#truLondon Discussion on How to Recruit College Students and Grads

Last week I had the good fortune to be able to participate in the eighth truLondon unconference. What’s an unconference? Well, if you’ve ever been to a conference for recruiters and other human resource professionals then you can picture the typical presentation room with rows of chairs for attendees and the presenter at the front of the room with her trusty podium, microphone, name badge, and PowerPoint presentation. None of that is anywhere to be seen in an unconference put on by Globaltru.

Bill Boorman, Aki Kakko, and Craig Fisher are the principals of the tru conferences, which are spreading across the globe faster than guppies reproduce and likely are the world’s largest series of recruiting events. Just about every week there’s a tru conference in cities such as Sydney, Dublin, Seattle, New York, Helsinki, Toronto, and London. Last week’s unconference was at the University of Westminster in London and attended by about 150 organizers, track leaders, and attendees. The agenda was thrown out the window before the conference started and we immediately descended into what Bill affectionately refers to as “organized chaos.” There were six classrooms with one being set up as a mini studio for Kelly Services’ The Talent Project from which they broadcast via Internet livestreaming a series of discussions.

One of the discussions was about how best to recruit college and university students and recent graduates. Lance Richards of Kelly and I were tapped to lead the discussion. Joining the discussion were:

• Belinda Johnson, owner of Worklab;
• Mona Wehbe, senior global content manager at Kelly Services;
• Holly Fawcett, digital marketing manager at Social Talent; and
• Mike Sandiford, sales director for Joberate.

Our group was at times irreverent, at times humorous, but most of the time serious.  I think that we did a pretty good job of discussing many of the major issues facing not just employers in the U.S. but employers across the world as well as the students and recent graduates who are the other half of the equation.

After the discussion, Lance and I had an opportunity to spend a couple of minutes (2 minutes 28 seconds, to be exact) summing up the conversation.

Intrigued? CollegeRecruiter.com has partnered with Globaltru to bring to your doorstep:

• #truCollegeRecruiter NYC on Monday, December 9th at the Ernst & Young Times Square headquarters;
• #truCollegeRecruiter Atlanta on Wednesday, December 11th at the Matrix Resources headquarters; and
• #truCollegeRecruiter Dallas on Friday, December 13th at a sweet location which cannot yet be identified.