Careers

It’s no secret that top businesses who want top graduates invest seriously in careers events. Fairs, presentations and promotions are one of the most direct ways to get the right candidates thinking about the positions you have to offer. However much investment these events receive, though, you’re never guaranteed an audience, and even the best names in the business have trouble getting a hundred undergraduates in the same room at the same time.

In the past a flyer or marketing posters might have sufficed, but now the smart recruiters are getting stuck in to social media as a way of promoting an event. There’s no perfect combination of the tools, and finding a way of interacting with candidates that suits your marketing model of course requires a bit of experimentation, but below are a few ideas to get you thinking:

• Most students will open their laptop before even opening their eyes in the morning: so make your event easily visible on Facebook as soon as it’s organised. A flyer is easily forgotten, but a Facebook feed will be seen a hundred times a day.
• The beauty of using social media is that it’s open: you don’t need to restrict your audience to a single school or university. Even smaller cities in the UK tend to have more than one university, so why not use a Facebook event to broaden up your audience?
• Use social media as a tool to measure expected attendance at the same time as promoting it. Ask applicants to confirm their attendance with a retweet for maximum exposure on Twitter.
• It’s possible to give an air of exclusivity via social media and you can be creative with how you use details. Using secret locations and limited availability can make events seem more desirable, particularly if you’re looking for candidates with a little bit of flair.
• Social media also works two ways: by advertising online either exclusively or in tandem with printed material you ensure you get the applicants who are competent and regular users of social media.

It’s important to remember that your social media campaign has to compliment your campaign, but you’re almost certain to attract sustained interest solely online. Experiment with the combination of tools you want to use and don’t forget to keep them updated with the latest information: the first port of call for an interested applicant is your social media platform.

The following post is written by Nicola Medici, a 3rd year Economics Student from Loughborough University. She has recently completed a years internship on the FMP programme with GE, having applied to (and been through the application process for) many companies while looking for a year-long internship as part of her degree.

I thought you might find the view ‘from the other side’ interesting…

How Students Find an Internship

For many second year students, applying for an internship is the first experience of the application process for a professional job within the sector they are interested and see a career in. Therefore it is important that finding the internship—and the process that follows—is as simple as possible.

There are a multitude of platforms on which companies can advertise placement positions:

• The easiest is on the companies careers website itself. A simple page with directions can allow the applicant to discover information about the position and essential background information on the company itself at the same time.
• A second form of advertisement is on websites which students use to search for placement opportunities such as rate-my-placement and milkround. You put a simple one-pager onto a website with a brief description of the role you are offering. This can also include links to your website, where you may describe the position in more detail, or to an application website. From my own experience this is how several students search for placement opportunities as it allows them to search using key words and to receive pages of jobs of possible interest to search through on one simple platform.
• The final form of advertisement is to go to universities direct. At Loughborough University, my own, we have a placements office who advertise roles directly. These comprise of A4 sheets which we are able to take away, providing simple information on the role, location, day to day tasks, how to apply etc. Many universities also offer career days where companies can come in and advertise graduate and placement opportunities. These are a fantastic opportunity for companies to advertise themselves to a wide range of students who may not even have thought of applying for the role on offer before attending.

Two Ideas for Improvement

From my experience of applying there are two areas which can be improved when advertising roles to placement students:

• The first is the amount of information about the role which is advertised. Often people have a rough idea about what a title relates to: however our perceived opinion is often wrong. It would be useful to create some sort of handbook detailing the internship for possible applicants. Information on key skills, day-to-day tasks, areas of work, opportunities for the year ahead, and reviews from previous students would all be interesting information for applicants.
• My second idea would be to allow applicants to contact the current intern to ask questions about the role, interview process and company. This would allow the opinion of the person currently experiencing the role to answer any questions potential applicants have. This may be less intimidating to applicants as they would be contacting somebody their own age.

Thanks Nicola!

I invited Lindsay Harper Mac to write a guest post for us today. Her interests include education, technology and social media, so are complementary to our own. Over to you!

Companies are always looking for the most effective way to recruit new employees, but the process of filling vacant positions or increasing the size of a company’s workforce comes with considerable costs.

Among those expenses are advertising job openings, screening candidates and interviewing those who have passed the initial screening process. When a corporation wants to hire a new CEO or other high-powered executive, they often turn to a head-hunter firm to find suitable candidates. The cost is usually based on a percentage of the position’s salary – 20 to 30 percent is not unusual. It’s easy to see how expensive the recruitment process can be.

Email, social media and online video can all be very cost-effective ways of recruiting if they’re used correctly, as part of a ‘we find you’ approach – or relationship-recruiting. And this can work for new entrants too: relationship-recruiting is not just for senior hires.

Let’s suppose that you’ve identified a set of potential recruits via one of the methods outlined by John Sullivan. What next?

Sending Out the First Email

Your first attempt at communication with potential job candidates is to send them an email. The purpose of the first email is to introduce yourself and your company to the reader. You should try to arouse the curiosity of the recipient without making it sound like a hard sell. The focus should only be on making a connection and not trying to pressure the reader to take any further action such as visiting your company’s website. Allow the reader to make their own decision. A casual statement such as saying that you’re in the process of putting together a new team for a long-term project is a good opening line; or, if you’re planning on recruiting a batch of interns from which to recruit permanent staff, you could mention a short-term assignment. You can then follow that up with something like “if you would like to be considered…” to give the potential candidate a chance to decide whether or not to seek further information.

Reaction to the Initial Email

If the response is positive, follow up with another email that thanks the individual for their interest in the opportunity. You can, at this time, explain the details of the job and provide a link to your company page for some more information. A clickable link allowing an individual to submit some basic information and perhaps receive a more formal application form is appropriate.

Using a Newsletter with Video Links

Alternatively, a great way to attract new recruits is to send out an online newsletter with links to short videos that talk about the job or jobs being offered. Most young people applying for jobs are very familiar with YouTube or other video providers and make use of them all of the time. The most effective videos are short, use actual employee testimonials and show them doing their job.

Before you send out such a newsletter, you must have a database of individuals that have expressed an interest in applying for a position; while campus events are one way of collecting names of people who are potentially both interested and interesting, social media provides another. Inviting people to sign up for newsletters as a first step can be done from any of the company’s online web estate, including Facebook.

Make Use of Social Network Sites

Emails are great, but they’re not the only online avenue to help companies recruit new talent. Social networking sites are a great source for identifying and building a relationship with people who might be potential recruits—and inviting them on that first date—and also for checking out applicants before making any hiring decision. Although it may be a bit controversial, seeing an online profile of a candidate can provide further insight into their character and even be a tool to disqualify an otherwise acceptable applicant.

Companies should take a multi-channel approach to recruiting. They should use traditional media such as help-wanted ads in newspapers and magazines and employment agencies. But adding an email marketing campaign to find new employees will also help with your company’s efforts at recruitment.

Thanks to Lindsay Harper Mac

About the author: Lindsey Harper Mac is a professional writer living in the Indianapolis area. She specializes in writing guest posts on social media and education. Currently, Lindsey is completing work on her master’s degree.