Wow, did we ever receive great feedback from Monday’s College Recruiting Bootcamp on AI at Google. I thought I should share some highlights:

• All 200 available tickets sold-out almost a week ahead of the event thanks, in part, to promotional efforts by the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals, CareerXroads, Recruiting Brainfood, and Jibe.
• A handful let us know that they couldn’t attend. We gave their tickets to people on the waitlist.
• Attendees at the Sunday evening reception, sponsored by TalentNet Inc., enjoyed crab, steak, grilled vegetables, adult beverages, and more than a few laughs.
• Whitney Selfridge, Google’s Product Marketing Manager, and Faith Rothberg, College Recruiter’s Chief Executive Officer, warmly welcomed the hundreds who attended in-person and via the live stream, which was sponsored by AllyO.
• I delivered an overview of how AI is already being used in the recruitment industry.
• Tarquin Clark, Director of Partnerships and Go To Market for Google’s Cloud Talent Solutions, delivered the opening keynote on how AI can better our education, businesses, and careers. He then moderated a panel discussion featuring Roopesh Nair, President and Chief Executive Officer of Symphony Talent; Jayne Kettles, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer for gr8 People; Joe Essenfeld, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Jibe; and Justin Lumby, Vice President of Technology Strategy for TalentNet Inc.
• Alexandra Levit of PeopleResults and author of Humanity Works delivered the featured presentation on how technology and people will merge in future workforces. She then moderated a panel discussion featuring Jennifer Sethre, CEO and Founder of Intry; Wahab Owolabi, Recruiting Manager for Rubrik; Jared Bazzell, Talent Acquisition Manager – Campus for CDW; and Doug Berg, Founder of ZAPinfo. Thanks to ZAPinfo, 100 attendees received a copy of Alexandra’s excellent, new book.
• After a delicious lunch sponsored by our partner, Google, we were treated to the closing keynote by John Sumser of HR Examiner on AI, the algorithms, and who owns the outcomes. He then moderated a spirited discussion with panelists Jeff Dunn, Campus Relations Manager for Intel; Derek Zeller, Director of Recruiting Solutions and Channels for ENGAGE Talent; Richard Rosenow, Workforce Planning Analyst for Facebook; and Heather Bussing of the Law Offices of Heather Bussing.

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Guest article by Spry Ideas

First, the good news: The unemployment rate in the U.S. is the lowest it’s been since 2001, and the percentage of prime working age adults who are employed is the highest it’s been since 2008.¹ Though this improvement in the job market hasn’t been consistent across all industries, job functions and regions, there appears to be an overall improvement.

While this is undoubtedly positive for both graduates seeking jobs and the economy, it presents a few challenges for agencies and employers. Many positions are getting harder to fill and candidates now have more choices, and therefore, increased bargaining power.

Though location, benefits, flexible hours and work environment are important factors in a career decision, salary is still ranked as the most important influence. A recent survey by Glassdoor shows that 67 percent of job seekers pay attention to salary when scanning job ads, more than any other piece of information on a position. Continue Reading

Ever have one of those, “Aha!”, moments where suddenly a puzzle that seemed to be missing a piece to became complete? That’s how I felt a little earlier today.

Peter Clayton of TotalPicture forwarded to me a press release that he received from our friends over at Symphony Talent. They were announcing that they are now live as a Google Cloud Talent Solution partner, under which Symphony Talent will use Google’s search technology — the best in the world — to power the job search on the websites of its employer clients. Ah, now I get why Symphony Talent’s chief executive officer Roopesh Nair will be a panelist at our College Recruiting Bootcamp on AI at Google. We were very happy to have him fly across the country from New York City to San Francisco to be a panelist at our event. And the event looks to be a tremendous hit with about 200, senior, talent acquisition leaders as attendees, presenters, and panelists combined with a superb venue and Peter’s recording and live streaming, but that’s still a long way for Roopesh to travel. Given today’s announcement from Symphony Talent, however, it now makes perfect sense. Our event will be a great opportunity for him to talk about how and why Symphony Talent decided to use Google’s AI-powered search technology, which College Recruiter believes delivers more relevant search results at a lower cost than anything else on the planet.

College Recruiter’s site is powered by the same technology, and we couldn’t be happier with the technology or the service that we’ve received from Google. To our friends at Symphony Talent, we say, “Welcome aboard and congratulations on making yet another wise decision on behalf of your employer clients”.

Here is the press release:

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One of my favorite people in the recruitment industry is Peter Clayton of TotalPicture Media. Without a doubt, he is the most knowledge and capable videographer in the industry. When I hear that he’s involved in a project, I know that the project will go well.

Peter and I recently sat down…about 1,266 miles apart, to discuss next Monday’s College Recruiting Bootcamp on AI at Google. Over the past decade, College Recruiter has organized 16 of these one-day conferences for talent acquisition and human resource leaders. All have essentially broken even, none have lost much money, and none have made much money. And that’s the way we planned them. We wanted to do something that would enable us to give back to the recruiting industry and a no-pitch, educational conference that moves around the country seemed like a great idea as there is a tremendous amount of turnover in talent acquisition and human resources, especially amongst those whose primary focus is the recruitment of people early in their careers, including college and university relations recruitment leaders. Continue Reading

Economic news released today by the National Association of Colleges and Employers contained a lot of great news for students and recent graduates of one-, two-, and four-year colleges and universities.

According to a survey of NACE employer members, only four percent of employers plan to decrease their hiring of recent college grads while a whopping 57.4 percent plan to increase such hiring. For those who aren’t human calculators, that means that 38.6 percent plan to maintain their number of hires. Even better news is that the percent increase in projected hires came in at 16.6 percent, which would be the largest increase in 12 years. It is noteworthy that the hiring rate has not been increasing year-after-year since the Great Recession of 2008-09. Indeed, the class of 2018 saw hiring decrease by 1.3 percent.

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College Recruiter believes that every student and recent graduate deserves a great career. And a great stepping stone to a great career is often a great internship. But students are often frustrated by how to find an internship and, when they do find one of interest, how to apply, get interviewed, and get hired.

If you try to do everything all at once, it can be overwhelming. I like to break the process down into manageable, bite-sized pieces.

1. Don’t procrastinate. To use another cliche, early bird gets the worm. While I trust that you’d rather land a great internship than a great worm, the cliche is too well known and understood for me to pass up. Some internships, particularly those with non-profits and governmental agencies, have strict and sometimes very early deadlines. Looking for next summer? You might need to apply in November. As of the writing of this blog article on November 5, 2018, College Recruiter already had 1,795 internships advertised on its site and it is still a couple of months from January when employers start to get aggressive with advertising their internship opportunities.
2. Complete your CIV analysis. What’s a CIV, you ask? Competencies, interests, and values. Grab a piece of paper and draw two lines down it to divide the paper into three columns. Write competencies at the top of the first column, interests at the top of the second, and values at the top of the third. Now, under competencies, write down everything that other people would say you’re good at. In the second column, write down everything that you find to be interesting, In the third column, write down everything that you care about. Now look for themes. What are you good at that also interests you and which you care about? Those themes are where you should focus your career search.
3. Network. Many and probably most people think that networking is all about asking other for help. Wrong. It is about asking them how you can help them. That will build good karma and inevitably you’ll find that some — not all — will reciprocate by asking how they can help you. Take them up on the offer. Tell them about your CIV, where you want your career to start, and ask them for the names of two people you should talk with. Keep repeating that. After a few rounds of people referring you to people who refer you to people, you’ll likely run across someone who will decline to give you the two names, not because they’re a jerk but because they want to hire you. Bingo.
4. Job search sites. Almost every college career service office has a career website, but the vast majority of jobs which are of interest to students and recent graduates are never posted to those sites. Why? Most employers don’t know about them and they can be hard and time consuming to use. So, use those sites but don’t stop there. Also use job search sites like College Recruiter, which typically has about a million part-time, seasonal, internship, and entry-level jobs advertised on its site. Did I tell you that College Recruiter already has 1,795 internships advertised on its site? Oh, yeah, I did. Did you search them yet?
5. Attend career fairs. Quite frankly, I’m not a huge fan because the expectations of the employers are often poorly aligned with those of the students. Employer representatives typically attend career fairs because they’re coerced by their bosses, their career service office partners, or both. Their disinterest shows, and they make it worse by refusing to accept paper resumes and telling you to go to their career sites if you want to apply. You could have done that from home, right? But they’re great places to network (see #3) and learn what it is really like to work for a company if you happen to run across a representative who likes to talk and maybe isn’t as discrete as they should be.
6. Search and apply to jobs. Seems kind of obvious, right? But you’d be amazed at how many candidates don’t apply to enough jobs, apply to the wrong ones, or do a terrible job of applying the ones they are qualified for. If you’re an elite student at an elite school or otherwise have some exceptional qualities, aim high by applying to the most sought-after internships, such as 20 top internships listed below. For everyone else, and that’s almost everyone, the hard truth is that you’re just going to have to try harder. But, if it helps, remember the joke about what you call a doctor who graduates at the bottom of their class from a third-rate medical school. The answer is doctor. Most employers for most jobs feel the same way about interns and new grads. They care far more that you went to college than your major. They care far more about your major than your school. And they care far more about your school than your grades or whether you had a sexy internship or just successfully completed an internship, preferably for them.
7. Create a job. Whether it’s a gig employment opportunity driving folks around or doing their grocery shopping for them or starting a small business in college like I did, don’t discount this option. But if you find yourself uttering, “I just need a good idea”, move on. The good idea is the least of your problems. Executing that good idea is FAR harder and FAR less exciting.
8. Get experience. The entire point of an internship program for the employer is to convert those interns into permanent hires upon graduation. If they don’t, their internship program is a failure. Similarly, the entire point of interning is to get an offer to become a permanent employee upon graduation and then to accept that offer. If you don’t, your internship was a failure. Well, maybe not a complete failure, but not as much of a success as it should have been.

So, back to the top internship programs. What are they? I thought you’d never ask:

1. Google
2. Apple
3. Microsoft
4. Tesla
5. Facebook
6. Goldman Sachs
7. Amazon
8. J.P. Morgan
9. SpaceX
10. The Walt Disney Company
11. Nike
12. Morgan Stanley
13. IBM
14. Deloitte
15. Berkshire Hathaway
16. Intel
17. ESPN
18. Mercedes-Benz
19. The Boston Consulting Group
20. Spotify

— Source: Vault

Author: Kate-Madonna Hindes

“Investing in entry-level workers creates greater job stability and more opportunities for advancement for employees, contributing to a more economically vibrant society.” (Rockefeller Foundation)

Every single day, new relationships are forming, and interns are turning into full-time employees. Across thousands of different companies, H.R. and recruiting departments are making long-term investments for maximum growth and profitability. Smart companies are taking note while searching for interns to see if they have the qualities they are looking for in full-time employees.

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A handshake. It seems so simple. So cordial. So harmless. Unless it is a job posted to Handshake. Maybe. Sometimes. Allow me to explain.

Today’s Community Digest e-newsletter from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) included a question from Shannon Schwaebler, Director of Career Services at Northeastern State University. She asked if her fellow subscribers, “would be open to sharing their policies for approving employer accounts through Handshake. We were forwarded this Inside Higher Ed article and want to make sure we have adequate policies in place to avoid this happening. We currently have processes we go through for 3rd party recruiters, utilize the trust score, etc. but are curious if anyone has written out processes they are proud of that we could take a look at. Our office wants to make sure there aren’t things we aren’t considering through the process that could be dangerous to our students.”

Hmmmm. What’s this article that Shannon references? Well, I bet that most of the subscribers didn’t open the e-newsletter at all and most of those who did only skimmed it and so missed a nugget that could potentially upend a key way that students and recent graduates of one-, two-, and four-year colleges find part-time, seasonal, internship, and entry-level jobs. Perhaps a little context would be of benefit here. Continue Reading

Almost since job boards existed, they’ve partnered together to share job content. One job board may have an excess number of candidate traffic in one area while a second may have an excess number of job posting ads in the same area. A real win-win can be created if the first sends its candidates to the second in return for a share of the revenue the second receives from its employer customer.

Unfortunately for the publisher — the site with excess candidate traffic — these backfill deals often took on the form of API calls, meaning that all of the jobs from the advertiser — the site with excess demand from employers — appeared at the bottom of the publisher’s search results. The publisher may have five jobs that match the interests of the candidate but their search results page would end up showing those five jobs plus hundreds of others from the advertiser.

Even worse was that the advertiser’s brand was typically adjacent to the jobs and the candidate would be sent to the advertiser’s site to register and, perhaps, apply to the job. To the candidate, the experience was searching for a job on the first job board, finding a potential match on the search results page, clicking, and going to a second job board. That created, at best, confusion for many job seekers. Were they at the employer’s site? Why were they being asked to register again? Was registering the same as applying? Continue Reading

Nurses. Year-after-year, we hear from hospitals, doctors’ offices, and other organizations how frustrated they are in trying to hire nurses, whether they are entry-level, recent graduates or have years of experience.

Before I dig into some suggestions for how any organization can hire more nurses, let’s first examine whether the underlying premise of a shortage is even true. Well, it’s true. “Currently there are nearly three million jobs for registered nurses, and there are more than 2.9 million licensed RNs, which doesn’t seem like a significant shortage,” said Joe Dunmire, executive director of Qualivis. “But 21 percent of licensed RNs are not engaged in patient care, which makes the actual deficit nearly 700,000.” To make that worse, Qualivis expects that there will be more than a million RN vacancies by 2024, which is more than twice the deficit of the last major nursing shortage.

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