BrainstormConsultingBlog

9 Topics to Include in Your Campus Recruiting Business Case

2011-12-16T08:02:00.000-08:00

This is Part 2 of...
5 Steps to Developing a World-Class Campus Recruiting Program

In Part 1 of this article, I described the importance of building a solid business case for campus recruiting. This is the first step in developing a world-class campus recruiting program. Your business case plays a vital role in helping you get the resources you need for a successful program. Here are nine topics you may wish to research and include in your business case:

1. The demographic shift

This is probably the most compelling (and perhaps obvious) argument for investing in campus recruiting today. A Google search will quickly provide you with plenty of evidence of the aging population, declining birth rates, and the fact that fewer workers are going to have to support more retirees. There is plenty of evidence (and those who debate the opposite as well) that this will lead to shortage of workers within the next few years.

But that’s not the only aspect of the demographic shift that may affect your company. January 1st of this year (2011) marked the date that the first baby boomers turned 65 – the traditional retirement age. Most companies are sitting on a potential mass exodus when your senior employees decide they can afford to retire. What are the projections for your organization? Obviously retirees can’t be immediately replaced with new grads, but foresight is required to put your organization in a good position to fill future gaps.

Seek out national data, industry-specific data and then complement that with information about your own organization. Include labour market details specific to your industry. Data is best, but opinion pieces and case studies will help support your case.

2. Eye on the competition

Compile evidence of what your competitors are doing in terms of campus recruiting. Is this your opportunity to get ahead of competitors by attracting the best young talent? Or are you in severe catch-up mode? Either way, learn your position among your competitors and build your argument around that.

3. Future workforce

The world of work is changing: how it gets done, where it gets done, and who does it. Young employees are keen and able to work in collaborative work environments; they know how to connect and communicate with others around the world through a variety of technologies; and they may adapt more easily to how businesses will operate in the future. Understand how the changing workplace is affecting your business and add details to your business case about how new grads can support that change.

4. Building diversity

Simply put: if your business is trying to re-balance its workforce to reflect the diversity of the population, campus recruiting can be one of the most effective ways to attract and recruit your target audience. Ensure that your efforts, and your business case, align with your organization’s diversity efforts (and you may even be able to acquire support and resources from that area of HR).

5. Understanding changing times

The world outside your organization is changing in ways that older workers sometimes don’t grasp. Compile information about how your business is expected to change and make the case that students in the programs you recruit from are being trained for these changing times.

6. Creativity and innovation

Few will argue that young talent can bring creativity and innovation to an organization. If this is something your organization values – it may even be built into your organizational vision – be sure to demonstrate alignment with campus recruiting.

7. ROI – corporate examples

Seek out case studies of successful organization and articles by respected business leaders that endorse the case for recruiting and “developing your own” talent straight out of campus. It may not be “data”, but it can be persuasive.

8. Future customers

If your organization directly serves or sells to consumers, there is likely an effort to ensure that your employees are also a reflection of your customer base. Make the case that it takes young people to understand, market, and sell to young consumers.

9. They “get” technology

Never before have we been in a position where all young new hires have wealth of know-how that is in demand by more experienced workers: how to use new technologies. Develop opportunities for younger workers to share their knowledge of these technologies and add this as evidence to your business case.

Collecting this information may seem like a lot of work – but unless you’ve been asked for it right away, you can work on this over time. Always be on the lookout for new statistics, hiring trends, and case studies to support your argument.

That’s it for Step 1. The next step (coming soon!) is to evaluate your recruiting programs, processes and people to help you determine the highest priorities in your recruitment strategy.

What else do you include in your business case for campus recruiting?

If you would like to be notified of new blog entries or upcoming events/programs from Brainstorm Strategy Group, please join our email list; connect with me on Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahambfdonald; or follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/grahamdonald.

5 Steps to Developing a World-Class Campus Recruiting Program (Part 1)

2011-12-04T20:30:00.000-08:00

In my next several articles I am going to discuss five steps involved in developing and implementing a truly strategic campus recruiting program. This information is also the subject matter I have been presenting at the Campus Recruiting Forums this fall. If you can, consider joining us at the last Forums of the year in San Francisco on December 12th (www.CampusRecruitingForum.com) and Waterloo on December 15th (www.CampusRecruiting.ca).

These are the five steps:

Build a solid business case
Evaluate your current programs, processes and people
Create your campus recruitment strategic plan
Focus on your Employer Value Proposition
Implement

Your process does not necessarily have to occur in this sequence. Chances are that you are in the midst of implementation right now – and it’s unlikely that you can take a lot of time away from that to prepare your business case or develop your plan. There’s no right or wrong way to do this, but completing the first four steps before your next recruiting cycle will dramatically enhance your success at implementation.

My approach to this process is based on two fundamental truisms:

Failure to plan is planning to fail; and,
That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially. (Karl Pearson)

Step 1: Building Your Business Case

Building a solid business case for investing resources into campus recruiting is the first step towards developing a truly strategic program. Even if you’ve been “thrown” into the job and told that you already have a clear mandate, the sooner you can get to work on building a solid business case the better. For one thing, it will help you better understand the needs and opportunity that support your organization’s investment. It will also provide some clarity that will support better decision-making when it comes to the many choices you will have to make regarding marketing, target school selection, program types (co-op, leadership development, internship), and so on.

Regardless of your situation, there will inevitably come a time when you’ll be asked: “why exactly are we doing this?” In fact, even if your current support comes from the CEO level, there will undoubtedly be those in your organization – people you rely on – who will not be completely convinced of the importance of your work. This could be your boss or your boss’s boss; your direct reports; hiring managers; colleagues in the marketing department; others in HR; recent hires you want to bring to campus; and many others. And of course, if there are leadership changes, you may find yourself having to defend your costs there too – or risk starting from scratch!

Part of your job is to ensure clarity among others. Your colleagues may think there is an endless supply of young talent or they may feel threatened, or concerned, by new hiring on campus when there are layoffs elsewhere in the business. Almost certainly, the colleagues you need support from are very busy with other tasks and responsibilities. The reasons for recruiting on campus may seem obvious to you, but often they are not; everyone deserves the opportunity to see the case clearly laid out. And remember, anecdotes are not data. You will need both.

Building your business case is a continuous process. You can continue to add data, case studies, and competitive intelligence to your business case on an on-going basis – the stronger your case, the more secure your role and your potential to expand your programs.

In my next article I will share eight topics that you should include in your business case.

Of course, if you’d rather discuss all five steps in person (along with many other topics at the conference), join us an upcoming Campus Recruiting Forum:

San Francisco, December 12th (www.CampusRecruitingForum.com)
Waterloo, December 15th (www.CampusRecruiting.ca)

The #1 Reason You Do NOT Need a Social Media Strategy.

2011-11-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

You’ve heard the buzz in campus recruiting and the buzz is: social media. The only other catchphrase competing as aggressively for your attention is: Gen Y. Your task is to attract Gen Y and you know Gen Y lives on social media and therefore… could it be any more obvious? You need to create a presence through social media. But you know social media is complex – there are so many decisions and choices to be made (Which channels? What voice? Whose responsibility? What frequency? Whose budget!?). So there can be no doubt: before you get started you must develop a well-planned strategy.

But most employers do NOT need a social media strategy.

Why not? Simply put: because they aren’t ready!

There are many reasons that a business may not be ready to develop a social media recruitment strategy. A big one can be a lack of buy-in from those who control the resources to make it successful – often because they question if it is really necessary and how success will be measured. Another reason can be the recruitment team’s lack of expertise – even if they are all over social media in their personal lives, they may not be ready to implement social media in their professional roles.

But the biggest reason that many employers are not yet ready for social media has nothing to do with social media at all. It is the simple fact that they have lower-hanging fruit to pick. That is, there are simpler challenges with better-understood solutions that should be addressed first.

Campus recruiting has many moving parts: campus events, coordinating hiring managers, making effective use of co-op programs, training interviewers, campus relations, projecting hiring needs, ensuring management buy-in, understanding today’s students, campus ambassador programs, developing an effective employment value proposition, on-boarding, an effective website, effective advertising, and so on.

To take advantage of the opportunities on campus, all these pieces need to be aligned and used effectively. Somewhere in that long list (and the list goes on), there is almost certainly something that can be fixed or improved more easily. That’s the low-hanging fruit you want to pick first.

Developing and implementing a social media strategy can and should be a vital part of your attraction strategy (which is itself a part of your recruitment strategy). There is plenty of guidance and support available to make it a success – but it does require the development of internal expertise and most likely the support of external resources and expertise also. It doesn’t have to be intimidating, but it is probably not your low-hanging fruit.

Social media will develop interest, start conversations, and expand your candidate pool. But the first step is to do an assessment (we call it a Campus Recruitment Audit) to make sure you are ready for success when it comes. When you’ve done your assessment and addressed your major challenges, then you’ll be ready to take on social media. (And we’ll be happy to help you when you do!)

Join the conversation and sharing of expertise regarding campus recruitment program audits, social media strategies, and campus recruitment best practices at the Campus Recruiting Forums coming to Calgary on November 30th (www.CampusRecruiting.ca), to San Francisco on December 12th (www.CampusRecruitingForum.com) and to Waterloo on December 15th (www.CampusRecruiting.ca).

Are You Measuring Your Quality of Hire?

2010-07-05T16:37:00.001-07:00

Do you know if you are hiring the right people? Does striving to attract students with the highest GPA at the best schools ensure the future success of your organization? Or does it simply result in you giving your campus hires a couple of years of training before they go elsewhere? How do you know?

At the NACE conference in Orlando last month a panel of expert campus recruiters discussed the use of various metrics to evaluate and improve their recruiting. For me, what was most striking was when the facilitator, John Flato of Campus Strategic Partners, asked the audience how many of them measured “quality of hire”. There were about 75 employers in the room and yet only a handful raised their hands. I was so surprised that I posed the same question in my own workshop at the conference the next day – and the results were the same.

To be clear, “quality of hire” refers to the success of your new hires as they progress in their careers in your organization. It doesn’t mean how many other employers wanted them, how well they interviewed, or other assets they demonstrated during the recruiting process. Quality of hire measures whether or not they deliver value to your organization, get promoted, and fit well enough with your culture to want to stay long enough to deliver a great return on your investment.

Tracking cost-per-hire, time-to-hire, job offer acceptance rates, and other data helps to measure whether or not you are “filling seats” efficiently. But these metrics say nothing about whether or not you are actually hiring the right people. Without measuring the quality of hire – the true success of your process – you can’t demonstrate your effectiveness nor learn how to make improvements to your talent attraction and management.

In fact, your metrics may be entirely misleading. Perhaps you should be doubling the value you attribute to your candidates’ extra-curricular activities; perhaps those who interview well are your worst performers. How do you know?

Most employers have failed to design and implement a process to determine whether or not the students and graduates they are hiring are actually the right fit for their organization – and therefore likely to be promoted and make a meaningful impact. Many have no idea how long their new hires stay in the organization or how well they perform in the long term.

But it is quite possible that your “top picks” are failing miserably on the job, or succeeding wonderfully but leaving quickly when they find the work isn’t what they were looking for. Meanwhile, the “second tier” candidates you are hiring may be staying for the long term and excelling on the job. Obviously you’d like to re-vamp your hiring process so that those you have been considering “second tier” become identified quickly as your top candidates. You simply can’t learn this without tracking your quality of hire.

All that is really needed is a process and documentation to track your campus hires as they progress in their careers; access to their performance reviews; their exit interviews if they leave; and the original details from the hiring and interviewing process. This doesn’t have to be difficult, but it is challenging when there is high turnover in the campus recruiting roles – as is the case with many employers. There are tools such as RECSOLU that are designed for campus recruiters and some ATS systems will also facilitate the maintenance of such information.

You can always find ways to cut costs and add more efficiency to the process, but your ability to advance the role of campus recruiting in your organization; gain more resources; a commitment for more hiring; and truly add value is severely limited if you aren’t measuring your quality of hire.

Do you really know who you are?

2010-05-25T20:48:00.001-07:00

In last week’s article I asked if you really know what your target students want and I talked about the importance of focusing in on their key interests when developing your recruitment messaging. But knowing what your target candidates are looking for is only the first step to developing effective brand messaging.

Once you understand what your ideal target candidate wants, it can be tempting to put it on a sign, a website, and your Facebook page: that’s us! That’s what we offer! But unless you have been re-designing your organization around the interests and aspirations of your future young recruits for many years, this is not likely true. So the next step in developing your key brand message is to understand who you really are. More specifically: what is the value you offer to current and potential employees?

This is essentially what is meant by the terms Employer Value Proposition or, my favourite, Unique Recruitment Proposition (URP!).

As you are likely aware, today’s students are sceptical of the messages they see and hear. So if your recruitment messages are anything less than authentic (or simply even contrary to public opinion), they will fall upon deaf ears; or worse, they will be mocked online for all to see. Discovering who you really are is best revealed by conducting research with your recent hires.

This does not have to be a huge undertaking, but it does need to be done objectively and in a manner which invites honest input. (And, generally speaking, today’s students are pretty comfortable expressing their opinions and pointing out opportunities for improvement). You will want to give them an opportunity to provide both open-ended feedback, which may reveal both strengths and weaknesses you hadn’t considered, as well as ranking-type questions in which they evaluate you on the exact same criteria that was used in the research with potential hires.

Ultimately, your goal is to figure out where the interests of your potential candidates (what they want) intersect with the actual experiences of your recent hires (who you are). In the end, you may find that “interesting work” is your target candidates’ first interest but not one of your strengths. In this case, you won’t be able to base your messaging on this aspect of your employment offering. But chances are that some of your real brand (the truth revealed by your young employee survey) will overlap with the interests of your candidates. This overlap will form the basis of your brand communications.

By the way, if you don’t find some points of strong correlation between the interests of your target candidates and experiences of your current employees, then either your “target candidate” criteria is flawed or your work environment needs to change, or both.

Do You Really Know What Students Want?

2010-05-13T18:40:00.000-07:00

At the Campus Recruiting Forum in Vancouver last week, there was a great discussion about the discrepancy between what students want to know about employers and what employers want them to hear.

Experienced campus recruiters know the importance of focusing their marketing on the “What’s In It For Me?” messages, but they often work with (or report to) colleagues who have different ideas about what is most important. As a campus expert, you have to be well prepared to address this issue or risk running an ineffective campaign.

Part of the problem is that as a concept “What’s In It For Me?” can leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths. It sounds horribly self-centred – and the last thing we want to do is hire young people who care about nothing but themselves. So let’s address this first. First of all, it is important to keep in mind that today’s students are far more active in volunteering and community service than any generation before them. It’s one of the accomplishments that the helicopter parents deserve a pat on the back for. In general, today’s students also have a strong sense of equity and fairness. So, in fact, “an opportunity to do good for others” is actually a very compelling “What’s In It For Me?” message.

So if this is not about appealing to selfishness, what is it about?

Quite simply, focusing on “What’s In It For Me?” is about clearly communicating the things that are meaningful and easily understood by the specific target audience. Like it or not, candidates of all ages are looking for what the opportunity will do for them personally, but different people use different filters to interpret the information they hear. In other words, if you tell me that your company is the industry leader for HR practices, I (as an experienced candidate) will have all sorts of ideas about how that might benefit me in terms of compensation, training opportunities, and career progression. But to a new grad, “industry leader” is much less meaningful. It would be far more effective to clearly spell out exactly what this will mean for them in practice.

Even just a few years into our careers we quickly forget the perspective of a student or new grad. We simply no longer recall what it was like to know very little about the workplace. But simple and clear messaging – without any special lingo or jargon – that focuses on students’ priorities, not your company’s, will be highly effective.

As Isabelle Morin of KPMG pointed out in her presentation at last week’s Campus Recruiting Forum, doing this well requires the right research. Your peers will respect and listen to your argument if you come armed with research that shows exactly what students are most interested in.

Keep in mind that what students appear to be less interested in is not necessarily unimportant. Employers are often surprised to hear that environmental policies and social responsibility do not make the “top 10” priorities. But these things are still important to students. However, they may not be as important AND students may also be sceptical of your messaging on these fronts any way. You must be prepared to address these topics, but very few employers can build a distinctive employment brand on them.

So what do students care about? Before I give the general answer based on our research, I’d like to make it clear that we find different answers depending on the target “top students” an employer wishes to attract. The list is different for MBAs than it is for undergrad business students; it’s also different for engineers, arts grads, and computer scientists. Again, if you want to spend your marketing dollars well and maximize your chance at connecting with the candidates that best fit your organization, you need the most pertinent research.

For most students, however, we find the same priorities near the top of the list: interesting work, great people to work with, job security, and work-life balance. The list probably doesn’t surprise you, but I am always intrigued that students make “great people” such a priority when I know so many experienced workers that took decades to realize the real importance of that.

Some are surprised to see “job security” on the list and attribute it to the recession. Certainly this became a higher priority recently, but stability has been very important to graduates for many years. Yes, they may be seen as job surfers but that has a lot more to do with workplaces not measuring up than it does with young people being disloyal (and we have plenty of research to back that up). In this economy, employers have to be prepared to talk about security and stability – after all, your new hires will be buying houses and having families soon.

And finally, it’s worth understanding that “work-life balance” to a new grad may not mean the same thing as it does to you. For one thing, most students are used to working much harder in school (concurrent with a part-time job) than most readers of this article likely did. But also, their highly programmed lives mean they have many interests outside work that they will continue to pursue (including the company sports teams and fund raisers you’ll want them to lead). For them, work-life balance is first and foremost about flexibility. The majority of new grads are women who may want plenty of time to raise families one day (not to mention fathers who may want the same). They also don’t see the logic of spending an hour in rush hour traffic when they can easily work from home until the traffic clears. And they would love the flexibility to take an extended holiday (even if they have to earn the time through reduced pay or extended over-time).

Communicating on the frequency on which your target candidates are listening requires research and carefully listening. It also may mean making a convincing case to your colleagues and providing them the information they need to support you. You can learn a lot more about these subjects at the Campus Recruiting Forum coming to Toronto and Chicago next week (www.CampusRecruitingForum.com). I hope to see you there.

Marketing: Quick Fixes, Tactics and Planning

2010-05-09T22:40:00.000-07:00

At a workshop last week, I spoke at length about the importance of developing your strategic plan before you venture into developing a marketing plan. The topic was marketing career services to students, but many of the concepts apply to employers recruiting students as well. It is far too easy to venture into implementation without sufficient planning. But doing so really says, “I’m in this for the short haul. I’m looking for a quick fix, not a permanent solution.”

Given all the pressure on people to work harder with fewer resources – and often carry the load from a recently vacated position as well – it is understandable that some may leap at the first opportunity to launch a Facebook page, create a LinkedIn Group, or spend money on a new video production. But the best way to reduce your workload in the long run is to do thorough planning first.

Consider this quote from one of the most respected marketing experts, Philip Kotler: “If the marketer does a good job of identifying consumer needs, developing appropriate products, and pricing, distributing, and promoting them effectively, these good wills sell very easily.”

Hopefully, it’s not too hard to see how this translates to marketing either career education or career opportunities to students. Whether you’re an employer trying to hire or a career services professional trying to engage students, if you do your marketing well, the rest will “sell very easily”.

Notice, however, that he has put the process in sequential order. “Promoting” is the last thing you do before you actually engage the students. And yet we are drawn so quickly to promotions. Ask anyone what strategies they are using to attract students these days and you’ll hear all about contests, YouTube videos, email or text campaigns and so on. But these are not really strategies; at best they are tactics. And they can only even be considered tactics if they come from a well-considered plan. Otherwise, they are just quick fixes.

If you are in it for the long haul, then you’ll go back to the beginning of the Kotler quote and start first with “identifying consumer needs”. In other words, develop a truly deep understanding of what the students you are trying to attract really want. Chances are that this information is not readily available. For a recruiter, attracting “students” as a whole means receiving thousands of unwanted applications. Understanding the needs of your target students requires quite a bit more research.

And next comes “developing appropriate products”. For the career services office these are the specific services that are relevant to meet the needs of each target group you are trying to engage. For employers, this is about developing a unique employment value proposition that speaks directly to your ideal candidate. But of course that requires a lot more than developing the right tagline; it means actually being the right fit for your target candidate. (And if you’re not, then you are either picking the wrong target or you need to become a different kind of employer.)

For career services, “pricing” is an issue: what does “free” say about your services? How can you address this? What do you do to prove that you offer value even if your service is so underpriced? For employers, “price” is about much more than salary and benefits. From a marketing point of view, it is really about the whole package of the employment experience – the workplace, the colleagues, the opportunities to grow, and so on. How attractive are you making that “price”?

And finally comes “distribution”. But remember, we’re not at “promotion” yet, so this isn’t about distributing your marketing message, this is about distributing your service or opportunity. For career services this about determining the right mix of delivery through one-on-one advising, workshops, major events, online, and so on. Clearly this is a major piece of work and planning how you will optimize your resources must occur before promotion can begin. I suppose employers could interpret “distribution” a number of ways: work location (does it appeal to your target candidate?); work-life balance and flexible hours; career mobility; or perhaps something else altogether.

Translating these product marketing concepts to the challenge of attracting students to career development or career opportunities should demonstrate one thing above all: if you want to make it easy to engage the right students with as little selling as possible (and who doesn’t?), then there is a lot of research, planning, and work to be done first. Otherwise, every “tactic” will be at best a quick fix – if that.

Should We Reinvent the Workplace for Millennials?

2010-04-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

Millennials have been coddled all their lives and are indecisive because every important decision has been made for them. They are the most medicated youth in history because we’ve given a medical term to every trouble they can come up with. They have the shortest imaginable attention span as they, like crows, pursue the shiniest object that catches their attention. They are disloyal and will quit their job and move into their parents’ basement the moment they are critiqued at work; they also don’t believe in “putting in time” and think they should be promoted every year regardless of their performance. They believe they deserve endless learning opportunities – as if the workplace is just an extension of their education. And, they are so good with technology that they will probably waste most of their workday on social media.

Therefore, your organization should bend over backwards and turn all your existing talent management processes, work culture and schedules, benefits programs, etc., on their ear to accommodate them. Right?

So, go to it – set up a meeting to tell your managers about all the changes that are coming. Time is running out and they have a lot of re-inventing and accommodating to do! Some of them have kids; they’ll understand how important this is. Won’t they? Oh, and most of what these Millennials want from the workplace is the same as what the Boomers running your company wanted back in the 60s and 70s, but never got. However, I’m sure they’ll be happy to help these undeserving youngsters get it now. After all, they must be familiar with the concepts (if memory serves).

Okay, so you’ve probably determined that this would not be the best approach. And although it is greatly exaggerated, it reflects the feeling I got while watching an interview with one of the many Gen Y “gurus” recently. He was discussing the radical changes required to attract and retain Millennials. He insisted that you don’t recruit Gen Y - you “engage” them. And you don’t “supervise” them - you “collaborate” with them. And by the way, social networks will be the business “operating system” of the future. Perhaps these statements will all be true one day, but this kind of talk might not go over too well back at the office. It’s no wonder that some older employees feel resentment. Perhaps your colleagues don’t believe all of the nasty stereotypes I described above, but chances are that they entertain at least some of these thoughts.

Now I must confess: I have great admiration for this generation and I don’t pay much heed to the stereotypes I’ve recited in the first paragraph. I firmly believe that all of the highly-invested parenting, technological changes, multi-cultural experience, open access to information, engagement with elders, and social and political changes of the past 30 years have produced a generation of young employees with admirable work values. We also know that they are more generous with their time as volunteers and share a great concern for those less fortunate than themselves; they are concerned with the environment and being socially responsible; they are optimistic through trying times (9-11, the war on terror, and even the current recession); and, although they may be less engaged in formal politics, they are highly interested in improving the society we live in.

Although there are some small truths in the stereotypes I introduced this with, I believe that what this generation really wants from the workplace is both achievable and very appealing to the vast majority of workers of all ages. The challenge is in engaging your leaders and colleagues to embrace change and at the same time tap into the strengths of tomorrow’s workers. It can help to share with them the many reasons for recruiting new graduates – from demographics to talent shortages to the need integrate “digital natives”; but that will only take you so far in changing your co-workers’ attitudes.

Try this exercise: take out a piece of paper and make two columns with the headings: “Hate to have” on the left and “Love to have” on the right. Now put these concepts in the appropriate column based on your own interests: great people to work with; flexible work schedules; a supportive manager; interesting work; personal developmental opportunities; a clear career path; an opportunity to have a positive impact on others; and, job security. I’m guessing that the right hand column is pretty full. Now imagine a great employer (it doesn’t have to be your company) and ask yourself which of these things should be achievable. Put an “A” beside each of the items that should – one day – be the norm of a great employer.

You’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this. What you want, what your colleagues want, and what Millennials wants is very similar. The changes needed to attract and retain today’s young workers are the same changes that will make your workplace a great workplace for everyone. It’s also worth pointing out that the percentage of women in most workplaces is growing rapidly (as is the percentage of women graduating today). Chances are that the women in your workplace feel even more strongly about these changes.

So if you are having trouble convincing your organization to embrace change for the sake of Millennials, focus on getting them to embrace change for their own benefit. Once you’re on that track, you can introduce the positive aspects of engaging Millennials in your workplace – not for what the workplace offers Millennials, but for what Millennials can offer your people and your organization.

What Does it Take to Promise a Career?

2010-04-21T19:32:00.000-07:00

In my previous blog post, I discussed the topic of career services offices providing guarantees as a means of building credibility for their programs and services. This caused a flurry of discussions on various LinkedIn Groups, primarily focused on the idea of guaranteeing jobs (to which most were strongly opposed). Although guaranteeing jobs was not the focus of my article, I did provoke the discussion by mentioning the University of Regina’s recent launch of the “UR Guarantee” which promises a great career after graduation. By no means am I suggesting that others should copy this strategy, but I am interested in the implications of this guarantee for the field of campus career development. What can we learn from this strategy?

First a little background.

The UR Guarantee (details are here) is built on the strength of the university's co-operative education program and commitment to experiential learning, and promises all students who complete the guarantee requirements a career-oriented job within six months of graduation. If students don’t get a good job, then they are entitled to an additional year of undergraduate study at no cost. Participation in the guarantee is optional and to qualify students must participate in a variety of career development activities each year during their studies.

The program was launched last fall, so the school won’t know if it attracts more students for a while and they won’t have students graduating with the guarantee for a few more years. Here are a few more important points:

This is primarily a recruitment initiative driven by anticipated enrolment challenges
It is being implemented from the senior administration down with the president leading the campaign
It has been accompanied by a significant investment in additional career development staffing and resources

It’s worth noting that with 12,000 students, U of R is the smaller and lesser known of the two universities in the province; it draws very few students from outside the province and is facing a declining demographic in terms of potential students in the region in years to come. It is also in a province that has weathered the recession extremely well in terms of youth employment.

So what’s a small university that is not well known with a declining enrolment base and great employment programs to do? How about addressing almost every student’s number one priority when considering post-secondary studies: careers!

On one level, this new initiative is so obvious I almost hesitate to call it brilliant. (And I know some are going to call me crazy for referring to this as “brilliant.”) And I can hear a few of the objections:

Isn’t this just a marketing ploy? (Yes, it is, but one that promotes career development for all students.)
How can you believe every student will get a job? (You can’t, but you can promise to help those who don’t succeed right away.)
Doesn’t this take us back to the dark ages of “placement”? (Securing a great career is still the students’ own responsibility. If four years of engagement in career development activities and experiential education doesn’t give them the tools they need then…)
What about the “unemployable” students we all have but don’t talk about? (UR would much rather give them extra attention than pretend they don’t exist.)

Haven’t we all been yelling from the rooftops for years that universities need to pay more attention to students’ career development? Isn’t this a great way to ensure investment in career services and experiential programs? And isn’t this bound to help other schools understand the value of investing in this kind of support? Sounds to me like it’s good for everyone – except possibly those schools that have to compete with U of R for new students.

It’s not really my goal to promote the UR Guarantee; nor am I suggesting that other schools should adopt this strategy. My interest is in looking at what this program implies for other.

This is what I take from the existence of the UR Guarantee:

When confronted with enrolment challenges, universities that take their planning and research seriously must address the fact that no outcome is more important to prospective students than their career opportunities.
A real commitment to student career development requires leadership from the president on down and from all corners of the campus.
This program clearly recognizes that students’ opportunities for career success are significantly enhanced by integrating career development throughout the post-secondary experience (and one school believes that strongly enough to invest in it up front and risk expense later if it doesn’t work).
For a university itself to feel confident that it can deliver on the promise of a successful career outcome, it must offer every student comprehensive programming delivered in all years of study.

Whether or not a university offers a guarantee, or even actively promotes career outcomes, the promise of a better career and a higher salary is implicit in the recruitment process at every school.

Should Career Services Offer a Guarantee?

2010-02-16T09:31:00.000-08:00

Guarantees come standard on most products we buy: whether it’s a new iPod or a box of cereal. If we’re not satisfied, we can return it. Guarantees on services are much less common, but they do exist. Some ski resorts and amusement parks offer guarantees, for instance. Guarantees convey a sense of quality and reliability and also reassure customers that if the product or service does not work as promised, the customer will be compensated. So if you are confident in the quality of work you do in Career Services, shouldn’t you offer a guarantee?

Three years ago I developed a workshop on the topic of marketing to students for Career Services offices. I presented it several times through webinars and also at the NACE Conference in New York. Not surprisingly, the topic attracted a very large audience each time it was presented because engaging students in their career development is both consistently challenging and a key focus for Career Services. The workshop covered several different key topics related to achieving credibility among students, ensuring that what you are offering really speaks to students, and so on. I also posed a challenge to participants: offer your students a service guarantee.

A guarantee is, in essence, an agreement between the customer and the provider. When I buy an iPod, I promise not to throw it down the stairs and if I do, I don’t expect the guarantee to apply. Similarly, with a service guarantee it is assumed that I will do my part: if I don’t give my accountant the right information, I can’t expect her to give me the right results. So a guarantee in Career Services would require a certain level of duty and commitment on the part of students.

Since a guarantee in a Career Services office represents an agreement between the student and Career Services, both are expected to do their part or the guarantee is null and void. Your statement of guarantee needs to specifically state what is expected of your students. Given this basis – the understanding that to “qualify” for the guarantee your students must invest a certain amount of effort – you may feel more confident about raising the bar of commitment that you are willing to make.

But what happens if your students do their part and still don’t get the result you promise? There’s usually no payment to refund, and more importantly, you can’t give them back the time they have invested. But you can do a number of things they will value greatly, the best of which is to listen to them and respond in a helpful way. Give them a meeting with the director, heap additional support and service upon them. Go the distance for them and they will become stronger allies than some of your most successful students. Again, these details must be described in your guarantee statement.

A first step in offering a service guarantee may be to start out with it as an option for just a certain group of students or a specific program. Select one of your best programs and create a guarantee or “service agreement” around it. Offer students the option of signing up for that agreement and explain clearly what is expected of them and what they can expect from you in return. Just imagine what it could do for their confidence in you, themselves, and the potential outcomes of your program!

To be clear, I am not suggesting that you guarantee your students a job – not unless you believe that that would be both achievable and consistent with your mandate. However, if your goal is to support students’ career development; or to create opportunities for them to connect with employers; or to develop job search skills, those are probably the kinds of things that you could be guaranteeing.

Offering a service guarantee can go a long way to increasing your credibility with students as true experts with whom they should invest their time. At the same time, it can increase students’ commitment to the process and thereby lead to better outcomes.

But what about the idea of guaranteeing students jobs upon graduation? That may not be a suitable offer for every Career Services office – at least not without the commitment of your entire institution. But is it necessarily an absurd idea? That’s the guarantee that the University of Regina launched last September (http://www.urconnected.ca/urguarantee) - but further discussion of that will have to wait until a future article.

Split Personality: Students Want Both Change and Stability

2010-02-02T01:05:00.000-08:00

Students want change

Today is an appropriate day to discuss one of the greatest fears students have about their first real job: boredom. At least, it’s an appropriate day for those who are old enough to remember the movie Ground Hog Day. If you haven’t seen it, all you need to know is that every morning – day after day – Bill Murray wakes up to discover that during his sleep he has gone back in time and he has to re-live the same day, February 2nd, all over again. It’s a great representation of what students fear if they accept your job offer: that their tenth day, their one hundredth day, and their one thousandth day will be exact replicas of their first day.

Of course, when that first day on the job arrives, they will likely fear many other things much more: Is this the right building? Will I remember people’s names? Am I really qualified for this? Did I remember to get dressed this morning? But during the hiring process when they are evaluating opportunities and imagining life after graduation, they will definitely be wondering about what will make their work day interesting.

The best way to address this – like so much of the recruiting process – is to get personal. Websites, brochures, and presentations are full of “a day-in-the-life” synopses designed to give candidates a full picture of the employment experience. This is a good start, but it’s nothing compared to specific personal examples: “Today, for instance, I am here meeting with you; this morning I worked on developing a new strategy which I am excited to share with my colleagues; this afternoon I’m visiting our web designers to review the site; and tomorrow we’re having our first meeting to plan our charity stair climb.” There’s no need to exaggerate, just tell it like it is: “But I have to admit Tuesday was frustrating: we had to kill two hours waiting for approval for…” It’s all about making it personal and keeping it authentic.

Start with the ideal scenario: a direct conversation with each potential candidate. Then look for ways to make the other ways you connect (your website, presentations, student ambassadors, etc.) as close to that personal conversation as possible. And while you of course need to talk about the job itself, don’t forget about the human interaction, the humour, the charity drives, the learning, and the personal growth that are part of your organization. All of these have the potential to create an emotional connection that will outstrip an intellectual one any day.

Of course, your own job may be nothing like the ones you are hiring for. That’s why you involve colleagues: so they can share their true stories of the roles you are trying to fill. And keep in mind that what is interesting to you will be different for others. The day of an accountant may seem dull to you, but the intellectual stimulation and challenge will be intriguing to the right candidate. Overselling or underselling the position may attract too many or too few candidates and will definitely create retention problems when the role doesn’t match your new hire’s expectations.

Students hate change

As you’ve likely read elsewhere, students value advancement (lateral or vertical promotion) and opportunities to learn and develop very highly. This is partly because it demonstrates growth and change. It is also because, as we have established, they want variety in their work.

So students want change. Well, sort of. They also hate change.

For several years now we’ve been asking students in surveys and discussion groups what they think of the idea of staying with one employer for their whole life. The results are shocking to most: more than half say they like the idea. They don’t consider it likely – after all, we’ve told them it won’t happen – but they like the idea of it. How is this possible? Aren’t all Gen Yers disloyal and job-happing mad? Well, no. (Not at all, in fact, but I’ll focus on the decimation of those myths another time.) Will they leave a job they don’t like – or an employer who fails to deliver on the promises made in the hiring process – even if it means moving into their parents’ basement while they find a new one? If they can afford it, absolutely.

Many students, however, want stability in their careers because their main focus (at least as they view it before starting their careers) is on their life outside work. It seems remarkable to think of young people focusing on job security, but the truth is that dating, marrying, home buying, and baby-making all offer enough change without worrying about changing jobs. I hear again and again about their disdain for job hunting and their desire to be part of an organization, a work community, and with a group of colleagues with whom the can build long-term relationships. The opportunity for advancement, to gain more expertise, the promise of a dynamic career and company loyalty (yes, loyalty!) can keep many students at one company for a long time – perhaps for their entire working lives.

These two things – variety in the day-to-day and stability over time – are not really contradictory, but the differences are important. Bringing these two together so that candidates can imagine staying for the long term as they move through different experiences and roles is the key to attracting – and keeping – candidates who best fit your organization.

New Reitman’s site demonstrates some career page best practices

2009-11-12T16:56:00.000-08:00

Reitman's (Canada) Ltd. has launched a new website (www.reitmans.ca) and its career pages demonstrate some best practices for recruiters. There are no earth-shattering new technologies involved, but a clean and simple focus on the things that matter most to candidates. It’s amazing how often some of these basics go missing from recruitment sites. One important shortcoming, however, is the site’s failure to clearly define a Unique Recruitment Proposition.

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the site from a recruitment point of view is the high profile given to “Careers” on the home page – it appears in the main menu, holds one of three “permanent” spots on the page, and is one of the three major themes represented by the rotating feature images: “Careers” is given equal billing to “About Reitman’s” and “Financial & Media”.

The careers pages themselves are very easy to navigate and cover all of the key elements clearly. Too often, career web pages miss some of these key elements or make them much too difficult to find. Here are some of the features:

Quick access to postings and clear delineation between corporate opportunities and in-store positions
Testimonials/profiles with great photos of 10 employees in a wide variety of roles
Details that focus on "what's in it for me" in terms of rewards, personal development, and work-life balance – all important benefits to students entering retail
Easy access to a list of upcoming recruitment events
A helpful list of FAQs that address the questions Reitman’s has, no doubt, heard many times; it’s great to see applicants’ concerns about the online process so well addressed
A page specific to students and graduates that addresses their unique interests
“Share” links that allow visitors to easily share pages on the site via email, Facebook, Twitter, and so on

As I said, the site covers all the basics well. One more thing that could add a lot of impact would be some videos portraying the real-life experience of working there.

Where Reitman’s career pages fall short is in defining a Unique Recruitment Proposition. The main visual space on the careers pages provide a rotating set of 8 headlines that provide details such as “over 10,000 employees”, “over 1 billion in sales”, “over 950 stores” and so on. These all hint at a Unique Recruitment Proposition, but these headlines are too plentiful (8 concepts is too many to have an impact) and too indirect – what does “multi-banner company” mean to me as potential employee? New grads should not be expected to make the leap of logic; not because they aren't smart enough (of course they are), but because they aren't experienced in the world of work. It's important to remember that, for students, all employers are the same until proven different (or better).

One of the headline statements addresses candidates’ concern that they may never progress past the retail floor: “Wide range of career opportunities”. This is important to students considering launching their careers through retail. Most of the other statements may be indicators of potential job security – which is also important to new grads – but they should be directly stated as such. If Reitman’s simplifies these messages into two or three key benefits and clarifies their immediate value to new recruits, then they will have an all-around solid recruitment website.

Canadian Students Rank Canada’s Top Employers

2009-10-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

[This blog entry is our press release announcing Canada's Top Campus Employers rankings...]

New rankings say a lot about the character of tomorrow’s workforce.

A recent survey of more than 16,000 Canadian university and college students forms the basis of Canada’s Top Campus Employers rankings while also providing new insight into the career interests and aspirations of today’s students.

The Government of Canada tops the overall rankings, with provincial and municipal governments as well as Health Canada also making it in the top 10. Interestingly, three technology giants – Google, Apple, and Microsoft – were the only for-profit organizations to make the top 10 this year. Meanwhile, some non-profit organizations made a big showing in the rankings: the Hospital for Sick Children, the Canadian Cancer Society, and the David Suzuki Foundation came in sixth, ninth, and tenth respectively.

Canada’s Top Campus Employers rankings are one component of a larger report, known as the From Learning to Work Report, which is conducted annually by Brainstorm Consulting and DECODE. The rankings also feature six sub-groups that list the top 25 employers as rated by students in liberal arts, engineering, information technology, natural sciences, undergraduate business, and MBA programs.

“Although surprising to many,” notes one of the report’s co-authors, Graham Donald of Brainstorm Consulting, “the results reflect two trends among young people that have been growing stronger each year: the desire for secure employment and the opportunity to do work that makes a meaningful contribution to society.”

The report refutes many stereotypes that often portray today’s graduates as unwilling to work hard and even disloyal to employers. “Today’s graduates are willing to work hard, but they place a high priority on having greater balance in their lives than their parents did,” explains Eric Meerkamper of DECODE. “And to say that this generation is not interested in loyalty is very misleading. Certainly organizations have to adapt to successfully retain these new hires, but the kinds of changes they need to make also improve the workplace for all employees.”

In fact, students believe quite strongly in the concept of loyalty: 71% of those surveyed believe that their employer will be loyal to them if they work hard. Even more remarkable is the finding that more than half (53%) of all students would like to find one employer with which to spend their whole career.

“Employers that want to rank well with today’s students have to demonstrate that they can provide the kind of workplace that will remain attractive for the long term,” adds Mr. Donald. “In other words, the onus to create opportunities for loyalty lies with the employer. This means creating a workplace environment that satisfies students’ top four priorities: interesting work, work-life balance, good people to work with, and job security.”

The recession has had some impact on students’ career expectations: 62% indicate that the current economy makes them “worried about” their job prospects. However, the study also found students to be very confident in their abilities and three quarters (76%) believe that employers will see them as “good candidates for employment.” “Canada’s top employers are not letting the recession stop them from building a good brand image on campus,” notes Mr. Donald.

Other highlights of the rankings show that the major accounting firms – Ernst & Young, Deloitte, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers – perform very well among undergraduate business students by landing in the top 10. Canadian technology powerhouse Research In Motion (the makers of the BlackBerry) ranked in the top 10 as selected by students in 4 different majors: undergraduate business, engineering, graduate business (MBA), and information technology.

Often in the spotlight to provide leadership during this recession, the Bank of Canada performed well among business students by ranking tenth.

“Our primary goal with this research,” explains Mr. Meerkamper, “is to be able to help employers attract and hire successfully on campus. However, we have found that the research not only supports our clients’ efforts towards attracting and retaining new grads, but also creates better workplaces for all employees.”

Further details about Canada’s Top Campus Employers and the full rankings are available at www.TopCampusEmployers.ca

Why Campus Recruiters Should Market More to Gut Instincts

2009-09-07T23:18:00.000-07:00

How do you make important decisions? How do you REALLY make those decisions? Do you develop a carefully calculated process to weigh various options and then select the one with the highest score? Or do you start along that track and then let your gut instincts take over? How do you imagine that students make decisions about their job choices? The truth is that gut instinct plays a far greater role in just about every decision than any of us like to admit. Effective recruiting means marketing to that gut instinct.

On the evolutionary time scale, our intellect is still in its infancy while our gut instinct is so mature that we don’t even notice it making decisions for us. Of course, “gut” is a misnomer that seems to imply that our instinctive decisions are not worthy of the brain where they are actually processed. Although we may have grown to accept that “rational” decisions are better in the sophisticated modern world, we wouldn’t last a day without our “gut” decisions to guide us. Before I get way too far outside my own expertise, I’ll simply refer you to a great book published last year by Dan Gardner, a journalist from Ottawa, entitled “Risk: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t – and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger.” (In the U.S. it was published with the title, “The Science of Fear.”) In a nutshell, he asserts that although we live in a safer world than ever, our illogical fear is also greater than ever – and causing some bad decisions.

Whether or not you agree that students’ career choices are made more by gut instinct than rational calculation, chances are that you are not speaking enough to the instinctive, emotional side of the brain. I was quite impressed a year and a half ago by a student in a focus group who indicated that salary was way down on his list of 10 criteria he used to evaluate job offers. I wasn’t so much impressed by salary being low on his list (that’s true of many students), but what impressed me was the simple fact that he even created such a list and scored the offers against it. That sounds pretty rational, but what was on that list? Quite simply, a lot of things that can’t be measured or easily compared.

(As an aside, one of the reasons students often appear to focus on salary is the same reason that employers focus on GPA more than they admit: these things are easily measured.)

Our research, and that of others, consistently shows such things as work-life balance, great people to work with, and interesting work as top criteria for graduating students. Not surprisingly in the current economic climate, the importance of “secure employment” has risen significantly. But none of these things can be easily measured, if at all. Ultimately, how students feel about these things is what will influence their decisions. How they feel about you and anyone else they meet from your company will therefore be tremendously important. What they hear from friends, family, and professors will also be highly impactful. And how they imagine themselves feeling when they tell those people where they’ve landed a job will also be critical.

My firm, Brainstorm Consulting, in partnership with DECODE, recently presented our clients with the 2009 edition of our “From Learning to Work Report” based on a survey of 16,000 Canadian university and college students. (Note to U.S. readers: I work and correspond work many U.S. experts and I am confident that these findings would be consistent on both sides of the border.) In our research, we analyzed dozens of criteria that influence students’ employer choice and job decisions. This resulted in the development of 6 groups of co-related criteria that we refer to as the 6 drivers of employer attractiveness. With almost all students, the number one driver is something we call “livability”. In a nutshell, livabililty is all about things that can’t be easily measured such as great people to work with, work-life balance, and a comfortable work environment. Marketing your livability means marketing what it feels like to work in your organization.

So how do you market such things as livability to students? How do you market to students’ gut rather than just their intellect? Well, of course Coca-Cola, Apple, VW and all the big brands create loyalty through massively expensive campaigns that consistently connect with our “heart strings” through mass media. So if you’ve got a great consumer brand and your target recruits love that brand, then you may be way ahead (although not everyone who loves a brand wants to work for the company).

Whether you have a great consumer brand you can leverage or not, the key here is to realize that although choosing an employer is a much bigger decision than choosing a soft drink or ketchup, employers must speak to the gut to create a powerful employment brand and have a profound influence on students’ decisions. And the way to do that is through simple true stories told in a personal way that create an image of work and a workplace that students can get passionate about and proud to be a part of. You may not have the budget to produce a heart-wrenching ad campaign, but if you work in a place worth working in then you are surrounded by stories – many of them your own personal stories – that will get students excited, even passionate, about joining you.

How, where, and when you tell those stories is a whole other matter…

Address students’ three “trigger questions” to engage them in career development.

2009-08-18T08:12:00.000-07:00

Every campus career educator would like to engage more students in their career development. Put simply, the goal is to: 1) involve more students in the programs and services available; and 2) get those currently participating to engage more deeply.

But how?

Every year I ask thousands of students across North America a wide range of questions through surveys, panel discussions, and focus groups. I ask about their career interests, how they evaluate employers, what they expect from their career services office, who influences their decisions, where they gather information, and much more. I have come to the conclusion that when it comes to decisions about job search and career development services on campus, students have some questions of their own. Consciously or not, these are the three make-or-break “trigger” questions in the back of their mind:

1) Is it good?
2) Is it relevant?
3) Is it here and now?

These questions are the key to understanding what your “customers” value – and what they value is really all that matters when trying to engage them. But before discussing these in detail, let’s look at how career educators usually try to get students to use their services.

The mandate to deliver more career education to more students usually leads to the conclusion that what is needed is better marketing. The assumption is that if you develop a strong brand with a great logo and a compelling tagline, maximize your impact through social networks, launch a shiny new website, and print massive quantities of posters, thousands more students will come to you for help. Effective marketing is certainly important (and a clear, simple message delivered consistently is crucial), but at best, this is only a partial solution.

Reaching and engaging more students has far more to do with the programs you deliver and how and where you deliver them than it does with marketing.

The first step in marketing any program or service is quite simply: fix the service! I don’t care how witty the advertising is, or how bold the branding is, for a new ketchup – if it tastes like pickle juice then I won’t be buying it again. More importantly, rather than recommending it to others, I will tell them how awful it is. This last point is especially important to career educators. The risk to a customer when buying a product is relatively low: I can almost always return the product for a refund. But when I use a service (even if there is no fee), I am taking a bigger risk because I can never get back the time I invest in using it.

This is why referrals (word-of-mouth) are such a critical part of marketing career education on campus. Your customers need to know in advance that what you are offering will be a valuable investment of their time. So the first step in your marketing is to fix your service. You must fix anything you do that is less than excellent to stop the bad word-of-mouth which always draws far more attention than the good. Chances are that you can’t bring everything up to the “excellent” level or you would have done so long ago, therefore you must eliminate it.

This is no small feat for career educators who by nature say “yes” to every opportunity to help. There is also a tendency to continue offering anything that requires very few resources or minimal effort. But this is because we vastly underestimate the damaging effects of less-than-excellent programs or services. In the networked world, this damage can grow exponentially.

So let’s assume you have award-winning marketing and nothing but excellent programs and services. Problem solved? If that were true then there would be career offices across the continent engaging 100% of their students in comprehensive career exploration. Great marketing may get students’ attention and quality programs will support positive word-of-mouth referrals. But these only address the first of the “trigger questions” that hold the key to students’ decision to participate.

Here is an explanation of the three questions and some suggestions for how career educators should explore them further:

1. Is it good? Quite simply, students want to know if the program, workshop, advice, or event you are offering is high quality. They are wondering: how do I know it’s good? What are the qualifications of the organizers or presenter? Where is the proof? Who said so?

Career educators need to brainstorm their answers to these questions and develop a plan to address them. What credentials can we boast about? What track record can we draw attention to? What testimonials can we offer? Who are the influential people (professors, student leaders, employers, advisors, etc.) who can recommend us?

2. Is it relevant? Now that I know it’s good, is it targeted to my needs? Is it relevant to me as a graduating kinesiology student or is this just another workshop that’s better for business students? How does it fit the stage I’m at? Is this about summer jobs or starting my career? Is it going to repeat the stuff I already know or take me to the next level? Will I really find it useful?

The big question that career educators need to ask themselves here is: how can we be more relevant to individual students with our limited resources? How can we have the greatest impact with the least investment in customization? How can we segment students into manageable sub-groups to increase our relevance? What partners can help us be more relevant to these students?

3. Is it here and now? Is it here where I spend my time – in my Faculty or campus hangouts? Do I really need this now? Do the venue and facilities reflect quality and give me confidence? Is it easily accessible? Is it available only in person or online too?

This is not about reinventing your programming in 30-second MTV-like sound bites or YouTube videos. The “here and now” factor is really about two things: 1) making it convenient and accessible; and 2) reinforcing the first two triggers with a time and a place that supports the messages of quality and relevance. How can you get your programming out of your career centre and into departments and faculties so that you not only increase participation, but also create opportunities to develop new partnerships and alliances?

It would be hard to imagine a better activity for a retreat day for career educators than to take on the task of addressing these questions. Ultimately, your work is about achieving positive change for your students. Engaging them in that change demands understanding what they value and responding in creative and innovative ways.

Is “centre” the new dirty word in career services?

2009-07-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

The old dirty word in career services was “placement”. It was a remarkably tenacious word: when I first got involved in this field twenty years ago it was already blacklisted. And yet it still holds on by a fingernail in a few dark corners. It lurks about feeding the myth that students can go to a “placement office” and be handed the job of their dreams.

Once upon a time, the Canadian Association of Career Educators and Employers (CACEE) was the University and College Placement Association (UCPA). It dropped that name about 25 years ago (we won’t discuss the strange interim name ACCIS which didn’t stand for anything). And in the U.S., the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) was the College Placement Council (CPC).

But despite these name changes, it has taken forever for the word to die. Most career advisors have dropped the “placement officer” title and most career services offices have dropped the word from their names. Many rested on the word “employment” (“Student Employment Service”) before leaping onwards to “Career Centre” or “Career Services”. Not wanting to lose the brand equity in the name “CAPS” which used to stand for Career and Placement Service, the University of Alberta recently rebranded it’s office “CAPS: Your U of A Career Centre” – but now “CAPS” is just part of the name and no longer an acronym. Are McGill’s or Concordia’s CAPS offices next? (Recommendation: if you must keep the acronym, go with “Career Advising and Planning Services”).

But now, in the age of social networks and virtual worlds, the word “centre” may just be the new dirty word, a word of the past. “Centre” implies a place, an office somewhere on campus. But where is the centre for the job seeker? In the networked world, isn’t the centre the job seeker herself? The reality is that students don’t want to visit a “centre” – except perhaps for a personal appointment.

And this isn’t just a question of online versus in person. Students are looking for career development support and education throughout their institution. They were told that a post-secondary education would get them a job – and a better, higher paying one at that. Therefore, their school should ooze career education through its pores wherever they go. I don’t think this is an unrealistic expectation. Students are the customers and the customers are demanding a job as the #1 outcome of their education – so let’s give them what they need to get it. Understanding that “the customer is always right” is a basic tenet of successful customer service, this means that we must give them what they need on their terms (not ours).

This is not about placement and may not even be about an in-depth career development experience. It’s whatever level of career education they need to get the result they came for. Many career services offices have already discovered what may just be the Holy Grail: the power and reach possible by connecting with students through their faculties and departments. Next stop: professors who recommend career development workshops.

So perhaps it’s time to discard the word “centre” and the implication that career education should happen in a obscure office somewhere – or even on the career centre website. I’m not saying we don’t need an office for the career services staff. In fact, I would put the career services office right up there next to that of the VP Academic. After all, the customer wants their education to lead to employment – so career education needs to become an integral part of the post-secondary experience.

Of course, “centre” sometimes has another meaning. It can refer to a place of “influence”, “action”, or “leadership” as in “the centre for public policy” or “centre for innovation in…” If career education is going to spread throughout the institution and be embraced by administrators and academics alike then it will need leadership. Campuses will need something with a name like,… well, a name like the one they have at the University of Windsor: “Centre for Career Education.” Hmm. “Centre”: now there’s a word for the future!

10 reasons why campus recruiting today is a lot harder than it looks.

2009-07-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

What is the true state of campus recruiting today? Sure, we know that the hiring numbers are down for most big employers – way down for some. But what is it actually like to be hiring on campus right now? Students should be “desperate” for jobs, right? And employers should be swamped with great applicants?

While meeting and talking with recruiters at the NACE Conference in Las Vegas a few weeks ago and the CACEE Conference in Vancouver recently, it was obvious that things are not as they seem. So I posed two questions to the hundred or so employers who attended my presentations at these conferences.

First, I asked if they had colleagues back at the office who had the impression that hiring on campus must be an easy task these days. The answer was a resounding “yes”. Those who aren’t on campus, think it must be like “shooting fish in a barrel” (sorry for the poor analogy, that’s what one recruiter actually said to me). So my second question was simply: is it true? Not surprisingly, the answer was a near unanimous “no”.

Given all the media stories about this being the worst possible time to be graduating because of the lack of jobs, it is understandable that some might think this makes hiring a simple task. But in conversation after conversation, I have learned just how challenging hiring in this market can be.

Why? Here are ten reasons that I have observed:

Budgets have been slashed for advertising, sponsoring campus activities, career fairs and other events. Some are even unable to pay career center job posting fees!
Fewer staff available – many recruiters have been laid off or assigned to different roles; people are being stretched the limit (and are often feeling demoralized by the “slash and burn” approach to business)
Planning is impossible – nobody will commit to the required hiring numbers and roles to be filled; it’s a moving target.
Some are required to hire “under the radar”: they are trying not to be detected when hiring on campus on the one hand, while laying experienced people off on the other.
Students are asking tough questions like, “why should I trust that you won’t lay me off too?” Students are wary of certain employers and industries no matter how reassuring employers may try to be.
Wading through masses of poor applications: many students are “blanketing” the market with applications to every opportunity without bothering to customize their cover letter and resume. Filtering down to the great candidates is far more time consuming.
Wading through masses of excellent applications from inappropriate candidates. Similar to the above point, except in this case students who are not right for the role are doing a great job of making themselves appear like a good fit. Again, this creates a burden on the filtering process.
Research says: students are no more likely to accept an offer this year than last. According Ed Koc’s research at NACE, students are no more likely to accept an offer in 2009 than the were in 2008. The good candidates are still very demanding.
Research says: the good candidates are still very confident. Our upcoming research report on the Canadian market (the From Learning to Work Report) indicates that although students are aware of the hiring downturn, they are still confident that they will get a great opportunity.
Future retention hell: hiring a “star” candidate that you couldn’t normally attract may create a retention nightmare later. This means employers have to take a long close look at whom they are hiring before making an offer.

On this last point, I am convinced this will be the real challenge of the future. Soon enough hiring will pick back up and when it does the coming battle for talent will be further complicated by all those recent hires who jump ship to the job they really wanted when they were hired during the recession. Now is the time to focus on retention by making your workplace a great place to stay.

Have you experienced any of these 10 challenges? Do you have others to add? Please click “Comment” below to add yours.

All employers are the same.

2009-06-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

At the Campus Recruiting Forum in LA, Sabine Gillert of TMP Worldwide led a great workshop on employment branding. At one point, she divided the attendees (made up of campus recruiters from about 20 companies as well as some college careers office staff) into two groups of about 15 people each. She asked one group to brainstorm out their impressions of Chevron as an employer while the other group did the same for Qualcomm. (The Chevron group included a couple of recruiters from Qualcomm and vice versa.)

The groups quickly put together a good list that included things such as "good benefits package", "secure employment", "innovative", "attempting to position itself as 'green'", "cool technology", and so on. The two lists were shared and the recruiters from those two companies verified that the lists were quite accurate. They included the key elements that those two companies were trying to convey with their branding as well as a few things they hope that prospective candidates will ignore.

But what struck me most was this: nothing on either list could convey in the slightest way what it would feel like to work in one of those companies. Are all employers with good benefits, some bureaucracy, a nice logo and a healthy balance sheet the same? To a very large extent, in the eyes of a candidate (especially a young candidate), the answer is YES! Here was a group of people in their twenties, thirties, forties and up who work in recruiting (as well as some in campus career services who have a long familiarity with these companies) who knew next to nothing about what it would feel like to work in either of these major corporations.

Why? Simple: because we don't know these companies' stories. Only stories can give us the feeling of working with innovative people or under tight timelines. And only stories can convey the most important elements that attract us to an organization: the comraderie, the companionship, the sense of belonging, the feeling of working with like-minded peers. And the only truly believable stories are the ones we get directly from the people they belong to; told by the current employees in an authentic way.

Without these stories (about everything from the company softball team to the feeling of completing a great project to the charitable community work to the inspiring company founder...) employers can only appeal to the candidates' intellect, if that. By ignoring the importance of the gut feelings that are stimulated by true stories, employers are recruiting with at least one hand tied behind their back. Possibly both. Without stories, all employers are the same.

Boy, have student attitudes changed!

2009-03-05T15:39:00.000-08:00

At the Campus Recruiting Forum in Vancouver a couple weeks ago, we held a panel discussion with a dozen university and colleges students from a variety of programs. Nobody could fail to notice the sea change that has place in the students’ career outlook. Of course, I wasn’t terribly surprised, but it is remarkable nonetheless how quickly the hunted have become the hunters. I think that perhaps a few employers in the room were pleased to see students getting a little “taste of reality”, but most were sympathetic.

On the bright side, several employers commented during discussions that the students they were meeting at career fairs and other events appeared to be better prepared to meet with them and ask good questions. On the other side, however, some commented that students are approaching them with that “I’ll take any job you’ve got attitude”. While students are wise to be flexible, there is perhaps nothing less appealing than a candidate that values their abilities so little. What most employers hear when students say that is “I don’t know anything about you, but I’d like a job with you to hold me over until I can find a good one!”

I am struck by two thoughts related to this change in the campus recruiting environment.

The first is that for many employers the search for great candidates is still a challenge. This is especially true in the consistently competitive markets such as health care, municipal government, or policing. But even for organizations in less competitive industries, finding the right candidates — with the right fit — still takes hard work. It also takes resources for travel, sponsorships, special events and so on. But most employers have slashed budgets for these — which means recruiters are having to make up for this with more leg work. I suspect that most will be pretty worn out in short order.

My other thought is about the students. First of all, the job market on campus is not nearly as bad as they may think. Despite the huge layoffs across the country, many employers are filling gaps with less expensive new hires from campus; others are increasing their hiring because they believe the talent they are looking for is more easily available now. My fear — and we’ve seen this in past downturns — is that students will lose hope and not invest appropriately in their job search. Already, many graduating students are making plans to go to grad school (whether or not it’s the best choice for them) to avoid the job market.

So some employers may actually find themselves competing with grad schools for great candidates. After all, students don’t have to worry about layoffs at grad school!