Astound, owners of several virtual event platforms including Unicruit, have been picked up by a division of United Business Media, owner of PR Newswire. The division named UBM Studios focuses on virtual events like trade shows, seminars, focus groups, and career fairs.

While we covered Unicruit’s virtual career fairs along with other competitors, this purchase is significant as for the first time, a company with some deep pockets will be able to offer and market virtual college career fairs. It hasn’t been since Monster acquired Jobtrak a decade ago, that a large company has put emphasis on college recruiting. While that didn’t turn out so well for Monster as they dissolved MonsterTRAK, UBM might find more success here.

I still think physical career fairs are not going away anytime soon, but UBM Studios does have a chance to disrupt university recruiting at a global level. Virtual events could allow organizations to reach and market to students all over the world.

I finished reading an article written for NACE’s Spotlight titled, “Effective Career Fair Recruiting: How to Increase Your ROI.” Let’s just say this latest article had some good points as usual, but unfortunately this time really left me shaking my head. First, I don’t think the title has anything to do with ROI. ROI is return on investment. The return is about hiring the best possible interns and soon-to-be grads that fit your organization’s profile and having them stay and spend many years there. The investment is about the amount of money spent at that campus, and your team’s time to pull off the event. There are several areas of this article where I disagree, and I will make other suggestions that should allow better ROI.

The article with this preface, “The following, based on observations gathered over several years, is intended to increase recruiter effectiveness at career fairs and therefore increase the organization’s ROI.” This statement at best is a reach. For instance, the article states that one of the ways to increase ROI is to spend money advertising including through student newspapers, flyers on and off campus, information tables on campus, student radio stations, and working with career centers to have class announcements in specific areas.

I’ve always liked the class announcements aspect as the only investment on your side is time and effort. If you have a good management system, you should be able to send out faculty e-newsletters quarterly. The rest of the ideas here, I believe are archaic and will actually decrease your ROI for many organizations. Mass advertising costs money and is not targeted. Most organizations go to career fairs looking for specific people. It might be engineers, accountants, consultants, managers… whatever it is, very few companies just hire in mass. Student newspaper advertising is not cheap as a full page display ad in the Lantern for Ohio State is almost $2,000, which is roughly 4x more expensive than registering to attend the fair! Flyers on and off campus I believe promote that your organization is wasting paper and not eco-friendly. As for student radio stations, unless you are trying to attract the DJs, only a few schools have students listening to student radio. This also seems like a waste of money.

A new study by the U.S. Department of Labor revealed that cities with a minimum population of 50,000 residents are experiencing new surges in hiring.

Professional, business, and technical industries (i.e., service industries) are all experiencing a growth in hiring demands. These typically include jobs that provide specific expert services for clients and customers.

However, industries that focus primarily on the delivery of goods and products, such as manufacturing, trade, transportation, and public utilities; are experiencing a diminishing need for new hires.

With 2.2 million students in UK Higher Education alone, and with so many graduates with strong A levels and getting a 2.1 (see my last blog) it is crucial to find ways to effectively target the right talent on campus. What can the Universities themselves offer to help you recruit your interns & graduates?

Firstly, which Universities to target? If you know the courses you want to target use www.unistats.ac.uk to find the Universities who run those specific courses.

Also think about the type of individuals you want to hire – for example, do you need more practically / vocationally biased in which case you may want to target the newer Universities. The other factor in who to target should be how easy the University make it for you to work with them – in other words good, old fashioned customer focus. So don’t just automatically think target the Top 10 Universities.

When asked where they prefer to work, many students might respond: “Google.” Google receives a resume every 8.2 seconds (and that stat was prior to the unemployment crises). This isn’t magic….Google just cares about talent quite a bit more more than your average company. Everyone boasts that what makes their business/company stand out from others is “the people.” Companies can talk the talk, but few walk the walk. And, the companies (like Google) that walk the walk succeed simply because the top talent desire to work there. Google isn’t magical, they just “get it.” Google knows that talent means everything and they allocate resources (money, time, creativity) to the recruiting process.

“One top-notch engineer is worth 300 times or more than the average… Google would rather lose an entire incoming class of engineering graduates than one exceptional technologist.”- Alan Eustace, VP of Engineering at Google.

So, how does Google “get it?” They engage students early and create an enticing place to work. They don’t get the most amazing people magically. They get them because they are committed. How?

One of my favorite television programs is Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN Sunday Mornings.   One guest this week was Richard Florida, economist and author of the “Great Reset”.  Florida details how U.S. economy has crashed before, but historically reset itself and emerged into new eras of growth and prosperity.  While Florida believes the U.S. is in what will be a long and painful reset period, he feels the end result will be another era of innovation and prosperity, albeit no longer defined by consumption.

In my opinion, I feel the U.S. educational system is beginning a similar reset, arguably rooted with the fundamental change of the U.S. economy post World War II.

In the past 60 years, especially in the last decade, there has been increasing demand for education after high school.  Traditional four year colleges have seen growing enrollments, and specialty institutions such as for-profit online colleges have been filling an ever growing need.   This demand is clearly fueled by necessity.

I wrote a post back in February about search engine optimization for university recruiters.  With the recruiting season starting now, I was curious to see who made headway in this area. I did some Google and Bing searches to see where companies lie when it comes to search results on university recruiting. Here are some of the tests we ran:

Avery Dennison
University Relations Manager- Graduate Programs
Framingham, MA

Job Description:
Avery Dennison is searching for a University Relations Manager to help us infuse world-class university talent into our growing company. The University Relations position at Avery Dennison will report to the Director of Staffing and will assist with the development and administration of Avery Dennison’s university recruiting programs at the graduate level. This individual will partner with business leaders and leadership development champions to place new graduates and interns onto full-time opportunities and assist with the onboarding and talent management process to ensure a rapid and smooth integration into Avery Dennison’s culture. He/she will work closely with other university program managers to better position Avery Dennison’s brand on university campuses throughout the country, heighten awareness of career opportunities at Avery Dennison, and continuously build partnerships with all key stakeholders.

Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:· Planning, implementing, and continuously improving the University Relations program · Evaluate success and improvements through use of metrics related to university recruitment.· Create and maintain strategic partnerships at selected universities · Help to manage university visits / outreach events · Work with corporate communications in creating compelling brand statements and supporting media· As needed, conduct first-round candidate screening in order to evaluate university talent in consideration for second round and on-site interviews. · Help manage on-site evaluation, selection, and offer process for new grads & interns. · Manage recruitment budget· Assist with the creation and implementation of an on-boarding training program to integrate all new graduate hires.· Actively maintain contact with new-hire placements over the first 1-2 years to ensure proper talent management is in place.· Provide opportunities for networking of new-hire graduates to facilitate assimilation into the company Employees describe Avery Dennison as a great place to work primarily due to the challenging work, the great teams you work with, and the ability to make a visible impact.

Just over 48 percent of industries increased the number of online jobs postings, according to Beyond.com, Inc.’s Second Quarter 2010 Career Trend Analysis Report, released earlier this week. Beyond.com, Inc.is the largest network of niche career communities in the world.

According to the Beyond.com quarterly report, which gathers information from thousands of top-tier industry and local career sites, more than 73 percent of employers sought full-time employees, an increase of 12 percent from the previous quarter. The healthcare and medical industries boasted the largest percent gain in overall jobs posted (5.57 percent), followed by the sales and sales management industries, which increased jobs posted by 2.24 percent.

CDW
University Recruiter
Chicago, IL

This position identifies screens and presents qualified talent to CDW leaders. This is achieved through pipelining talent on targeted colleges and universities. This individual is responsible for attending job fairs, open houses, informational sessions and college recruiting events. The position maintains excellent relationships with all stakeholders while achieving team and individual hiring goals.

Key Areas of Responsibility