarding the decision by CollegeRecruiter.com to eliminate resume searching. Our two primary concerns were:

1. Illegitimate organizations, most of which were international, using the resume data for illegitimate purposes such as identity theft. Most job boards have done of good job of preventing that by manually verifying their clients.
   
2. Legitimate organizations, most of which are domestic, using the resume data for illegitimate purposes such as pitching credit cards and other financial products to high income earners or those who have the potential to be high income earners, such as the college students and recent graduates who are the primary users of CollegeRecruiter.com.
   

Continue reading "Other Job Boards "Shocked" CollegeRecruiter.com Eliminated Resume Searching" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 9, 2008 at 8:02 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've been receiving a fair number of kudos recently for some of our policies, some of which are new and some of which are old.

An example of a new policy for which we've been receiving a lot of praise is that we stopped selling resume searching when two weeks ago we re-launched our web site with new back and front ends.

But we're equally as proud of some of our old policies, such as our effort to be as transparent as we can. I recently wrote about how after our re-launch we've seen daily job applications increase by about 100 percent. Today I'm happy to reveal that since our re-launch we're also seeing an increase in the number of job applications per posting increase by some 140 percent. Prior to the re-launch, we typically saw about 10 percent of candidates who viewed a job posting apply to that job posting. We're now seeing about 24 percent apply to viewed postings.

Some might argue that increased applications isn't a good thing but our clients would disagree. The vast majority of our clients regularly comment on the number of applications as a key criteria for how they decide whether to use a job board and to what extent to use that job board. Almost every large employer has an applicant tracking system or other software that helps them identify the best prospects for a particular position so rather than having each job board try to infer which candidates are best and then having different and often incorrect standards applied to those candidates, it seems to me that it makes the most sense to put those decision into the hands of the party best suited to making them and making them consistently: the employer.

We're not screening applicants. We're not testing them. We're not running background checks on them. We see our job as connecting quality employers with quality candidates. And we're cognizant of the fact that what makes for a quality candidate to one employer makes for a horrible candidate to another. So rather than asking our employer clients to re-enter their selection criteria into our system so that we can screen, tier, or otherwise rank candidates inconsistently with the employer's own software, we've made it as easy as possible for those employers to receive applications from the candidates using our site. At most the candidates need to complete four fields of data in order to apply: name, email address, resume and/or cover letter, and their geographic location. That's it.

We've come to the conclusion that less is more. Less intensive graphics make for a faster and therefore more enjoyable experience. Less clutter makes for a more easily navigated site. And less application fields makes for more applications, more candidates who are happy, and more employers who are happy.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 3, 2008 at 4:10 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Since re-launching almost two weeks ago, we've been keeping a close eye on our daily metrics to help make sure that the new design of our site and the continuing tweaks are making it easier for our visitors. One key metric is the number of applications. Good news: that's just about doubled.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 30, 2008 at 3:27 PM | 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)

I had the opportunity today to reflect on the tremendous accomplishment by the employees of CollegeRecruiter.com in re-launching our web site this past weekend. The planning for it hit a fever pitch early last fall and development was underway by early winter.

A lot of blood, sweat, and tears were expended in creating a site that we are proud of and continuing to work hard on to make even better. Many of the changes we're making now are subtle and not at all obvious to the casual observer. But all of the changes that we've made since last fall were made with one goal in mind: to make our site as efficient and as effective as possible for the candidates, employers, schools, and others who use it.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 23, 2008 at 2:59 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I'm looking forward to next week when I'll be in New Orleans.

On Tuesday I'm speaking at the Louisiana Association of Colleges and Employers annual conference and then going to at least three college recruiting events that evening.

On Wednesday I'm speaking at the National Association of Colleges and Employers annual conference and then going to at least one event that evening.

I fly home Thursday. I have a hotel room, of course, but I'm starting to wonder if I should have bothered...

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 22, 2008 at 8:21 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the nice features that our new job board software has is the ability for us to run some or all of a client's jobs as "sponsored" jobs. Have a look at this screen capture (click on it to enlarge the image) so you'll have a good idea as to what the new search results look like:

As the above screen capture indicates, sponsored jobs run in the premium position at the top of the search results, resulting in more applications than if the job ran further down the page or even on page two, three, etc. of the results. And more applications means happier clients.

One of the issues that we'll play with over the coming days and weeks is how many jobs to display as sponsored. We've run a number of test searches and the overwhelming number of searches right now are coming up with zero to two sponsored jobs. That seems about right to me but what if of the 10 results per page we were to have five sponsored results? Eight? All ten?

Is there an optimal number for how many sponsored results appear per page?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 21, 2008 at 4:49 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

ERE published a nice article yesterday about our recent re-launch.

They did a great job in summarizing some of the most important reasons behind the re-launch, including the minimalistic look-and-feel that should make it much easier for candidates to find the job postings that are the primary reason they come to a job board like CollegeRecruiter.com and that we're no longer selling resume searching access to employers.

As indicated in the ERE article, we came to the conclusion recently that the juice simply wasn't worth the squeeze when it came to selling resume searching. Many and perhaps most larger job boards generate 30 or so percent of their revenues from resume searching. Because of the strength of our targeted email and cell phone text messaging (SMS) products, resume searching was under five percent for us. We sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of it last year but expect most of those dollars to find their way into job postings, targeted emails, cell phone text messaging, or some of our other products. So we felt we weren't looking at a huge hit to revenue yet inevitably were looking at a potential huge hit to the security of the database.

Continue reading "Resume Databases Pose Security Risks" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 20, 2008 at 11:32 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I've been writing about it for months. It happened this weekend. It went very well. There were some problems with it, but nothing out of the ordinary. We're thrilled with how it went.

So what is "it?" Well, "it" is our re-launch. CollegeRecruiter.com re-launched this weekend with an all new look-and-feel and an all new back-end for our job search and resume database engines.

Do you like it?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 19, 2008 at 2:18 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the great improvements in the job board industry since it came into being in the mid-1990's was the creation by Peter Weddle of the International Association of Employment Web Sites (IAEWS). It was at last November's IAEWS meeting in Orlando that I realized, as one of the owners of CollegeRecruiter.com, that we needed to stop selling access to our resume bank.

One of the biggest concerns shared by representatives from 80 of the biggest boards was the increasing frequency of illegitimate individuals and organizations using resume banks for the purpose of identity theft. Sometimes these entities use legitimate credit cards but download the data for illegitimate reasons. More times than not they're using stolen credit cards. But in either case, they're hoping that the job boards give them access and don't cut it off until after they've downloaded thousands and sometimes tens or even hundreds of thousands of resumes. Fortunately, to the best of our knowledge, we've identified all of these threats and blocked them from accessing our resume bank.

Continue reading "CollegeRecruiter.com Kills Resume Searching" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 16, 2008 at 4:24 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

We're in the process of re-launching CollegeRecruiter.com with all new job search and resume database software and a completely new look-and-feel. I've posted some screen captures for those whose curiosity can't be satisfied with a vague reference like that.

I learned earlier today that the transfer of job posting and resume related data from our old software has begun. No word yet on when it will be completed but I'm anticipating later today or, more likely, tomorrow. If all goes according to our evil plan, we'll then import the data into our new software over the weekend.

Continue reading "Transfer of Data Underway from Old Job Board Software" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 15, 2008 at 12:27 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

CNN just published a list of the 30 best job boards for candidates. There are more than 40,000 job boards in the U.S. and a similar number in other countries so being named to that list is quite an honor. Well, we're quite honored as we're on the list. We're even further honored as we're the only college job board on the list.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 14, 2008 at 2:33 PM | Leave a Comment (1)

We just completed the load testing of our servers and new job board software in preparation for the scheduled re-launch of CollegeRecruiter.com this weekend.

The load testing was successful. The servers are great and the software is in good shape. The testing mimicked our site being used by hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of users simultaneously in order to identify problem areas. The testing pointed out some areas where the software could be improved in order to make the site run as quickly as possible at all times for all of our users. Fortunately, we anticipated that those areas could be problematic and will be able to make the necessary modifications well before we re-launch.

Looking good!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 12, 2008 at 3:32 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

CollegeRecruiter.com went live in 1996 and has had a handful of major software updates since that time. We're scheduled to re-launch with our newest update the weekend of Saturday, May 17th and we're very excited.

To celebrate our impending re-launch, we'll automatically add to all employer accounts as many free job posting ad credits as they have active postings on the date that we re-launch. So if an employer has five active job postings on our re-launch date, we'll add five additional postings to their account at no charge! To buy your two-for-one postings, go to our registration page if you're a new client or our login page if you've previously registered with us.

Continue reading "CollegeRecruiter.com Re-launches With Free Job Postings" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 8, 2008 at 12:15 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Many including me predicted that the U.S. economy was in a recession during the first quarter. Turns out that news of the economy's ill health was greatly exaggerated. The economy actually grew during the first quarter of 2008, albeit barely. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, the country's economic growth from January through March was 0.6 percent. Hardly great, but definitely a lot better than many feared.

Not to toot our own horn, well, maybe a little, but our revenues were up during the first quarter of 2008. Our revenues increased by 22.4 percent in the first quarter in 2008 as compared to the same period a year earlier. That's off from the roughly 75 percent growth we saw from 2006 to 2007 but given the recession economy's only slight growth, we're feeling pretty good.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 1, 2008 at 4:23 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I recently accepted the Human Capital Institute's invitation to join their Expert Advisory Panel for Recruitment Advertising and Communications. The Human Capital Institute (HCI) is a global professional association and educator that is advancing the science of strategic talent management.

The panel meets on quarterly conference calls and collaborates through on-line technology to discuss trends, uncover leading-edge thinking and ideas, provide real examples and advice, guide HCI research and webcasts, and help push the industry forward in general by discussing what works and what doesn't. More specifically, Expert Advisors help HCI Community Leaders identify track topics for webcast and research development, identify leading speakers for webcasts, identify industry best practices and tools for the track, and help attract others interested in the track topics to help promote the track offerings. Expert Advisors also contribute to articles, research, webcasts and educational initiatives at HCI. Quotes from members of the panel may also occasionally be used in HCI content.

Continue reading "Human Capital Institute Expert Advisory Panel" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on May 1, 2008 at 4:00 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

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)

There are approximately 50,000 job boards in the United States and about the same elsewhere in the world. Many are essentially cookie cutter boards with little to no traffic and little to no unique job posting or article content. But all serve employers and job seekers and to survive and thrive all must therefore listen to those visitors to understand what features, functionality and services they like best on today's job boards.

Fortunately, the industry has the International Association of Employment Web Sites to help us out with keeping up-to-date on issues like this. The executive director, Peter Weddle, conducted a survey between April, 2007 and April, 2008 and generated over 15,700 responses. The results were:

• 19.4% The caliber of the job postings on a site;
  
• 19.1% The number of job postings on a site;
  
• 16.7% Ease of access to employment opportunities on the site;
  
• 16.2% The job search tools and information provided on a site;
  
• 16.1% The fact that access to employment opportunities is free; and
  
• 12.5% The ability to network with others on the site.
  

Continue reading "What Job Seekers Want From Job Boards" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 30, 2008 at 10:27 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 29, 2008 at 8:16 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

I'm pleased to announce that we converted another of our unpaid intern bloggers to a paid employee.

William Frierson of Florence, South Carolina graduated from high school in 2002 and earned his associate's degree in business marketing in 2005.

William became an unpaid writing intern for CollegeRecruiter.com almost a year ago in May 2006. His writing and thoughtfulness so impressed us that we started to pay him to write for us on a freelance basis to help ensure that he would continue to write for us and hopefully write more and more. I've loved his work and work ethic and so was quite pleased when we finalized the paperwork last week and converted him to a W-2 employee. I have every confidence that he will continue to impress us and those who have the privilege of reading his articles.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 28, 2008 at 3:24 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Kudos to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) for creating the All That Jazz blog to help engage their members and hopefully increase the attendance at this spring's annual conference in New Orleans. The NACE annual conferences are very well attended and offer a wealth of content, but given how the career service office, employer, and other members are so spread out geographically it must be very difficult for NACE to engage with them throughout the year.

NACE asked for volunteers to write for the blog. I jumped at the opportunity and so did a handful of others. The entries and related comments so far have been diverse, regular, and interesting. A great example is a post about low student attendance at career center programs and ideas for what to do about it.

If you're looking for insight into the hearts and minds of those who live and breath college recruiting each and every day, then read the All That Jazz blog.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 17, 2008 at 11:29 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)

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)

We're receiving a steady number of postings to the new Facebook Career Blog application. It is free and takes seconds to add it to your Facebook account.

You'll be asked questions about your career, such as who was your favorite boss and why. Your Facebook friends will be alerted that you've posted answers to the questions and the question and answer will be posted to the CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Candidates Blog.

Share your career advice. Try it. You'll like it.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on April 2, 2008 at 3:14 PM | 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)

We're live with our new our newest Facebook application: CollegeRecruiter.com Career Blog.

The new application asks you a series of career-related questions. The question and your answer are then displayed to your Facebook friends and also sent to one of our employees. If the content is appropriate (no swearing etc.) then our employee approves the Q&A for publication and it gets posted to the CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Candidates Blog like the blog entry about whether money is a big factor in choosing a job/career.

Try it out. Add it to your Facebook page and then let me know what you think.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 25, 2008 at 2:30 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Entry level jobs is a very sought after keyword search string for college job boards and other web sites that want to drive a significant amount of traffic from search engines like Google. It is what search engine optimization experts refer to as a short tail keyword phrase. If you can rank well for short tail keyword search strings such as entry level jobs then you should also rank well for the long tail keyword search strings such as engineering entry level jobs (we're currently #3 for that).

CollegeRecruiter.com has for years paid considerable attention to search engine optimization and we're pretty good at it. But we reached a very nice milestone today. Although the results will differ user-to-user, many and perhaps most who run a search on Google using the short tail keyword string of entry level jobs will see that Google has 3,740,000 pages in its index for that search term and CollegeRecruiter.com is in the first position and site we recently acquired, EntryLevelJobs.net, is in the second position. In addition, an interior page of CollegeRecruiter.com has been moving up the search results and should soon appear on the first page. So right now we own three of the top 15 pages for entry level jobs and soon will own three of the top 10 pages.

Continue reading "Entry Level Jobs - CollegeRecruiter.com Captures Top Two Search Results" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 18, 2008 at 10:33 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Guy Kawasaki, venture capitalist and Apple evangelist, just announced the launch of Alltop.com, a site which helps its users explore their passions by collecting stories from "all the top" sites on the web. They've grouped these collections -- "aggregations" -- into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as environment, photography, science, celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, Macintosh, and, wait for it, careers.

Content from a number of my favorite bloggers are included at Alltop, including Penelope Trunk, Jason Alba, Karen Burns, G.L. Hoffman, Gautam Ghosh, Todd Raphael, Joel Cheesman, Gerry Crispin, George Lenard, Dave Mendoza, Lindsey Pollak, and Toby Dayton. Oh, and this blog is there too.

Continue reading "Alltop.com Beats Jason Goldberg's social|median to the Punch" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 12, 2008 at 10:58 AM | Leave a Comment (2)

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 recently wrote a blog entry about how to artfully dodge stock and often pointless questions from employers such as, "what is your greatest weakness."

But sometimes stock questions aren't silly at all and are deserving of a well thought out and delivered response. We now have a great video on our site that walks you through how to answer tough interview questions.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on March 10, 2008 at 2:56 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)

As first reported by Cheezhead, CollegeRecruiter.com last week acquired EntryLevelJobs.net.

We acquired ELJ when the opportunity arose primarily because of their very strong search engine rankings for just about every popular search that includes the keyword phrase "entry level jobs." We've already made some modifications to the site and more will be forthcoming over the months but for the time being most users will see few changes. The biggest change so far is that we've replaced the job postings on their site with postings from CollegeRecruiter.com so that candidates who want to apply to postings they find on ELJ will be directed to CollegeRecruiter.com to apply to the same jobs. That will increase the number of applications that our employers are receiving.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 29, 2008 at 9:28 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

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)

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)

One of the questions that we're often asked by our employer, school, consumer marketing, and other clients is how we've managed to create a double opt-in database of over 10 million college students and recent graduates. Well, the answer is that is hasn't been easy and it hasn't all been our work.

CollegeRecruiter.com is part of a network of sites, most of which are job boards but some of which are used to find a new school, research scholarships, enter contests, etc. Also, those who come to CollegeRecruiter.com or many of the sites in our network may register in a variety of ways. For example, a student searching for an internship or recent graduate looking for an entry level job is likely to post their resume at our site:

Continue reading "Double Opt-in Targeted Emails, SMS, and Direct Mail Database" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 11, 2008 at 4:27 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

It was a great feeling to receive an email from Peter Weddle yesterday in which he told me that CollegeRecruiter.com had again been selected as one of the best job boards in the world by job seekers, employers, and recruiters.

The Weddle's Users Choice Awards allows those stakeholders to vote for their choice of the best from any of the 40,000 job boards based in the U.S. and 40,000 job boards based elsewhere. Only 30 of the 80,000 win the award. We were fortunate enough to win it in 2007 and are now able to announce that we repeated for 2008. To make the award even sweeter, CollegeRecruiter.com was the only college job board in the winners' circle.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 7, 2008 at 12:50 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Want to find a great new job quickly? Experts will tell you that your chances of success increase dramatically if you invest time on the front end doing some research into the appropriate industry, the organizations within that industry, the departments within those organizations, and the hiring managers within those departments.

But once you've identified those targets, how do you get those targets to pay attention to you? One way is to blog about them. Create a blog on CollegeRecruiter.com or other sites that provide free blogging space for candidates and write a series of short articles about the industry, the organization you're targeting, their vendors, their suppliers, etc. Prove to the hiring managers and other decision makers that you care deeply about their organization and that you can do and have done the work.

As reported by Karen Burns, University of Missouri student Andrew Cafourek used a blog to land a job with a marketing firm in St Louis. If he did, why not you too?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on February 4, 2008 at 10:12 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

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)

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed for a story on WNBC, the local NBC affiliate for New York City, about Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites can be dangerous to job seekers and candidates who are applying for admission to attend a college or university.

Some media outlets have published or aired a lot of doom-and-gloom and even scare mongering stories about the dangers of social networking sites so it was nice to see such a good, well balanced story being broadcast by WNBC. The reporter gives a good overview of how the sites can and should be used by high school students, college students, and others.

Continue reading "Facebook Dangers for Job Seekers: WNBC Interview" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 28, 2008 at 9:03 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Paula Santonocito recently wrote an article for OnRec in which she looked back at pivotal events which occurred in on-line recruitment in 2007 and also looked forward to what we may expect in 2008. It was nice to receive such positive recognition from Paula and OnRec about our efforts to make high quality employer-generated recruitment videos easily available to the candidates who use CollegeRecruiter.com to find internships or entry level jobs.

Paula's article highlighted the recruitment videos that we've added as a result of our partnership with CareerTV. Here's the relevant section of the article:

Continue reading "OnRec Recognizes CollegeRecruiter.com as Pioneer" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 23, 2008 at 2:20 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Tuesday's Dr. Phil Show spotlighted Facebook group 30 Reasons Girls Should Call It a Night. It is one of the largest Facebook groups with 175,000 members.

The basic idea of the group is for female members to upload to Facebook photos of themselves after they've gotten drunk. Many of the photos are pretty harmless and just show a group of friends smiling and laughing. Few would object to those.

Continue reading "30 Reasons Girls Should Call It a Night" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 17, 2008 at 6:39 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Yesterday we launched a new Facebook group, Internships and Entry Level Jobs, for those who want to raise the level of discussion on career-related topics.

Apparently there are a lot who do as we already have 56 members. Join us. Lurk if you must. Participate if you will.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 16, 2008 at 11:52 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)

Due in large part to the tremendous growth that we've seen over the past few years and the partnerships that we've built with other career sites, CollegeRecruiter.com is able to provide the largest, most robust, double opt-in, targeted email and cell phone text messaging databases in the industry.

For students attending four year schools, we have 870,525 freshmen, 1,058,004 sophomores, 699,342 juniors, 752,396 seniors, 595,274 graduate school students, 494,077 recent graduates, 256,799 unclassified (we don't know their graduation date), for a total of 4,726,417. For students attending two year schools, we have 2,290,399 freshmen, 1,707,029 seniors, 1,382,403 recent graduates, 68,924 unclassifieds, for a total of 5,448,755. The grand total is therefore 10,175,172 students and recent graduates in our database.

We've compiled a spreadsheet that breaks those numbers down by state. Feel free to download, but be prepared to be amazed.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 9, 2008 at 10:07 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

CollegeRecruiter.com just announced that it has the most internships and entry level job posting ads of any college job board thanks to our recent partnership with vertical job search engine Indeed.com.

When a candidate runs a job search on CollegeRecruiter.com, they will continue to see jobs posted by employers to CollegeRecruiter.com first but those are supplemented by jobs from Indeed. The jobs from the Indeed feed are identified in our search results as follows:

Continue reading "Internships and Entry Level Jobs: We Have the Most" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 7, 2008 at 12:30 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the most addicting on-line games I've ever played is our Stumbling Distance game. Using your mouse, you need to help the sleepy college student find his way back to his dorm room before he falls over.

Play it and share your scores with your friends. And don't blame me if you become addicted. I warned you.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 3, 2008 at 8:53 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Ever wondered how long it will take you to become a millionaire? Check out our Millionaire Maker calculator.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on January 2, 2008 at 8:51 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the most frequently asked questions that I get from bloggers is where do I find the time to write as much as I do and where do I get all of the ideas to write about? Many and perhaps most bloggers struggle to find ideas and even if they have the right ideas they struggle to find the time to write the articles. So their blogs languish and may only be updated every few weeks. Blogs that are neglected like that tend not to generate loyal readers and don't rank as highly in the search engines as they could because they aren't as active and don't have as much content.

So where does a typical blogger get more ideas and more time? Rather than trying to find the ideas and time to write your own blog entries each and every time, why not allow guest writers to take some of the load off of your shoulders? By having guest writers, you'll get free career-related content for your blog and the more content you have, the more pages you create. The more pages you have, the more likely it is that you'll have the right keyword phrase that someone types into Google, Yahoo, MSN, or any of the search engines and that will generate free traffic for your site. But even if they don't go to that new page, web sites with more pages rank higher in the search results because the search engines believe that larger sites are more likely to have the information being sought by the people using the search engines.

Continue reading "Can't Think of Anything to Write?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 21, 2007 at 6:21 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

By Tahjia Chapman

Marketing yourself and your e-portfolio (also known as a personal portfolio) is one career goal worth planning. If you want to get your dream job, place your e-portfolio before prospective employers and possible clients. You may not be familiar with internet marketing, but we have you covered. We have compiled a list of the top five methods of increasing traffic, visibility, and importance of an e-portfolio for recent college grads and students. You must work on these tips to build a foundation then add more link building strategies for more exposure.

Why should you focus on marketing your e-portfolio?

Your e-portfolio is one marketing tool that sells your skills to an employer. An e-portfolio places you before an audience with information of who you are, why they should know, and how they can contact you for job interviews. It is important to use your e-portfolio as an introduction for prospective employers by placing your most valuable work before their eyes. The marketing plan for your e-portfolio will include all five marketing strategies to gain interests from future employers.

Continue reading "Five Ways To Market Your E-Portfolio" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 17, 2007 at 9:51 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I just found out from Jason Davis at RecruitingBlogs.com that this blog was nominated as one of the best recruiting blogs. Voting begins today. If you like the work that we do, please vote for the CollegeRecruiter.com Blog.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 14, 2007 at 6:53 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)

Do you want to attract more visitors to your career site but don't have the budget for a big advertising or public relations campaign? No problem.

One of the most efficient and effective ways to attract highly targeted visitors to any web site is by increasing the number of visitors who find you in the organic (free) results of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. But how do you increase the number of those visitors? Make your web site come up higher in the results so more of your targeted visitors will see your site and click through. Two of the best ways of making your site come up higher in the search results are to add more content to your site and to increase the number of links to your site.

Continue reading "How to Get More Traffic to Your Career Site" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 6, 2007 at 7:50 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Nice to see that a poll that we ran showed that college students who are hunting for internships and recent graduates who are looking for entry level jobs and other career opportunities are more optimistic in December than they were in November. Perhaps all of the doom and gloom in the mainstream media is overblown.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 6, 2007 at 6:06 AM | 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)

I was honored to be offered the opportunity to be part of the presentation by Bill Vick for this week's Dallas Recruiting Roadshow Unconference. Bill, who is always looking for new and better ways of getting the job done, used webcams and Skype Video to record the segment with me and the other "panelists."

For my segment, Bill interviewed me about how recruiters can and should use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Couldn't be at the Dallas event? No problem. Here's my presentation:

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on December 4, 2007 at 3:51 PM | 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)

Great news out of Texas: the Dallas Recruiting Roadshow Unconference is sold out. My congratulations to Ami Givertz and John Sumser for organizing such a great line-up of presenters and marketing it so well to recruiters and other human resource professionals. CollegeRecruiter.com is proud to be one of the sponsors and looks forward to continuing to partner with these gentlemen.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 30, 2007 at 7:21 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Paul DeBettignies a/k/a The Minnesota Headhunter has done it again. No, I'm not talking about his almost completely irrational devotion to University of Minnesota football. I'm talking about his great job in organizing the second Minnesota Recruiting Unconference.

The conference kicks off (pun intended) tomorrow morning at 8am and concludes at 2pm. In between, the attendees will be treated to breakfast, some great networking opportunities, great speakers, some great networking opportunities, lunch, some great networking opportunities, and then some more great networking opportunities. Did I mention that there's no charge and no selling from the podium?

I was privileged to be one of the presenters for the first conference. This time around, CollegeRecruiter.com is privileged to be one of the sponsors. If you're within driving distance of the Best Buy headquarters in suburban Minneapolis tomorrow, you need to sign up right away and join us.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 29, 2007 at 3:06 PM | Leave a Comment (2)

I'm pleased to announce the launch of a new monthly service, the CollegeRecruiter.com Job Seeker Confidence Index. Each month we'll poll hundreds of candidates to better understand their level of optimism about the job market. We'll use the same question and offer the same answer options each month so that we'll be able to understand, over time, whether candidates are becoming more or less optimistic about their prospects of finding a new internship, entry level job, or other career opportunity.

We just posted the results for November and they look quite good. Almost 75 percent of respondents believe that it will take them three or fewer months to find a new job.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 27, 2007 at 9:37 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

We just launched a new application on Facebook that allows you to send a free gift through Facebook to your friends, family, enemies, Donald Duck, etc.

The Holiday Gifts application works somewhat like the gifts application that Facebook created eons ago except that they charge $1 per gift sent and we charge nothing. In either case, the gifts are icons that appear on the profile page of the recipient. In addition, when you send a gift to a friend, that is noted on your page and theirs so that those who are friends of yours and the recipient of your gift will see that you are using our application and that makes it more likely that they will want to use it too. Also, when you send a gift to someone who does not have the application already installed, then they will need to install it. When they do, they can easily send gifts to their friends. So the entire process is designed to be viral.

So what does CollegeRecruiter.com get out of the new Holiday Gifts application on Facebook? If it takes off, we'll get a boost to our traffic as our logo appears on the application page. The logo gives us both branding for long-term benefits and it is linked to our home page for a short-term traffic boost.

Install it today. Give it a whirl. Add a comment below with your feedback. We're listening.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 20, 2007 at 2:38 PM | 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)

Just heard from Jason Davis that the most recent entries to the Recruiting Blogswap free content exchange program are now being featured on the home page of his well regarded RecruitingBlogswap.com site.

The Recruiting Blogswap is a great way for recruiters and other human resource professionals to share their opinions by authoring articles which are then automatically distributed by the Blogswap software to the next publisher in line. The publishers are recruiting bloggers who want to provide more content and more diverse content to their readers. There is no charge to participate. We run this program as a service to the recruiting community and it also builds links back to CollegeRecruiter.com as each entry includes a "sponsored by" link at the bottom. Win-win-win.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 13, 2007 at 9:29 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Facebook just broadened their offerings again. These guys never sleep. When Facebook was launched just a few years ago, it was designed to be an on-line alternative to the school yearbook for Harvard students. Then it spread to other Ivy League schools, then other colleges and universities, then high schools, then non-educational organizations, and then to everyone. But through that entire time the only profile pages that could be created for free were those of individuals. So you, your friend Mandy, and your cousin Betsy could have a Facebook page, but organizations such as CollegeRecruiter.com could not. Until now.

Visit the just launched CollegeRecruiter.com page on Facebook and become a "fan" so that you will be the first to know what is happening with our Facebook efforts, including several new applications that we're finalizing and will be releasing over the coming weeks.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 9, 2007 at 9:55 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of my favorite people to meet up with at recruiting conferences, by phone, via email, smoke signals, whatever is Dennis Smith. Most of those who blog about recruiting in what has become known as the recruiting blogosphere know Dennis as the face of T-Mobile. No longer. Dennis has jumped to WorldLink.

So what is WorldLink? It is a global, services oriented organization that delivers innovative business solutions in areas such as information technology, marketing and sales, accounting and finance, and engineering. Put another way, they're a global technology, services, and outsourcing company.

Continue reading "Dennis Smith" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 6, 2007 at 7:25 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the pleasure of speaking with Bill Vick today about the panel that he's putting together for the Dallas Recruiting Roadshow Unconference. Bill is putting together a panel presentation with quite a twist. None of the panelists will be at the conference.

The panelists, including me, will be interviewed about various topics using webcams and Skype Video. Bill will edit the presentations as necessary and then show it at the conference. If anyone had any doubts about Bill's love of practical technology, this should eliminate those doubts. During the presentation, Bill will be killing multiple birds with one stone. For example, during my part of the presentation, he'll be gathering content for the attendees about how to use social networking sites for recruitment purposes. But underlying that will be a demonstration on how easy it now is to do video conference and therefore...real-time, video interviews.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on November 5, 2007 at 4:44 PM | 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)

I am what some refer to sympathetically a road warrior. That is to say, I travel a lot and almost all of my travels are for work. When you're going to San Diego in January and your friends in Minneapolis are envious, the road warrior knows that the way to silence their comments is to remind them that the temperature and views inside of a hotel meeting room in San Diego are pretty much the same as the temperature and views inside of a hotel meeting room in Minneapolis.

That said, there are some perks to traveling. I'm scheduled to be in New York City later today for a client meeting and then fly home to Minneapolis from my four day business trip. On these longer trips, I sometimes bring my kids back a little gift or two to help make my absence a little sweeter. Well, what could be sweeter than a mongo-sized chocolate bar from the Hershey's store in Times Square?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 19, 2007 at 4:49 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Given that CollegeRecruiter.com is a leading job board for students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities, most of what we focus on when we're looking at social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are issues related to careers. But colleges and university students are discovering that the information that they post on-line is not private even if they think that it should be and even if the web site has privacy settings.

A tip of the hat to Charles Cassells for alerting me that Oxford University is investigating what appear to be fairly petty crimes using Facebook. The video of just under three minutes shows a student upset that her school would use photos that she felt would be private and that there would be consequences to her law breaking behavior even though university officials did not witness the crimes first hand. Hopefully she'll become a little wiser through this experience. I've said it before and I'll say it again: posting any information on-line anywhere is like getting a tattoo. There's nothing inherently wrong with it but you have to realize that once you've done it, it is permanent and you won't always be able to control who sees it or how they will react to it.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 15, 2007 at 9:48 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I had the pleasure of being a guest on the season premiere of Minnesota Public Radio's "In The Loop" show. The first show was entitled "Your Exposed Life" and dealt in a sometimes humorous and sometimes serious way with the very serious issue of the permanent, digital trail that we're all leaving. That trail can be helpful at times as old friends are able to connect with us. That trail can be harmful at times as employers can often easily learn about personal issues related to our health, criminal activity (even minor offenses), political thoughts, weekend partying, and more.

The show airs this Sunday at 6pm CT on MPR. If these issues are of concern to you, and they should be to everyone, then you should listen. You'll be entertained and learn a lot. For those outside of the MPR listening area, listen on-line. If you want to see the studio audience, guests, host, head over to Flickr.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 12, 2007 at 3:54 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Since August, I've traveled every week to speak at conferences and meet with clients except for this week. No matter how nice your hotel bed is, and they're certainly a lot nicer these days than they used to be, no bed is as nice as your own.

That said (written?), I'm excited about traveling against next week as I'll be in Washington, D.C. to take in the ERE Expo 2007 and meet with clients, partners, and a vendor or two. It will be a pretty busy week but it should be great to see some people who I've done business with for years but never met face-to-face and to reconnect with some other people with whom I am able to see on a regular basis but wish that I could see more often.

I won't actually be in the D.C. metro the whole time. On Friday I will be taking the express train up to New York City. Once there, one of our employees and I will be meeting with a key client and then flying home Friday evening. Phew!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on October 11, 2007 at 8:25 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)

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)

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)

Ami Givertz deserves a huge slap on the back for a job very, very well done. He was the driving force and organizer of the second Recruiting Roadshow Unconference and did a masterful job by pulling together John Sumser and some other great speakers. The conference on Tuesday was attended by about 150 mostly corporate recruiter and human resource manager attendees.

I had the privilege of delivering the post-lunch keynote on how employers can and should use social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. It was interesting that the material was new to almost everyone in attendance. I've spent a lot of time thinking, writing, and speaking about these issues over the past year or two so it was great to be able to help those in attendance become aware of the issues and hopefully to help them understand that the sites are neither evil nor silver bullets but used wisely can become another arrow in their recruiting quiver.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 27, 2007 at 11:49 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the other people who attends a lot of the recruiting trade shows and conferences is industry thought leader Don Ramer of Arbita. I've known Don since the 1990's and am thrilled to announce that clients of Arbita will now be able to post their internship and entry level jobs through Arbita's fully automated job posting system to CollegeRecruiter.com. Arbita provides world class Internet recruiting solutions to hundreds of customers including General Dynamics, eBay, Pfizer, and Cox Communications. Arbita's OnePost system is used in the U.S. by many government contractors to meet OFCCP and EEOC posting and reporting requirements.

We look forward to working with Arbita for years to come to help make more and better matches between highly qualified candidates and employers offering high quality positions.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 20, 2007 at 8:10 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

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)

Thanks to our recently implemented partnership with CareerTV, we're able to bring the users of CollegeRecruiter.com so truly fantastic career-related videos. One of my favorites is Internships Rock, which explain the importance of internships and how to find them. If you're a college student searching for an internship or even a recent graduate trying to bolster your experience through a post-graduate internship, you'll want to invest the few minutes it takes to watch this great video.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 13, 2007 at 7:58 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Very few cities in the U.S. are truly alive. Those which come to mind include Chicago (I'm there on business today), New York, and San Francisco. Many other cities are wonderful but don't have that vibrancy, that character, that excitement.

Next week I'll be in San Francisco for the Salesforce.com annual user conference, the International Association of Employment Web Sites conference, and the OnRec recruiting conference. I arrive Sunday morning and fly out Wednesday late afternoon and will likely be on the go pretty much non-stop the entire time. It should be an interesting time juggling my time when the Salesforce conference runs from Sunday evening through Wednesday afternoon so overlaps with the Monday afternoon IAEWS conference and the Tuesday and Wednesday OnRec conference.

If this trinity were taking place in just about any other city, I'd probably still go but would be gritting my teeth at the thought of having to juggle the agendas. But given that this is in San Francisco, I'm excited.

Anyone else planning to take in all three or am I the only nut?

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 11, 2007 at 10:45 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I haven't blogged since Wednesday. I'm going through withdrawal. Am I ill? Nope. Uninterested? Nope. Traveling on business. Yep.

I've been in Florida since Wednesday to meet with a couple of clients, speak at one of their conferences, and meet with a key vendor. Traveling from Minnesota to Florida at the beginning of September is like traveling from Florida to Minnesota in January. The change in temperature and humidity are not for the faint of heart.

Also not for the faint of heart was the amazing tour that we received of the new Valpak manufacturing facility. Valpak, a client, is the publisher of the blue envelopes that magically show up in your mailbox each month and which contain offers from local and national merchants. Their new facility is incredible. My background is in printing so I've seen my share of large commercial printing facilities, but none come even close to approaching the level of robotics and other automation in this plant. There are virtually no workers involved in the process of printing and mailing literally billions of targeted direct mail pieces each year. The automation has allowed Valpak to reduce the time it takes to turn a piece around from four days to four hours.

Their hundreds of franchisees will now have a much better cost side of the income statement to work with. CollegeRecruiter.com, along with other partners, will now be able to help the franchisees increase their net income even further by helping them hire hundreds of new entry level sales representatives.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on September 8, 2007 at 8:53 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Looking for an even better way to pay for your college education than student loans? The brand new CollegeRecruiter.com Scholarship Finder will help you research, apply to, and win hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships. And best of all, our Scholarship Finder is absolutely free.

Continue reading "New Scholarship Search Feature" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 24, 2007 at 9:57 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

We launched our second Facebook application late last week and we've already got about 225 installations. But that's not all that interesting. Want interesting? Read on.

Facebook applications allow third parties such as CollegeRecruiter.com to add features to Facebook so that its million of users can customize what they see and use when they go to Facebook. Think of them like computer programs that you download to your computer. Each person works differently so we each have our computers set up differently. Facebook recognized that desire for customization and a couple of months ago they created the applications section.

Our first application was essentially a (yawn!) job search engine. Practical but not exactly exciting. The second has a similar front end but features two improvements, one minor and the other major:

1. The first application requires you to enter the state in which you are looking for a job. The second application assumes that you're searching for a job in your state of residence. Nice improvement, but minor.
   
2. The first application required you to run a job search every time you wanted to check our database to see what is new. The second application automatically posts to your Facebook profile page a list of the 10 or so newest internships and entry level jobs based upon the keywords, job category, and state of residence that you enter. Nice improvement, and major.
   

Continue reading "Facebook Application Update" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 20, 2007 at 4:54 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Want to see on your Facebook profile page the newest internship and entry level job postings in your area of interest and state? Add our brand new Facebook application and we'll do just that. Essentially, we'll keep an eye out for you for the newest internships and entry level jobs so that you don't even have to come to CollegeRecruiter.com -- you just need to go to Facebook to keep an eye out for jobs that you want to apply to before anyone else.

Continue reading "New Facebook Application Shows Newest Internship and Entry Level Jobs on Your Facebook Profile Page" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 17, 2007 at 8:44 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Mike Palmquist, our National Account Executive, and I fly later today to San Diego for the 2007 annual Enterprise Rent-A-Car human resource conference. All 700 or so of their global HR folks come together each year to learn from each other and from a small number of third parties. CollegeRecruiter.com has been blessed to have Enterprise as a client for years and we look forward to working and enhancing our relationship with them for years to come.

This year's conference promises to deliver much of the same as last year's in Atlanta but also some differences. Their hiring metrics last year were staggering: about 220,000 applications from college students and recent graduates turned into 70,000 interviews and 7,000 hires. This year, they're planning to hire 8,000 college students and recent graduates. Amazing.

Continue reading "Leaving for Enterprise Rent-A-Car Annual HR Conference" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 15, 2007 at 12:53 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

We just added a neat, new feature to CollegeRecruiter.com. We're now able to poll our users to better understand their demographics, their aspirations, their needs, and their wants. We're also able to gather similar intelligence for our clients so employers, for example, can run a quick poll to learn whether students would be more likely to work for them if the employers added a new benefit or modified their recruiting practices.

The polling software is provided to us by Vizu Answers, which bills itself as the Internet's first research network because clients can run polls on multiple sites. Vizu allows organizations to conduct custom market research quickly, easily, and at an affordable price. They emphasize that if you want an answer, the key is asking the right people. Their diverse network of publishers, of which we're one, makes that possible by providing organizations access to their unique audiences.

Vizu Answers allows anyone to conduct affordable do-it-yourself market research by combining an easy-to-use polling platform with a network of diverse websites. Each day, people use Vizu Answers to validate value propositions, vet new product ideas and obtain preference data that can aid marketing, communication and positioning decisions.

Vizu's growing network spans a diverse global population and includes blogs, networks, portals, news outlets, media properties and retailers. Organizations which run polls can zero in on their target audiences for their market research by selecting a category or specific web sites such as CollegeRecruiter.com (hint, hint).

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 13, 2007 at 7:20 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

My discussions with recruiters and other human resource professionals often include conversations about the increasing concentration of the recruiting industry due to the never ending list of acquisitions and alliances. While many of these acquisitions and alliances have led to better products and services at better prices for the clients, the reality is that some acquisitions and alliances have led to quality and pricing problems with formerly great products and services. If you share in these concerns, then you'll want to quickly sign up for the October 17, 2007 event that is sure provide tremendous value to its attendees. Only 100 seats are available and the event is almost sold out.

Continue reading "Supplier Summit: Building Alliances in the Recruiting Marketplace" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 3, 2007 at 7:55 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I occasionally get asked by employers and consumer marketers how they get their opportunities, products or services mentioned in leading blogs? Simple. Pay for the placement. That's right. There are web sites that broker advertorial advertising in blogs. You submit the request to the web site, including what you want written about your opportunity, product, or service; how much you're willing to pay for the mention in the blog; and which blogs you want to appear in. Then the blog advertising broker contacts the blog owner and passes along the request. If the blog owner accepts the request, the blog owner receives the bulk of your payment and the blog advertising broker receives the rest as a commission.

If there's an idea, there's an Internet site for it.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 3, 2007 at 7:06 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I received a most welcomed call from Ami Givertz (is there any other type of call when Ami is ringing?) the other day. He both wanted to find out more of the good, the bad, and the ugly from the Minneapolis Recruiting Roadshow Unconference, which was organized by Paul DeBettignies a/k/a The Minnesota Headhunter. Ami also wanted to ask if I would be interested in participating in the second Roadshow, which is scheduled for September 25th in Atlanta.

Continue reading "Atlanta Recruiting Roadshow Unconference" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on August 1, 2007 at 11:22 AM | Leave a Comment (1)

The Minnesota Headhunter was right. He was right. I was wrong. I was wrong. There. I said it. Twice in fact. He predicted that we'd have WAY more than my prediction of two or three dozen people sign-up for today's Minneapolis Recruiting.com Roadshow Unconference. We capped the sign-up at 100, reached that with a week to go, and created a waiting list.

Continue reading "I'm Out $5 and Thrilled to Death" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 20, 2007 at 2:25 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

It is here. Finally here. Really here. Well, almost here. Tomorrow if the first of hopefully many Recruiting.com Roadshow Unconferences.

Paul DeBettignies, Don Ramer, John Sumser, and I got together tonight for a great dinner, a lot of laughs, and we even managed to share a bit of knowledge with each other. Tomorrow should be a blast.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 19, 2007 at 11:17 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Paul DeBettignies, Managing Partner of Nerd Search, LLC, Josh Kahn of Best Buy / Accenture, and I came together a couple of months ago and laid the foundation for a free, half day conference for recruiters and other human resource professionals. We knew that a key component to the success of what later would become known as the Minneapolis Recruiting.com Roadshow Unconference would be to have a nationally known speaker keynote and I knew that John Sumser of Interbiznet and Recruiting.com was looking for a way of getting the word out about Recruiting.com so I contacted him to see if he'd be interested. Not only did he agree but he enthusiastically helped with some of the organizing.

Continue reading "Minneapolis Recruiting.com Roadshow Unconference Oversold" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 13, 2007 at 6:01 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

Months ago we were honored to be awarded the Weddle's User's Choice Award for being one of the 30 best job boards. As is the case with most industries, the number of major players is often surprisingly small and collegial. And those players often work together in a cooperative fashion to bring as much value to their clients as possible. Want an example?

Continue reading "Casino Careers" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 13, 2007 at 9:16 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Human resource search engine optimization expert Joel Cheesman was kind enough to post a blog entry today about our just released Facebook job search application. Thanks, Joel! And thanks, Facebook!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 11, 2007 at 11:19 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the organizations that I've had the pleasure of working with over the years has been Kennedy Information. Most of what I've done with them has been to speak at their regular human resource and recruiting conferences, but they recently invited me to be a member of their Recruiting Trends Thought Leadership group, which I gladly accepted.

As a member of that group, I have the opportunity to write a monthly article for their web site. They just published my most recent article as the leading article. Here's an excerpt:

A tight talent supply of highly talented college students has drawn attention to the latest developments in entry-level online marketing positions. The need of Internet marketers has caused some companies to hire fresh candidates with one year of experience for $40,000, according to Revenue, an affiliate marketing magazine. This new decree outweighs the current wages available for traditional entry-level marketing positions which is currently $35,000. Even though some marketing companies are interested in recent graduates, they still want to hire candidates with on-the-job experience.

To continue reading the rest of the article, go to http://www.recruitingtrends.com/online/thoughtleadership/476-1.html

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 10, 2007 at 7:17 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

I will participating in The Onrec.com Conference and Expo, on the 18th and 19th September 2007, San Francisco and would love to see you there!!

This leading industry event is jam packed with informative, cost-saving advice and innovative ideas on how to improve your recruitment strategy, including the chance to:

• Discover new ways of reaching the best candidates, whilst reducing your cost-per-hire spend;
  
• Learn how the online recruitment market is developing and how to keep ahead of the game;
  
• Explore new techniques in attracting candidates using web 2.0 technologies;
  
• Hear about new employment regulations and how they affect YOU;
  
• Network with the leading authorities in online recruitment and take part in engaging panel debates about the future of online recruitment; and
  
• Meet suppliers that have solutions and packages to solve your recruitment problems.
  

As a speaker, I have secured discounted tickets to the event. You can take advantage of this special, time-limited offer by simply entering the following code when you register at https://www.cteusa.com/onrec2/. When at that page, enter code 3TC7T. Book now to take advantage of the special offer! I look forward to seeing you there!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on July 3, 2007 at 11:43 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

The revenues and profits that we generated in 2006 were our best ever. But yesterday we surpassed both and the year isn't quite half over yet. Interestingly and perhaps a sign of things to come, the sale that put us over the top was the largest cell phone text messaging campaign that we've ever sold and perhaps the largest ever sold by a job board.

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 28, 2007 at 8:14 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

There’s little doubt that fewer and fewer Gen Y / Millennial candidates get their news or any other information from traditional media such as newspapers and even television. But one device that they use continuously are their cellular telephones. Because of this, organizations such as Pepsi, Nike, and Dell are increasingly turning to marketing their products, services, and employment opportunities through cell phone text messages (SMS) and cell phone video messages (MMS).

Cell phones have been popular for almost two decades and in the hands of almost every young adult for a decade. So why the sudden surge in interest and completed ad campaigns? Quite simply, the technology has caught up to its potential. Almost all phones purchased by Millennials are capable of sending and receiving text messages. They’re also web-enabled so they can be used to view web pages, videos, and other graphics.

Continue reading "Cell Phone Text Messaging (SMS) and Video Messaging (MMS): What’s All the Fuss About?" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 25, 2007 at 7:45 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of my greatest frustrations when helping clients solve their recruiting needs relates to how some use, or should I say misuse, banner ads. Those billboard type ads that at the top right corner of virtually every interior page of CollegeRecruiter.com and in similarly prominent locations on most web sites have been around almost since Al Gore invented the Internet. But do they work? Quite frankly, they're usually a waste of the client's money.

Continue reading "Cage Match: Targeted Emails vs Banner Ads" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 21, 2007 at 7:19 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

A few months ago I wrote about hearing Guy Kawasaki speak about innovation at the University of Minnesota and how his speech caused me to think long and hard about the mantra of CollegeRecruiter.com: college career connector. I just ran across a copy of him delivering the same presentation to a different audience:

Continue reading "Guy Kawasaki's Art of Innovation Presentation" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 20, 2007 at 7:51 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

One of the most informative and high energy conferences that I've attended over the years, and I've attended a lot, was the OnRec conference last year in Chicago. My presentation was on how recruiters can and should use social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. You can watch a video of the OnRec social networking presentation on CollegeRecruiter.com.

This year, the OnRec conference will be in San Francisco on September 18th and 19th and I've been offered the opportunity to be one of the presenters. I'll be speaking about college recruiting. Other speakers include Joel Cheesman, Peter Weddle, Joe Shaker Jr., Gerry Crispin, Jeff Hunter, Kevin Wheeler, and Don Ramer.

As one of the presenters, I'm able to provide attendees with a $100 discount. All you need to do is click through to the special page they've built for me and then sign-up. See you there!

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 20, 2007 at 7:31 AM | Leave a Comment (0)

Paul DeBettignies of Nerd Search deserves a lot of credit. He's been the driving force behind the creation and impending promotion of the first Recruiting Roadshow. John Sumser, the dean of the recruiting blogosphere, will be taking Recruiting.com on the road and Paul, Josh Kahn of Best Buy/Accenture, and I are thrilled to be the ringleaders who convinced him that Minneapolis was the place to start his tour.

So does Paul deserve a lot of credit for that? Nah. All in a day's work. What is really amazing is that he did all of that while working through some family health issues, an Internet Service Provider who took a month to move his access to his new office 500 feet down the hall, the grief caused by the thrashing inflicted upon the Minnesota Wild this spring by the Anaheim Ducks, and the generally pathetic state of Minnesota college sports.

Continue reading "Minneapolis Recruiting Roadshow Unconference Announced" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 13, 2007 at 3:36 PM | Leave a Comment (2)

Yesterday at the dinner table my wife and I had one of those "we must be doing something right" moments. We were talking about work and how we're about to hire a new Client Services Representative when our 12 year old (we also have 10 and 8 year olds) said that hiring someone is the highest level of tzedakah. For those who do not know Hebrew, and I fall into the group that knows just a little, tzedakah is often translated as being equivalent to charity or tithe but that is not an accurate translation because charity implies that your heart motivated to act. Tzedakah, however, literally means righteousness. In other words, tzedakah means doing the right thing.

I was pretty sure that my 12 year old was right but I looked it up today and confirmed that all of those years of Religious School didn't go to waste. Maimonides defined nine levels in giving tzedakah:

Continue reading "Finding Work for Someone is the Highest Level of Charity" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 8, 2007 at 12:36 PM | Leave a Comment (0)

We deliver multiple targeted email campaigns per week to employers and other organizations who want to reach our double opt-in database of 8.9 million college students and recent graduates. For years we hardly had any ask how many of the recipients asked to be removed from our list, but that question started popping up a few months and became pretty frequent. Actually, it is good question because it helps the advertiser understand the annoyance factor: are they ticking off as many people as they're recruiting?

The solution to the question was to provide the answer. We added a new field to our report so that all targeted email clients now received that information. Below is a typical tracking report for a targeted email campaign that we deployed a week ago. Note that it continues to include information about the number of emails we delivered (we guarantee 100 percent delivered emails so that's always what the client purchased), the number of emails opened (how many were read), clicks, and the new unsubscribe column.

Continue reading "Updated Targeted Email Tracking Report" »

Posted by Steven Rothberg, CollegeRecruiter.com on June 7, 2007 at 2:55 PM |