Ted Bauer is a contributing author to College Recruiter

By Ted Bauer, contributing author to College Recruiter

This headline from October 2015 in Harvard Business Review says it all: “Firms are wasting millions recruiting on only a few college campuses.”

We’ve seen this for years, especially among the EPS companies across investment banks, management consulting firms, and law firms. There are “target” campuses and then there’s “everyone else.” While you might get some amazingly high-quality people (good!), overall the process has a lot of waste, financially and in terms of potential burnout for your recruiting team.

There’s a better way. Ever seen the stat that it took 35 years to construct the federal highway system, but Facebook reached 500 million users in six years? It’s an obvious stat, sure — but it speaks to the amazing power of digital to both connect and scale.

No matter how you approach digital vs. in-person, your goal should be to maximize your ROI from your college recruiting efforts. To do that, you might need to move around some budget buckets: less on-campus and more interactive/digital/social/job board work.

Ted Bauer is a contributing author to College Recruiter

By Ted Bauer, contributing author to College Recruiter

Diversity is a complicated topic, especially in this modern political climate where it seems like many are trying to define other groups as the enemy. It’s also semantically complicated — it means many different things to many different people. Some think of it as skin color, some as gender, some along socioeconomic lines. It varies.

What’s more — diversity and inclusion are actually very different concepts, although they’re not often treated as such. Your efforts at diverse recruiting need to differentiate between the two ideas. Continue Reading

Ted Bauer is a contributing author to College Recruiter

By Ted Bauer, contributing author to College Recruiter

Goldman Sachs has long been considered a king of on-campus recruiting.

Don’t get us wrong: they still do it, and they’re still aggressive around a few campuses. But recently they’ve shifted budget over to interactive, digital, social, and job boards more so — all in the interest of maximizing their college recruiting ROI. Continue Reading

Ted Bauer is a contributing author to College Recruiter

We tend to think of diversity in very specific ways, using even more specific terms…but there’s oftentimes layers and layers of nuance we’re missing. Have you ever considered narcissism in hiring, for example? Cue this study:

“A job interview is one of the few social situations where narcissistic behaviors such as boasting actually create a positive impression,” said Del Paulhus, Psychology Professor at the University of British Columbia and the study’s lead author. “Normally, people are put off by such behavior, especially over repeated exposure.” The research noted that “narcissists tended to talk about themselves, make eye contact, joke around and ask the interviewers more questions. As a result, the study found that people rated narcissists as more attractive candidates for the position.”

That’s not good. You need to be thinking more and more about your diversity recruiting efforts, on a variety of spectrums.

One of the most effective operational ways to do that is by diversifying your recruitment funnel. You do that through shifting methods — move away from on-campus and more to online, for example. There’s a concern that online candidates aren’t as “vetted” as face-to-face candidates, but that can be overcome.

Ted Bauer is a contributing author to College Recruiter

By Ted Bauer, contributing author to College Recruiter

As a smaller business, what you need is effective talent. That, coupled with strong decision-making and the right technological assets, will help you get competitive with your bigger in-industry rivals.

If you lack the talent, though, everything that comes next usually isn’t that successful. The problem, of course, is that traditional methods of getting talent — especially young talent, which (truth be told) can be gotten cheaper and developed — cost money. Doing on-campus college recruiting involves asset production, plane fares, hotel rooms, and other costs.

As a result, many companies — SMBs to enterprises like Goldman Sachs and Lockheed Martin — are shifting resources away from on-campus recruiting and into virtual/interactive recruiting. Continue Reading

Ted Bauer is a contributing author to College Recruiter

By Ted Bauer, contributing author to College Recruiter

We all know diversity needs to be a priority in recruiting, but many of us struggle with this daily.

There are best practices all over the Internet for diversity recruiting — Harvard has a particularly good one — and there are numerous lists of good companies for diversity, including Black Enterprise’s version and Fortune’s version.

There are organizations out there doing diversity recruiting properly, and here’s the central thing all of them have in common: they diversify (logically) their pipelines. If you’re predominantly on-campus, then you’re predominantly going to get the types of students on that campus. But if you’re on-campus and using digital tools and job boards, you can attract a wider grouping. Then, from a numbers perspective and a talent perspective, you’re set up for more success. Continue Reading

Ted Bauer is a contributing author to College Recruiter

By Ted Bauer, contributing writer to College Recruiter

A year ago at the Reinventing America Summit, one session was on “Winning The Big Talent Game.” (The sub-title of the corresponding Forbes article was “It’s not about snacks and scooters.”)

Kip Wright, SVP of Manpower North America, had a sobering thought at this event: “Do you, every month, look at your financial plan? Of course,” he said. “How many of you spend months looking at your talent plan? We’ve got to fundamentally think very selfishly and aggressively about how we manage our talent.”

We do. And if you’re a smaller company, this is even more relevant — because your resources may be limited compared to some of your enterprise competitors. If you have better people, you’ll win those key market share/partner battles — but there’s a belief that you need to break the bank to get better people. You don’t. Continue Reading

Ted Bauer is a contributing author to College Recruiter

By Ted Bauer, contributing writer to College Recruiter

There are organizations out there doing diversity recruiting properly, and here’s the central thing all of them have in common: they diversify (logically) their pipelines.

If you’re predominantly on-campus, then you’re predominantly going to get the types of students on that campus. But if you’re on-campus and using digital tools and job boards, you can attract a wider grouping. Then, from a numbers perspective and a talent perspective, you’re set up for more success. Continue Reading