Students can go to the site each day and take an assessment and use other tools to get feedback on their careers. Monday, they’ll decide based on their strengths what path’s best for them. Tuesday it’ll focus more on their passions. Wednesday, the tool will be about their values, and what volunteer opportunities fit for them. Thursday is a day for their online reputation, and Friday they’ll create a “brand plan” — for themselves.

PwC recruits on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

The leadership set aside at least half the day for the team to identify upcoming problems and opportunities and the resulting strategic moves that need to be made. This article is merely a checklist of the strategic talent management actions that I have found that the very best corporations should have on their potential to-do list.

The Top 15 Potential Strategic Actions to Consider in Talent Management

If you’ve decided to stop fighting fires and to do something major with a strategic impact, here is a list of possible programs and actions that you should consider.

1. Increase the productivity of your workforce – workforce productivity is merely comparing the output of your entire workforce (the total value of the products and services they produce) with the cost of your workforce (total labor and talent management costs). Many talent management departments measure engagement (a precursor to productivity) but they don’t measure workforce productivity. Even fewer take proactive actions to directly increase it. Increasing productivity requires talent management to identify the barriers that restrict productivity and then to proactively provide the consulting advice, best practices, and tools that have been proven to increase a team’s productivity.
2. Increase employee innovation – fierce marketplace competition requires firms to accelerate innovation in product and service areas, despite having fewer resources. Rather than targeting a few departments, talent management must increase innovation in all areas of the business. Typically, innovation can be increased tough the targeted hiring of innovators, retaining innovators, and minimizing the barriers that innovators face within the corporation. Talent management must help shape the culture so that the expectation of continuous innovation permeates every business area.
3. Reward great people management – Most managers simply don’t spend enough time on talent management activities. The primary reason is that managers are not directly measured or rewarded based on how well they manage their talent. This is true even though talent management “owns” all of the key components related to measuring and rewarding (performance management, performance appraisal, competencies, and reward systems). The key action step is to develop a “people management scorecard” for each individual manager and reward them based on their performance against those standards.
4. Identify and fix bad managers – research by Google has shown that in most cases, an employee’s or a team’s manager is the single-highest impact factor on the hiring, retention, innovation, productivity, and the development of employees. Yet most organizations have no formal program for identifying weak managers. Strategic actions would include implementing surveys and metrics to identify with managers and to provide general lists with proven tools and approaches to improve a manager’s people management performance.
5. Convert talent management metrics into their dollar impact – unfortunately, most traditional talent management metrics fail to impress executives because they are not expressed in “the language of business,” which is dollars. Saying we have a 12% turnover rate, a 54% engagement rate, or an 87-day time to fill generally won’t impress senior managers because the metrics are not expressed in their dollar impact on corporate revenue. In contrast, stating that every percentage point increase in regrettable employee turnover costs us $7.2 million gets an immediate reaction. Work with the CFO’s office to credibly calculate the impacts.
6. Calculate the risks of weak talent management — shifting from the positive business impact to the possible negative impacts requires a risk management manager. Risk management is an increasingly important function throughout the business, but unfortunately, few talent management functions have put anyone charge of risk management. Risk managers identify and quantify the risks associated with potential talent problems (its probability and likely costs). Underfunding important talent programs can create tremendous economic risks such as losing key innovators to competitors, failing to have enough developed leaders, and a weak employer brand that drives top candidates away.
7. You need to prepare for a leadership gap — the combination of increased growth and higher turnover rates will mean that most corporations will begin to suffer because of a lack of leadership bench strength. In addition, because the type of leaders who will be needed will also change, the entire leadership and succession program will have to be re-examined and new social media and project rotation tools will need to be developed and implemented.
8. Speed up internal movement through proactive internal placement – very few things increased productivity, retention, and employee development faster than periodic internal movement. Unfortunately, most corporate programs require the employee to initiate the movement and to find the “correct” placement area. A more strategic approach is a proactive one where recruiters periodically identify employees and then help to correctly place these individuals who should be moved both for their own and for the corporate good.
9. Improve internal best-practice sharing – most talent management leaders spend most of their time and resources on developing new programs and approaches. Surprisingly, the data indicates that you can have a higher impact faster and at lower cost by simply identifying and sharing “hidden” existing best practices. Rather than relying on this best-practice sharing occurring organically, a superior approach is a proactive one that seeks out these affected practices wherever they might be in the organization. And once identified, they are shared in such a manner that managers easily understand their value and implement them.
10. Update your retention approach – just like employer branding, retention programs have been allowed to atrophy because the economy has reduced most turnover to a trickle. Unfortunately, turnover is about to dramatically increase, so processes to prioritize key individuals, processes for identifying who is at risk, and retention toolkits need to be reinvigorated before it is too late.
11. Employee referral programs need to be reinvigorated — as the rate of hiring and competition for talent increases throughout the year, stagnant employee referral programs need to be re-examined. Because they produce the highest quality and volume of hires, referrals as the percentage of all hires should begin to reach over 40%. Employee referral programs must be closely integrated with the developing social media approaches.
12. Assess your external employer brand – during the economic downturn, the area of employer branding has been frequently ignored because very little hiring was going on. Unfortunately, during the same time, the reputation of many corporations has been tarnished as a result of layoffs, salary/promotion freezes and a reduction and development resources. In addition, corporate images in general and in some specific industries like banking, oil etc., have been damaged by recent events and “occupy” type movements. The growth of glassdoor.com, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook now make it much easier for negative messages to be spread. At the very least, the positive/negative aspects of your employer brand should be measured and monitored before an upturn in hiring begins.
13. Re-examine your social media approach – although many talent managers have “done something” in the area of social media recruiting, realize that the potential for social media in talent management is much greater than almost everyone anticipated. Plans should be developed to determine how social media can positively impact training, employee development, learning, retention, collaboration, problem identification, crowdsourcing of answers, and best-practice sharing. The mobile platform should be examined in a similar manner because it is rapidly becoming the dominant communications platform for employees.
14. College recruiting needs to be reengineered — communications and job seeking approaches have changed dramatically on college campuses but college recruiting programs have unfortunately been stagnant for years. Program features that need to be examined include remote college recruiting, social media approaches aimed at college students, mobile platform approaches and marketing research to better understand the needs and the actions of top grads.
15. Improve non-monetary motivation – when compensation and reward resources are limited, nonmonetary motivators need to be emphasized. Unfortunately, the compensation function focuses almost exclusively on “expensive” salary, benefits, and bonuses … even though a significant percentage of employee motivation comes from … recognition, praise, and feedback. Talent management should develop non-monetary motivation tools for managers that are easy to use and that produce measurable results. They should also target key employees and server them in order to identify “how to best manage and motivate me” plans.

Benchmark Firms to Learn From

A key competency for any talent management leader is rapid self-directed learning, so it only makes sense to benchmark the firms that are aggressively making tremendous strides in talent management. My extensive research has identified some of the best firms to learn from. Many are from the Silicon Valley, which has already returned to a “war for talent” (Google, Facebook, Zynga all approach talent management using a more scientific approach).

Firms outside of technology have also taken some amazing steps so they should not be ignored (Zappos, Sodexo, CACI, DaVita, Deloitte, KPMG, PepsiCo, and the U.S. Army have all taken bold steps).

Additional Strategic Talent Management Actions to Consider

In addition to the top 15 major actions recommended above, some other strategic actions to consider include:

• Prepare for VUCA, the new normal — talent management plans, approaches, and processes need to be improved so that they can handle the new business environment that we face (VUCA = Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity)
• Increasing revenues — examining how talent management actions can directly increase individual employee revenue generation
• Integration of talent management functions – an almost-universal weakness is a lack of integration. Talent management functions must more closely cooperate, coordinate, and integrate so that they work seamlessly.
• Hire right before they do — if your firm doesn’t have the strongest employer brand, location or glamorous product, you must develop a plan to quickly initiate hiring immediately before your talent competitors. A rapid “explode out-of-the-box” plan is also required.
• Corporate headcount “fat” – setting up a process that ensures that the return to hiring doesn’t result in a surplus of employees (i.e. headcount fat).
• Competitive analysis — identifying the competitive advantage that your talent management practices provide compared to your talent competitors.
• Prioritizing — prioritizing jobs, managers, and talent management programs so that your limited resources provide the highest possible impact.
• SWAT team — creating a rapid response team that can respond to sudden talent management opportunities and problems.
• Alerts — providing a process that alerts managers about upcoming problems before they get out of hand.
• Lean or agile talent management – adapting lean, CRM, and agile business approaches and tools to the area of talent management.
• Remote work opportunities — as technology, communications, and social media tools improve, talent management must develop ways that allows top talent to work from anywhere.
• Forward-looking metrics — unfortunately, almost all current talent management and recruiting metrics are backward looking, in that they tell you what happened in the past. Instead, forward-looking and predictive-metrics that allow for improved decision-making need to replace them.
• Reengineer performance appraisals – this is an almost universally disliked process that requires tremendous amount of time but produces no measurable results. A completely new approach is required.
• Transparency – throughout the business world there is an increasing emphasis on transparency and openness. The time has come for talent management leaders to reassess their entire approach to secrecy, privacy, and the degree of openness with employees and applicants.
• Cloud talent management – HR and talent management cannot be exempt from the powerful trend to move everything to the cloud.

Final Thoughts

The period immediately before the beginning of the New Year is a great time to sit back and think of your accomplishments and your legacy. Unfortunately, rather than being strategic, too many talent leaders have been simply happy to survive the last few years with their sanity intact.

Now is the time to shake loose any lethargy, to take some risks, and do something bold before you retire or move on. You may have “earned a seat at the table” but you can’t be truly respected and admired unless you produce a measurable strategic business impact.

As a college professor and someone that advises firms on the design of college recruiting programs, I have come up with a long list of the advantages of hiring recent graduates.

If you’re not seeing these attributes in your recent college hires, interns, or those you are courting, the problem is most likely a result of major weaknesses in your recruiting process and not with “this latest generation” of college students.

The Business Benefits of Hiring Recent College Grads

The benefits are split into two categories 1) benefits to individual hiring managers and 2) benefits that may accrue to the entire firm over time. Note that the possible outcomes listed here are based partially on generalizations that cover many but not all top college hires.

Shorter-term Benefits of Hiring College Students

1. Lower salary costs – most are willing to work for significantly less salary than “experienced hires.”
2. Continuous learners — because they have a recent history of learning, they are self-motivated “continuous learners.” This may actually be the most important competency.
3. Comfortable with technology — New grads expect to use technology and have no fear of it. They learn new technologies rapidly, and this, combined with their extensive knowledge of the latest hardware and software, automatically makes them a high-value hire both for current and future needs.
4. Comfortable with the Internet and social media – college students are much more likely to be familiar with and skilled in all aspects of the Internet, and in particular the emerging area of social media and mobile applications.
5. High levels of innovation – there is a great deal of academic research indicating that many great innovators do their best and most groundbreaking work in their youth. Midcareer hires may bring continuous improvement but lower levels of radical inflection-point innovation.
6. Fast change and agility — nothing more accurately describes the business world these days than intense competition and rapid change. If you’re going to be successful, you’re going to need agile individuals who are not just capable of fast change but also those who literally look forward to it. Fortunately college grads have a combination of youth and an excitement for trying new things that makes them more willing to accept and adapt to rapid change. They’re also agile and as a result they are able to shift rapidly and frequently between unrelated tasks.
7. Team players — very few major projects can be accomplished these days without teamwork. Fortunately, college hires these days are thoroughly experienced in teamwork and cross-functional teams. Rather than being forced to participate, it comes natural to them.
8. Superior communicators — college hires are accomplished communicators. They know how to communicate with teammates, vendors, regulators, and customers in many diverse and economical non-face-to-face ways. This includes the use of social networks and web 2.0 tools that experienced hires might be unfamiliar with.
9. The “why” question — a willingness to repeatedly ask the “why question” of others (Why do we do it this way? Why not that way?) helps to force you to re-examine your approaches.
10. Better performance on the job — we know from professional sports that the performance of college grads can meet and sometimes exceed that of experienced players (i.e. Kobe and LeBron). If you use a “surgical” data-driven college-hiring process, a majority of your hires will be above-average performers almost immediately. If the same process surgically targets grads with high levels of loyalty, your retention rates will also be exceptional.
11. New ideas — they bring numerous new ideas that they’ve acquired from leading-edge thinkers and professors that continually challenge them to think differently.
12. No need to unlearn — because they have little work experience or corporate cultural history, they don’t have to unlearn old ways or bad habits that experienced hires might carry with them.
13. Multitasking ability — they grew up in a multitasking world, so they look forward to being assigned to simultaneous tasks. Experienced hires might consider it overloading when you expect multiple tasks to be done simultaneously.
14. Energy and enthusiasm — their youth and relative health will likely give them what some describe as unbounded energy during the day, requiring fewer breaks and with no lapses in work quality due to fatigue.
15. Willing to take high-risk assignments — their relative youth and inexperience may lower their level of fear, making them more willing to take on risky tasks and assignments. With fewer outside-of-work commitments, many may be willing to take career risks that experienced professionals would not.
16. They understand metrics — because they’re fresh out of school, recent grads are likely to remember how to use numbers, statistics, and metrics. Although they might not have any practical knowledge, their lack of fear related to numbers and metrics is a positive factor.
17. Willingness to do grunt work — because of their eagerness to learn, even top students may be willing to do thankless assignments and even grunt work that others consider beneath them. This may speed up projects that are often delayed because no one on the team is willing to volunteer for the unglamorous tasks.
18. Willingness to travel — fewer outside-of-work commitments and a high level of excitement regarding exploring and travel means that they are more willing to take assignments that require a significant amount of travel.
19. Diverse ideas — each year, the diversity levels of graduating classes increase making them more diverse than the available experienced hire pool. If your college recruiting program has an effective diversity component, the diverse thinking of these college hires will add richness to your teams and decision-making because diverse individuals see things differently.
20. Professor contacts also — if you hire the very best graduate students, you will likely also get with them their academic contacts and access to the best research professors.
21. Access to research — once again if you hire the very best graduate students, you will also do research. You may also gain access to the research of their professors, thus aiding in product development.
22. Faster time to productivity — because they learn quickly, have high energy levels, have few family commitments and they have no professional biases to unlearn, new college hires may actually reach the minimum required level of productivity faster than experienced hires.
23. Easier to manage — although they may ask lots of questions initially, they may actually be easier to manage. This is because they seldom have the level of entitlement, professional biases, and political awareness that experienced hires usually have. Because they are new, they are less likely to argue, play politics, or complain.
24. An opportunity for a tryout — hiring experienced professionals can be a hit-or-miss proposition because you don’t get a chance to actually see them work. Fortunately, with college hires you can preview their work by hiring them as interns. If designed correctly, this internship opportunity can dramatically reduce the number of hiring errors.

Long-Term Benefits to the Firm for Hiring College Grads

Some firms have found that college hires bring many benefits that accrue to hiring managers, but in addition, also help the company over the long term. Some of the benefits that may extend to the entire company include:

1. A global perspective — many U.S.-based schools have a high percentage of international students. The curriculum in nearly every discipline these days focuses on global issues. As a result, you can be sure that new college hires will think globally, as well as feel comfortable working with internationally located individuals.
2. Essential for filling future management positions — it is difficult to hire first-level managers externally because no matter how strong their management skills, they are unfamiliar with the team and the corporate culture. Consistently hiring entry-level college hires allows you to promote the best into supervisory and management positions within five years. Without this college hire strata of employees, it will be much more difficult to fill these critical management positions.
3. Long-term assets — if you do hire college grads, they are yours to lose. So with great retention and career development, they will continue to be an asset to your firm for up to 40 years. Midcareer hires can’t possibly return value for the same number of years.
4. You might only get one shot at them — whichever firm hires a new grad, it literally has a chance to keep them forever. Meaning that if this firm treats them well, they may remain at this firm throughout their entire career. However, if you only hire experienced hires, you may have missed your one and only chance to monopolize this particular individual.
5. Competitive advantage — if your firm gets this talent, your competitors cannot.
6. Youth market benefits — if your firm happens to target many of its products and services toward younger people, having a large number on your staff will likely result in better products and increase sales to this population.
7. An opportunity to influence curriculum — even the process of college recruiting allows you to build relationships with faculty. Over time this many help you in steering the curriculum so that graduates more closely fit your future needs.
8. Now is the perfect time — in the past, a weak employer brand image or a poorly designed college recruiting program may have resulted in your firm hiring lower performing college hires. However, because almost no one is actively hiring large numbers on campuses these days, you could cherry-pick the very best if you are willing to act quickly.

Built on the Facebook platform, BeKnown is a jobs-oriented network that allows users to build career profiles and connections separate from those on Facebook itself. By adding jobs to corporate sites and including colleges, Monster is encouraging users to conduct their job hunting within BeKnown.

For employers and schools that already have a Facebook career presence — and thousands do — the BeKnown sites are largely duplicative. But for those brand sites where jobs aren’t the main focus, a BeKnown site can become the gathering place for career discussions.

That’s the point Tom Chevalier, Monster’s BeKnown product manager, was making during a demo call today. A BeKnown site is a “secondary or duplicate offering,” he said, if a company or campus career center already has a recruitment presence on Facebook.

For everyone else (and that would include all those companies who simply stream their openings onto their Facebook site) a BeKnown site is where employees, alumni, students, job seekers, and potential candidates can engage in career conversations. Chevalier observed that a company isn’t very social if  it’s not carrying on active discussions with its fans and visitors.

In that regard, colleges will have it easier than employers. Alumni are vocal supporters of their school, and they are the very ones to talk about how their degree and their college years have paid off. And to post jobs.

Employers, whether direct or agency, need to invest time to make social media work. This isn’t unique to BeKnown or any other social site. Simply streaming jobs onto your site is not a social media strategy.

Engaging with candidates requires real interaction. Chevalier says BeKnown facilitates that because of its orientation. The way the site is designed, a BeKnown user can quickly see who they may know. If the employer adds the job feature — free and easily added — current listings appear on the main page. Right now, only jobs posted to Monster automatically show up. Soon, Chevalier said, XML and RSS feeds will be added to automate the process.

Colleges have it even easier. Monster has created pages for some 3,500 colleges in the U.S., populating them with content that includes a bit of history, costs, financial aid, and alums registered with BeKnown. A school need but claim its page.

While Monster was announcing its latest enhancements, Facebook was already the center of attention over its rumored plans for a $10 billion IPO next year. In a story repeated in hundreds of posts, the Wall Street Journal said the company was expected to file papers for its initial public offering possibly even before the end of the year. Based on the shares already outstanding, a $10 billion offering would value Facebook at $100 billion, ranking it among the most valuable companies in the world.

First to college recruiting. Tavish Ledesma is one of the key players on this one. He comes from a software-engineering background, with less than a year on the human resources side. What he found when starting with HR, and going to campuses last spring, was a “laborious process for processing resumes.”

Intel receives 20,000 paper resumes per year in the U.S. “They were were shipped to a Intel shared service center where they were processed,” says Allen Stephens. “The candidate data would not be available in our system for a couple of weeks, resulting in a delay before our candidates would hear back from us.”

Ledesma put together a proposal, with some screen shots, for streamlining that process, and Intel, up to the CIO’s office and the HR VP, bought in.

Among the goals is to help recruiters collect information from candidates, and shorten the time between when a candidate and recruiter meet, and that candidate gets an email from Intel about applying for a job.

Intel’s still refining it, and still piloting it, but basically recruiters, instead of getting paper resumes and writing notes on them, are equipped with iPads. The iPad application (see graphic at left) is used at a career fair or other conference to collect information from a candidate, such as their name, email address, grades, and interests. The recruiter can mark it up with notes, such as whether the person wants a job or an internship.

The information makes it way into the Taleo applicant tracking system, and candidates can hopefully get an email back from Intel as soon as that day, the day they interacted with Intel at a career fair, and not weeks later.

Stephens says “the app allows Intel to reduce our candidate response time by 25 times, and save over 500 hours per year in manual processing.”

Development started in August, and as I mentioned, is ongoing. The biggest challenge right now, with the application having been tested at three different events, is getting a soft copy of a resume entered into the system; in other words, finding the best way way to get additional information from the job candidate added to their profile.

New Mobile App for Candidates

The college recruiting application mentioned above is generally an internal technology — to make life easier for recruiters and in the end, better for candidates. Intel’s also rolling out an application for job candidates who look for jobs with a smart phone, along the lines of ones Autodesk, Pepsi, and others have had built. It’s first being rolled out for Androids, and then to iPhones and iPads.

It took about six months from the first meeting about it to completion, and is still being tweaked as we speak, particularly with respect to the branding, images, and the security features. “We take our brand very seriously,” says Intel staffing channels manager Keith Molesworth. “Especially in the recruiting space.”

Facebook and Other Social Media

When we last off, a year ago, Intel was trying to make its social media recruiting more social, more consistent, and make sure it didn’t fall behind Silicon Valley competitors. Sejal Patel and others are continuing that work, with new wrinkles.

One of those is Google+. Patel partnered with the Social Media Center of Excellence (within the Sales and Marketing Group) to create the Intel brand page, which has multiple circles such as “technology enthusiasts,” “Newsroom,” “Trends,” and a recruiting-focused one, “Life at Intel.”

Meanwhile, as far as search engine optimization of jobs is concerned, earlier this year, Intel started using a tool from an association called DirectEmployers. The tool costs nothing additional for members of the association. Intel is now trying out Jobs2Web on some of Intel’s critical software jobs.

Intel continues to use Twitter, LinkedIn (where it has enjoyed success with a student lounge), and Facebook. When it comes to Facebook — well, that all had gotten a bit unwieldy for Intel, with multiple pages around the world, some even inactive. What it’s doing now is putting jobs tabs on different pages for different countries – UK, Germany, Poland, Malaysia, Vietnam, Israel, Germany, Russia. Those pages will have feeds from Intel’s careers blog, as well as local career-related events. A company called Vitrue helped create the tabs, modules, and feeds.

The Facebook site is pulling from the Taleo system, so people can search for jobs on Facebook, read the job description, and in the end go to the Intel careers site to apply. Work4Labs helps power the job search. “It’s a cleaner, prettier, branded way to search for jobs on Facebook,” says Patel.

It’s not yet using BeKnown or BranchOut, but was recently approached by the latter and is considering testing it, and others in that field.

Intel is also stepping up its use of virtual events in recruiting. Using a company called ON24, some of Intel’s events are mainly chats, where candidates submit resumes and talk to hiring managers and recruiters about working at Intel. Others are more of the webinar variety, on topics like CV writing — with a question-and-answer period.

Allen Stephens provided stats on a recent event: “Over 650 resumes received during two-hour event; 385 students attended; 10 hiring managers plus multiple recruiters in the chat event.”

Still Cracking the Code

Even with all this going on, even with this being Intel and all, if you talk to the Intel team, you find that it’s sourcing and social media challenges aren’t so different from everyone else’s.

You have your Tiffany Peerys (among the Intel team on video here talking about their recruiting in the spring of 2011) who are adept at the social-media recruiting thing, and you have others who aren’t as enthused. To that end, Intel recruiting leaders in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere are brainstorming some ways to better train people on social media, with that training likely to increase toward the beginning of 2012. It’d also eventually like to have a community manager for each region of the world, rather than so much of it being either run out of the U.S, or ad hoc.

Anderson is a family-owned outfit, started in 1913 and handling tens of thousands of homes and businesses. It has just under 200 employees but wants to grow about 25% over the next few months, adding 25 “co-workers,” as it sometimes calls them, by the end of the year, and about 25 more early in 2012.

And not only is it hiring, but human resources is part of its marketing to prospective customers. They’re told that “Anderson retains technicians longer so customers get more consistent service.” And they are asked, “How many different technicians have handled your account during the past 24 months?”

Anderson is hiring in Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Indiana. The business is cyclical, with fewer pests in the winter, ants arriving in the spring, a slightly slower summer, and ants and yellowjackets in the fall.

It’s playing up its careers as being interesting, pretty stable (see graphic at left) and always in demand, as well as environmentally friendly. That last part of the value proposition, O’Hara says, is a biggie both for customers and recruits. Rather than offering just a few “green” products, the whole company is based around trapping, not using rodenticides. Rodenticides suck up a lot of resources when they’re produced, he says, and they also can end up in dumpsters.

This approach means more labor, more expertise. It’s so different from what O’Hara says competitors do, that the company doesn’t recruit from competitors. “Trying to weed technicians off of a tank is hard,” he says. “Communicators, service, heart, attitude — that’s what we’re about. It’s not the traditional ‘see and spray.’”

Anderson is also touting its community involvement. Carrie Missele, a regional sales manager I talked to, is particularly fired up about a program where if the firm adds 25 people before this year’s out, it’ll donate $5,000 to the Northern Illinois Food Bank.

This isn’t a sexy industry — “A stigma we need to overcome,” O’Hara says. So the company is doing a number of things. For one, not finding enough success with career offices and career fairs at schools, it’s talking to professors about the company, about their students, who might want to be an intern, and so on.

It’s bringing in people for internships where they rotate through different parts of the company, and then do an open-ended project at the end where they present ideas for improving Anderson. Some interns can then come back a second summer, and help put on the intern program for first-year interns. O’Hara says he’s also going to be working with a (very successful) public charter school called “Urban Prep,” in Chicago. Students will spend a couple weeks shadowing Anderson employees, and then will receive a paid trip to a university. O’Hara believes that once the student actually sets foot on a university and knows it’s within their reach to receive an education and have a good career, they’ll be more likely to want to go to college.

O’Hara said he initially thought people might want to read things like facts about animals on Facebook, but that he wisened up. “Nobody wants to hear that,” he says. They want to know, “where does this fit in with my life?” So the Facebook page has videos about life at the company.

There’s more. They’re trying to hire more women (and three female technicians have started in the last five months, after not having one in many years; O’Hara attributes this partly to having female recruiters). They’re trying mentoring programs. They’re trying to get more employee referrals. Past interns are appearing at career fairs and sales parties, like a party held at a race track. “When you get one of your students there,” O’Hara says, “the response is much different.” It used to be tough to compete at fairs against a company like Anheuser-Busch, he says, but after all of the above the company has been trying, “we actually have a line now.”

The “Chief Technology Office” at Citi wanted to deliver the application before the mid-September recruiting season began. The team — mostly recent grads – worked with recruiters on the concept, prototype, and final product to get it done in less than a month.

Using the app, students at select schools see a list of nearby Citi recruiting events (there are 156 upcoming events at 72 locations); get a Twitter feed from Citi; get directions to events; view “day in the life” videos, and more. Right now, it covers North America, but will later include other events in other parts of the world. Citi’s also working on making the application available on other smart phones.

Citigroup is cutting costs and limiting hiring, but a spokeswoman says the firm has “added talent in businesses and regions that are targeted for growth.”

If your responsible for your company’s campus recruiting efforts, Natasha Singer’s recent article for the New York Times is a must-read. The story highlights ways companies are using student Brand Ambassadors to promote products and services, and generate loyalty via social media, in-store events, and on-campus buzz.

Traditional marketing efforts like print advertising and TV spots are yielding fewer and fewer tangible results, but did you know that this fall, an estimated 10,000 American college students will be working on hundreds of campuses as Brand Ambassadors?

By illustration, Singer’s article cites efforts from three American Eagle student marketers who solicited 50 volunteers to take part in a move-in event at the University of North Carolina. Wearing A.E. Move-In Crew T-shirts, they helped with lifting boxes, handing out swag, and creating a welcoming branded experience for new arrivals, as just one of AE’s 50-campus events.

Target opened up its wallets for a freshman welcome dinner, and its doors for a private late-night shopping experience, complete with DJs and dancing through the aisles.

Mr. Youth, a youth marketing agency, published its list of brands who were best at communicating with freshmen. They included Nike (design your own shoes), Xbox (engage, connect and compete with your friends), and of course Apple (‘nuf said.)

So advice to the campus recruiting teams: Plan together and plan ahead.

1. Check in with your marketing department and find out if they are launching any guerilla marketing events on the college campuses. If yes, get in on it. If no, this is where you can shine. Help them plan something and then work together (isn’t that a great concept) to promote a seamless brand experience from consumer through employee. Give them the list of your target schools (you have that right?) and start there.
2. Work to infuse an employer value proposition that is aligned with the consumer value proposition into all your messages, and don’t sound like anyone else.
3. Make sure you’re careers site has been recently refreshed, is up-to-date and mobile friendly (QR tags are optional), and your social media sites are integrated with your career/jobs information.

Remember: the brands that swim together, win together.

It’s hiring about 9,000 students, including 5,200 from U.S. campuses, in the 2012 fiscal year, which began July 1, 2011. Those pre-recession levels cover the U.S., Canada, Israel, Mexico, and Central and South America. It’ll also use 3,900 interns, and double MBA hiring.

In the U.S., it expects to hire 3,000 grads for full-time jobs, and 2,200 interns.

The 141,000-person firm also:

• has a new internship program where interns spend four of the weeks of their internships abroad.
• is working with CampusLIVE. Later this month it will launch an ”Ernst & Young Challenge” on the site.
• is launching an new ad campaign this fall, using the tagline “See More” to encourage people to learn more about internships and jobs at Ernst & Young. Ads will run in school newspapers, wsj.com, businessweek.com, Pandora, CollegeRecruiter.com, Yahoo.com, and Experience.com.

Yes, I know. Astronomically, summer won’t end for another 18 days. But, I’m talking symbolically, not scientifically. And in that context, the U.S. Labor Day marks a transition from summer white to fall brown. It’s when kids go back to school, and the pace of the office quickens as workers return from vacation.

Once a day of parades and political speeches in praise of American workers, which still occur here and there across the country, Labor Day is mostly now a time to head for the beach or the park, fire up the barbecue, and kick back.

In the spirit of years past, however, I present you some inspirational words on life and work in the 21st century, from two of the most widely seen commencement addresses ever delivered.

First, is the advice given to the graduating class of 2010 at Auburn University by  Tim Cook, then Apple’s COO and now, its CEO:

I know of no one who has achieved something significant without also in their own lives experiencing their share of hardship, frustration, and regret. So, don’t believe that something in your past prevents you from doing great work in the future.

“Give up on the idea of developing a life plan that will bear any resemblance to what ultimately unfolds,” he tells the graduates.  Instead, “Paint in your mind the most grand vision where you want to go in life. Prepare. Trust in, and execute on your intuition. And don’t get distracted by life’s potholes.”

Take the 16 minutes to watch the video. Besides the advice, which is every bit as relevant for mid-career workers as for new grads, Cook’s speech provides clues to the stamp he will put on Apple in the coming months. (Start the video at the 2:20 point to skip the lengthy introduction.)

The second video is three stories, told to Stanford’s graduating class in 2005, by one of the greatest entrepreneurs in all of Silicon Valley: Apple co-founder, its former CEO, and current chairman Steve Jobs.

Story one is about connecting the dots. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards,” Jobs says. “So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. ”

Story two is one the graduates may not have much experience with, but will be familiar to everyone else. It’s about love and loss. It’s moral, says Jobs, is this:

You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

His final story is about death:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

The reason is simple: students now turn more often to faculty members for early-career guidance and advice on which employers to start out with. In a way, this might make university recruiting relationship management easier: just shift the primary focus to the faculty. For the time being, until the economy really rebounds, this would be an effective sourcing model. But when the economy rebounds, nearly a majority of tenured faculty at many top-tier universities will at least be eligible for early retirement, and the new relationships forged in those few years will take time to rebuild with new replacements.

Regardless of the function, the best strategic plans try to anticipate the potential outcomes of as many conceivable contingencies as possible. Not every contingency can be planned for, but an inability to anticipate the possible contingencies can sink any strategy in record time. In this case, if a company could leverage its need for a long-term university recruitment pipeline with a university’s need for replacing its faculty in the future, such a strategy could create a significant competitive advantage.

While the nation’s top companies have pushed to develop strong internship, entry-level, and MBA programs for college graduates, they seem to have abandoned one other university talent pool: the doctorates. Most PhD graduates each year leave their university to find positions either in industry, research organizations, or government. But what about the PhD graduates who seek to go right from the graduation dais to the professor’s lectern? If these candidates can be recruited to serve as limited-term employees — say, up to two years — before launching their academic career, then a new talent pool could be identified, something I write more about in the July/August Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership (ask Todd Raphael for a copy if you want one). Furthermore, if the aim of an industry-based postdoc program was to help target universities secure new faculty members, then placing its postdocs at those recruitment targets could create a whole new pipeline.

V. Program Responsiveness Features

Being responsive to those who refer and the referrals they submit are critical features that drive program loyalty, participation, and engagement.

1. Rapid response to a referral is critical – a lack of responsiveness to employee referrals is the #1 program killer. The best programs set a target of getting feedback to the referrer and the referred individual within 48 – 72 hours of submission (Aricent & AmTrust Bank).
2. Expedited interviewing – some firms make a commitment to decide whether to interview/not interview all referrals within a week. Others make a more narrow commitment, which is to actually schedule an interview with all “A” quality employee referral candidates within a week of receiving their referral (Owens Corning).
3. Referrals must be tagged and the processing expedited – in the best programs, all referral applications are tagged in order to measure program effectiveness. In addition, the tagged referrals are given a priority for processing (i.e. fast tracked). This is necessary in order to ensure that both the employee and the referred individual feel like they are “special” (Accenture).
4. “On the spot” screening – consider developing a process where resumes collected at the referral desk undergo instant screening followed by instant feedback to the employee and the candidate (Tata consultancy).

VI. Communicating with employees and applicants

High-performing referral programs require frequent and effective communications.

1. Personalize and target your communications – broad communications addressed to all employees almost always produce disappointing results. Instead, develop customized or personalized promotions and campaigns. Write personalized e-mails, tweets, or Facebook entries to targeted job families, well-connected individuals, and top performers alerting them to critical needs in their area. Periodically push relevant job openings that require referrals only to the narrow list of appropriate employees (Amazon & CACI International).
2. Provide periodic employee notifications after a referral is made — employees are almost always nervous about whether their referrals were any good and what is going to happen to their colleague. The best practice is to electronically notify employees immediately when their referral is accepted/rejected, if the candidate is invited for an interview and when the candidate is finally hired or rejected.
3. Provide periodic feedback to applicants – prospects who have been referred are also frequently nervous about their chances. At the very least they should be electronically notified that there referral has been received and accepted. These notifications can also include an overview of what they can expect, including the steps in the process, frequently asked questions, and the likely timeframe before any decision is made.
4. Offer an online chat feature with employees – one of the best ways to reach busy and hesitant employees with questions about the ERP is through an online chat feature (Aricent).
5. Develop and use referral champions – a powerful way to inspire employees to refer is to use senior leaders as referral champions. These executive champions should participate in communications and help to explain to employees the importance to the business of the positions being recruited for (Accenture).
6. Consider a follow-up meeting after a great referral – after a great referral, schedule a follow-up meeting with the person. Goals include to hand-deliver the bonus, to thank them (and their manager), to identify and then learn from their approach, and to ask them if they know any other stars. (Amazon).
7. Provide direct feedback to employees on weak referrals — make sure that you provide feedback to individual employees who make weak referrals, so that they know what they did wrong and how to improve.
8. Keep top referral rejects interested – top referrals who were not hired because they lost out to an exceptional candidate should be kept for consideration of future openings. Your goal should be to develop a pool of these potential “future hires” and to build a long-term relationship with them by continually communicating through periodic messages or an e-newsletter. Also “push” future relevant jobs to them. In order to keep them excited, consider telling all A+ rated referrals who were not hired what specifically they could do to improve their chances.
9. 24/7 help desk – large firms with a high volume of referrals can open 24×7 referral help desks to provide information and to answer questions, much like a concierge (Tata and Aricent).

VII. Specialized referral approaches to consider

In addition to providing a broad employee referral program, it is also wise to consider implementing some specialized subprograms.

1. Proactively approaching target employees – most referral programs communicate using a broad impersonal approach; a superior proactive approach involves recruiters seeking out individual employees who have a high likelihood of making a quality referral for a specific job. Employees and managers are usually approached on a one-to-one basis (and often in person) and are asked to provide the names of a handful of individuals who fit a targeted set of criteria. Because the approach is personal and targeted, the response rate and referral quality are significantly higher. When top performers and executives are proactively approached, frequently they are willing only to provide “names” alone, with no follow-up or resume (Google & Aricent)
2. Boomerang referrals – this focused approach emphasizes maintaining a continuous relationship with high-quality former employees (corporate alumni) in the hopes of someday rehiring them through an employee referral. Top corporate alumni can also be asked to provide referrals (Aricent & Booz Allen).
3. Reference referrals – this approach emphasizes approaching the top references of last year’s top hires as referral sources. They are thanked for their helpful reference and asked if they “know anyone else equally as qualified.”
4. College hire referrals – because of their widespread usage of social media, college students are well-connected with other students in their field around the world. College referral programs have proven to produce excellent referrals for both interns and permanent hires. Last year’s graduates who you hired from key schools should also be proactively approached for names (Endeca, Aricent, & Intuit).
5. Onboarding referrals — make it a regular part of onboarding to highlight the employee referral program and to provide new hires with a referral information kit. Also make them aware that you have a recruiting culture and that they are expected to continually provide referrals. Each new hire should be asked to immediately provide top referrals from their former firm. (Aricent & Eli Lily)
6. Referrals for executive positions – because corporate executives are highly visible and accessible in today’s world of social networks, vacant executive positions should also be filled through referrals. In order to be successful, the executive referrals component requires an extremely high level of customer service and candidate experience. These “choose-your-own-leader” type programs can empower employees to get better leaders (Aricent).
7. Internal movement referrals – employee referrals can also be an effective tool for improving internal movement. Employees need to be rewarded for making successful referrals for key internal openings and managers must be rewarded for “releasing talent.” An internal recruiting team may also be used to speed up internal placements (Booz Allen, Sodexo, & Microsoft).
8. Offer letter referrals – this extremely aggressive program requires you to ask potential new hires to provide referrals as a condition for becoming an employee (FirstMerit).

VIII. Referral program technology

Globalization of referrals and the requirement for fast processing of applications mandate that programs use the latest in technology, which in this field advances by leaps and bounds.

1. Allow employees to submit using multiple platforms – provide your employees with multiple options for submitting referrals (web, email, phone, text). Providing multiple options can make it easier for busy employees to make referrals 24/7, while they are “on the run.”
2. Application website flexibility – the referral website should offer regular and expedited options. The first channel should provide the detailed information that first-time referrers’ need, but the second channel should be designed for experienced referrers, so that they can quickly jump directly to the referral submission page (Accenture).
3. A website that allows employees to track the progress of their referrals – an internal site can allow employees to continually track the progress of their referrals as well as their accumulated bonuses (Accenture and Aricent).
4. Offer referral program kiosks – because not all employees have continuous access to a computer, standalone referral kiosks often need to be strategically placed around the facility. These kiosks can be used to input referrals and to provide information about open positions. They can include advice, frequently asked questions, and a calendar of upcoming referral events (Aricent).
5. Online assessment tools – develop and offer online assessment tools so that the skills of referral candidates can be quickly assessed. Also consider another option of offering tools that allow the prospects to self-assess themselves before they agree to become a referral.
6. Online interview scheduling – develop a website that allows referrals who have been chosen for interviews to self-scheduling their own interview times (Alaska Airlines).

IX. Process management and the administrative aspects of referral programs

The effective administration of the ERP is an extremely important component for producing great referrals.

1. Proactively discourage weak referrals – help to avoid a clogged referral queue by developing a process that discourages “junk referrals.” Discourage your employees from referring their relatives, and strangers who “approach them.” In order to ensure that your employees are screening out weak prospects, require employees to thoroughly know and assess their referral’s work, their skills, their interest in the job, and their cultural fit. You can also require employees to rate their knowledge of their candidates on a 1 to 5 scale. Requiring this level of knowledge and assessment helps to make the employee own the quality of their referral, and it minimizes the wasting of hiring managers and recruiters time on weak referrals (Agilent & Aricent).
2. Establish referral targets for managers – managers and teams produce a higher percentage of referrals when they are provided up front with specific referral targets or goals for each quarter. Also rank managers from best to worst on their ERP performance (Aricent & Acumen Solutions).
3. Encourage internal competition – offering rewards for early-bird referrals (i.e. the first submitted) can foster competition and encourage employees to respond quickly. Holding contests between rival business ynits can also foster a competitive mindset around producing referrals. An employee scorecard that lists the employee’s personal referral success rate allows employees to continually track the progress of their referrals as well is accumulated bonuses. One organization sends their iRefer dashboard to all employees to encourage competition and to allow employees to contact top referrers for advice (Tata Consultancy & Aricent).
4. Continually monitor referral vendors – maintain continuous awareness of the services offered by the numerous established and emerging vendors in the referral area. Even if you don’t use them, be aware of the concepts, the technologies, and the outsourcing options that are emerging in this area.
5. You need dedicated program staff and recruiters – the best programs develop a referral team and assign responsive recruiters to specialize in referrals (Owens Corning, Microsoft, & Amazon)
6. Develop an SLA – you can increase the responsiveness of line managers by instituting service-level agreements that spell out expectations for both managers and the ERP program staff (Aricent & Tata Consultancy).
7. Develop a best practice sharing process – periodically survey or interview both new hires from referrals and employees (with successful and failed referrals) in order to identify what worked and what didn’t. Develop a formal process (i.e.  a Wiki, listserv, Facebook page, Twitter feed, or online forum) that allows employees to ask questions and to easily post and share best practices for finding prospects, building relationships, and selling prospects.
8. Monitor progress and continually improve using metrics – periodically assess the satisfaction of employees, hiring managers, and individuals who were referred. Other key metrics that should be tracked include new-hire job performance, new-hire retention, boomerang rehires, offer acceptance ratio, diversity referrals, and referrals as a percentage of all hires (Aricent & Accenture).

Some Benchmark ERP Milestones

Some “best in the world” metrics to compare yourself to include:

• Participation rate (% of employees with at least one referral): 71% -Aricent
• Percentage of all hires from referrals (with a bonus): 78% -AmTrust
• Percentage of all hires from referrals (without paying a bonus): 70% -AmTrust
• Employee satisfaction rate: 98% -Aricent
• Percent of boomerang rehires through referrals: 72% -Aricent
• Most globalized ERP: operates in 40 countries -Microsoft

Referral Program Killers To Avoid

If you expect great results, in addition to providing some of the above advanced features and best practices, you must consciously avoid the following 13 ERP killers:

1. An ERP that is slow to respond to referrals and questions
2. Delaying the reward/bonus payment for three to six months
3. Referral spamming of employees with too many messages
4. Failing to periodically re-energize the ERP
5. No ATS marking of ERP applications so that you can track program effectiveness
6. Equal rewards for all jobs
7. No feedback on weak or bad referrals
8. Individual recruiters are allowed to “ignore” referrals
9. Not tracking referral rates by manager
10. Too many rules and restrictions
11. Not weighting referrals based on the referrer’s track record
12. ERP applications are not given priority treatment in the recruiting process or ATS
13. ERP program manager turnover

“Millennials are, in fact, much like their older counterparts,” says the study authors, who compared the results of current surveys and historic surveys of Boomers and Gen Xers.

What they found is that contrary to the stereotype of being a malcontented, coddled, naive lot, Millennials, the Gen Y generation, are in many ways more satisfied than their older counterparts.

“The data refutes the ‘millennial malcontent’ stereotype,”  write authors Brenda Kowske and Rena Rasch. As part of Kenexa’s WorkTrends survey of some 30,000 workers in 28 countries, they asked a series of attitude questions, finding that 60 percent of Millennials are “extremely satisfied” with where they work. That’s well above the 54 percent of Boomers and Gen Xers who said that.

Millennials were also more satisfied with the recognition they receive, more satisfied with their opportunities for growth and development, and as excited about their work and their pay as Boomers and Gen Yers.

The prevailing wisdom that Millennials hired today probably won’t stay for long does turn out to be true. But not because they are Millennials, say the authors. In the 2011 survey, a third of Millennials reported planning to leave their job in the next 12 months. Only 19 percent of Boomers are considering a change, while 27 percent of Gen Xers are.

Looking back to survey results from 1990, the authors found that 31 percent of the 27-year-olds were headed out, exactly the same percentage as this year’s 27-year-olds.

So why the disconnect, ask the authors, between the prevailing wisdom that Millennials are so very different from you and I, and what they found, which is “when it comes to the workplace, the differences are shockingly slight?”

“It’s possible that HR professionals and managers are adapting to their new charges, and creating programs that incorporate Millennials’ views into the workplace,” suggest Kowske and Rasch.

I suggest there’s more to it than that. The Pew Research Center painted a portrait of American Millennials last year, showing them to be better educated, more ethnically and racially diverse, and with higher incomes than previous generations at the same age.

They are also the first generation to grow up with computers, were the first to embrace social networking, and are still more likely to have online profiles than any other group. They also are the first generation to come of age in the midst of a recession since the Great Depression, perhaps explaining why 37 percent of Millennials were out of work or out of the workforce last year when Pew did its survey.

All these factors have an influence on Millennials, perhaps none as profoundly, though, as the recession. At the Brazen Careerist, a career site for young professionals, some of the most popular and active groups are those dealing with job and career issues. Professional affinity groups are almost as active.

Started by Penelope Trunk, the blunt-talking, irreverent career adviser, Brazen Careerist today has 120,000 members who flock to the online networking events where they connect with other young professionals, and seasoned veterans. These events are networking’s equivalent of speed dating, with a new conversation every few minutes.

The virtual career fairs are equally unique. They, too, have time limits on conversation between job seeker and recruiters. As Ryan Healy, co-founder and COO of Brazen Careerist told me, “we’re not trying to do what everyone else is doing. (Millennials) have a different approach.”

Consequently, the encounters at a Brazen Careerist job fair are conversations, not interviews. “The best part about our online recruiting events is that they offer direct contact to qualified applicants,” Brazen Careerist Marketing and Communications Director Ashley Hoffman wrote me in an email. Recruiters  get resumes, even though the site encourages profiles. It’s a nod to tradition and ATS data fields.

As an aside, a survey by freelance job site Elance found 56 percent of its Millennials declaring digital portfolios and online resumes are more effective than traditional resumes in landing a job.

There are other Gen Y job sites — AfterCollege.com and CollegeRecruiter.com are two of the larger ones. And more, like Confidently.co, a Ladders copycat for entry-level jobs and internships, pop up regularly.

Though Brazen Careerist has job listings, collects resumes for the job fairs, and welcomes recruiters, Healy says it is not a job board, nor a Millennial LinkedIn. “There are plenty of social networks out there,” he says. “There are lots of places to go look for jobs … we are more a collection of products and services for your career.”

Adds Hoffman, “At Brazen, you are surrounded by peers. It’s a little more Gen Y friendly.”

Venture for America is recruiting 50 or more college seniors, and is looking for companies to match them with the students. Beginning in the fall of 2012, the students will take jobs at startups in Detroit, Providence, New Orleans, and other cities that have a hard time competing for talent with sexier locales.

Startups will hire the “fellows,” as they’re being called, for at least $32- $38,000 per year, for two years. Employers agree to pay the candidates’ healthcare benefits; contribute $2,500 into a training institute; host one event for Fellows; and more.

In return, employers are getting their recruiting partially done for them, and a job candidate willing to venture outside of the Bostons and San Franciscos of the world.

Venture for America is also going to keep a database of resumes, transcripts, and essays of candidates who apply to the program, and will make that database available to companies, even those not participating in this program otherwise, to search. I’m told it’ll be free to use the database, with a “tax-deductible contribution of $1,000 – $2,000 upon successful hire by the company.”

Source: Challenger, Gray & Christmas

More teenagers found summer jobs in June than at any time since 2007.

Global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas says June saw 785,000 16-19 year-olds hired. Last year, 457,000 teens got jobs in June.

Considering the summer hiring season for teenagers to be May through July, the two-month total of 785,000, well ahead of last year at this point, is shy of 2009′s 809,000. July’s numbers historically are about half of June’s. But last year, July’s hiring was almost as large as June’s, a consequence, perhaps, of employers wanting to be sure they had the customers to support the summer staff.

July’s numbers won’t be known until August 5th when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its next monthly employment report. So far, no one is making predictions about what it will show. The June report had the economy adding only 18,000 new jobs, a number that surprised even the most pessimistic economists.

(Note: If you’re a data wonk, you may have noticed that the jobs numbers I’ve used here are contradictory. That’s explained at the end of this post.)

Even if there is a surge of summer hiring, most teenagers won’t have jobs. For the vast majority, that’s by choice. According to the BLS, there are 10 million kids not in the labor force. These are the kids who will populate America’s summer camps, summer schools, beaches, malls, parks, and streets.

Some will hold unpaid internships. NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers, said last week that half the Class of 2011 had at least one internship before graduation. Many — 37 percent, according to the survey — worked for free.

Among the 20,000 respondents to the NACE survey, paid interns spent more time on professional tasks while unpaid interns were more likely to perform clerical work. As a result, the paid intern “may offer employers more of the type of experience they’re seeking in their new hires,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director.

For employers, unpaid internships can be a benefit and a headache. State, and especially federal labor rules require employers offering unpaid internships to provide training, feedback, and to comply with regulations regarding hours, and breaks. The U.S. Department of Labor and many states (California, for example) strongly prefer that unpaid internships be managed by or at least in conjunction with a school or college and that credit be offered.

Even were these jobs to abound, it’s unlikely there would be enough to go around. The BLS reported there were 1.86 million teens in June who wanted a job and actively looked for work during the month. That translates into an unemployment rate for 16-19 year-olds of 27.6 percent. The unadjusted unemployment rate for the population as a whole was 9.3 percent. (The seasonally adjusted rate was 9.2 percent.)

For black teenagers, the unemployment rate was 45 percent. White kids had an unemployment rate of 24.8 percent. Teenage women of all races fare better than men. Their unemployment rate is 25.6 percent to 29.5 percent for men.

(Note: Challenger, Gray & Christmas and I are using the unadjusted jobs numbers. The monthly numbers economists, investors, and others focus on are seasonally adjusted numbers. In most cases, removing some of the seasonality offers a clearer picture of what’s happening in the overall economy. But using seasonally adjusted numbers to see how teenagers are faring would distort the picture, since we’re talking summer jobs.)

Boehner is not alone. A lot of people of all political, economic, and social persuasions seem to be asking the same question. But because many of us have been exhorting for years that such a scenario was inevitable, the current job crisis should be no surprise. More importantly, it should be more than obvious that strategies that worked in the past would not work in the future. As Peter Drucker once said, “the greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”

A new report released by McKinsey Global Institute seems to confirm that political rhetoric and populist driven strategies won’t be enough to see the United States return to full employment before 2020.

The report includes quite a few compelling statistics that I hadn’t seen before, at least not in these terms:

• 7 million: decline in the number of U.S. jobs since December 2007
• 21 million: jobs needed by 2020 to return to full employment
• 40%: proportion of companies planning to hire that have had openings for six months
• 1.5 million: estimated shortage of college graduates in the workforce in 2020.
• 23%: drop in rate of new business creation since 2007, resulting in as many as 1.8 million fewer jobs; the number of employees per new business has been falling, from eight in the 1990s to fewer than six in recent years.
• 20%: proportion of men in the population, not working today; up from 7% in 1970.
• 1 in 10: the number of Americans who move annually, down from 1 in 5 in 1985.

All told, between 2000 and 2007, the United States posted a weaker record of job creation than during any decade since the Great Depression. Total employment from 2000 to 2007 increased by 9.2 million — and 1.2 of those jobs were in sectors directly fueled by the credit bubble. The current job crisis didn’t start with the recession. The recession only accelerated and exacerbated it.

Under several job-creation scenarios, McKinsey estimates that as few as 9.3 million jobs could be created to as many as 22.5 million. Unfortunately the low-job-growth creation scenario is too familiar and will be the result of continued contraction in manufacturing employment, continued automation and offshoring in administrative and back-office positions, and new automation in retail (such as more opportunities for self-checkout.)

To achieve a high-job-growth scenario, our economy will have to rely on the healthcare sector. If this scenario comes to fruition, another 5 million jobs might be created thanks to rising demand from an aging population and the addition of millions of newly insured Americans to the healthcare system. If this scenario is accurate, politicians and citizen movements calling for an end to the proposed healthcare plan could win one battle (health care) but lose another (new job creation). In addition to healthcare, continued growth in business services might add another 6 million jobs. A housing recovery could create another 3 million jobs.

To reemploy the millions of unemployed with less than a college degree, the high-job-growth scenario must become a reality. The catch-22 is that to fill many of the jobs in the high-job-creation scenario, candidates with college degrees will be required. McKinsey projects that by 2020, 56.5 million members of the workforce will have college or graduate degrees. But to fill all the jobs created, an additional 1.5 million workers with college degrees would be needed. On the other hand, 64 million workers will have a high school degree or less, leaving 5.9 million more high school dropouts than jobs available.

But job creation alone won’t solve the problem. Those job creation-job filling scenarios assume that the fields of study pursued by the workers matches the needs of the employer and economy. Unfortunately that’s a faulty assumption.

Based on current trends, t0o few Americans who attend college and vocational schools choose fields of study that will give them the specific skills that employers are seeking. Twice as many students in the U.S. will graduate with degrees in social sciences and business rather than the much-needed skills in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Potential shortages loom large for nutritionists, welders, nurse’s aides, computer specialists, and engineers.

This skill gap is no longer pending as 64 percent of companies interviewed for the McKinsey study reported they cannot find qualified applicants, with management, scientists, and computer engineers topping the list.

The report offers three recommendations to achieve full employment: (1) sustained demand growth; (2) rising U.S. competitiveness, and (3) better matching of U.S. workers to jobs. Two of the three strategies seem to be out of the control for all but maybe the large multinational organizations. Better matching of workers to jobs offers the single best solution — and maybe the only one — for businesses committed to hiring and retaining a skilled, competitive workforce.

First, the salary news.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers reported Wednesday that the average starting salary for newly minted college graduates is $51,018. That’s up 4.8 percent from last year’s $48,661.

It’s the third time the quarterly NACE salary survey has reported an increase. It contrasts with 2010, when average starting offers were below those in 2009.

“The steady increases in starting salary offers we’re seeing this year is a good indication that the job market for new college graduates is gathering strength,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director.

Engineering graduates saw some of the biggest increases — and biggest salaries generally. Petroleum engineering graduates got average offers of $80,849, up 8.1 percent over the summer 2010 survey. The average offer to computer engineering graduates rose 7.6 percent to $64,499.

While their starting salaries were much lower, even students in humanities and social science programs saw increases.

Average salary offer rose 15.3 percent over last year to $40,057. However, growth there may be slowing, since the summer average is only 1.3 percent higher than the $39,527 average in the Spring 2011 survey.

Still, English majors saw a 6.6 percent bump over last year to $39,611, while offers to history majors rose 8.1 percent to $40,051.

The full report is available free for NACE members or by purchase, but more details are available in the press release here.

While college counselors and the Class of 2012 digest the salary data, Work4Labs released its latest Facebook app, which it calls Jobs For Me. Its first app, Work For Us, simplifies the posting of jobs to company Facebook pages. Jobs For Me does that — and more — for college career centers.

The free app posts jobs from the career center to the school’s Facebook profile. A setting in the app can be adjusted to limit access to only those with a school email address.

Work4Labs has made the interface remarkably convenient. Clicking into a job opens it right in Facebook, rather than elsewhere. Click into the apply link and a popup opens that allows a student to upload a resume and cover letter.  The popup, wisely, informs applicants that nothing from their Facebook profile will be submitted or accessible by others.

Students can also share jobs with their own network.

There’s a search tool useful for colleges and universities that have lots of jobs, and easy access for recruiters to post jobs.

Work4Labs says there’s a dashboard providing real-time and historic analytics on views, applies, likes, and sharing, among other data points.

The app had its beta launch in Europe, where Work4Labs was founded. The announcement says more than 100 universities there have installed it and some 8,000 companies have used it for their jobs.

Want to take a look at an example? Here’s the Facebook page for ESEI International Business School in Barcelona.

Ironically, one word still seems to sum up today’s career advice: “Anything.”

Even with the brightest employment prospects in years, barely a quarter of the 1.6 million about-to-be college graduates had a job locked down this spring.

The percentage hasn’t changed since last year, but, says the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the numbers themselves have. Last year, with doom and gloom everywhere, only 45.5 percent of seniors bothered to apply for jobs; this year, two-thirds have.

More students received job offers this year — 42 percent vs. 38 percent — and slightly more turned down an offer this year than last, says NACE, which surveyed 26,000 graduating seniors earlier this year.

Optimism has clearly improved. AfterCollege, a job board for college students and recent grads, surveyed its visitors last month finding 78 percent described the job hunt as “difficult” or “very difficult.” Last year 85 percent of the students said that.

Still, with graduation upon them, even the most optimistic of the holdouts will begin to heed that “anything” advice. By the time they doff those caps and gowns the percentage of seniors with jobs could reach 30 percent.

According to a just-released study of graduates from 2006-2010, within two months of graduation 51 percent of seniors found jobs. The study from Rutgers John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development didn’t break that out for the most recent grduates, but the report did note that 39 percent of those graduating in 2009 and 2010 took jobs paying “a lot less than they expected to earn.” The median salary for the first job was $30,000 for all graduates surveyed, but for those who grduated last year or in 2009, the median salary dropped to $27,000.

That might just explain the sighs mixed in with the “Pomp and Circumstance.” One poll cited by Time suggests that an astonishing 85 percent of graduates may have to move home because they can’t afford a place of their own.

That bit of wisdom from the classes of 2005-2010 comes too late to help this year’s crop of grads. And even for underclassmen, picking a major solely because of job prospects is probably advice easier given than taken. Not everyone has the aptitude for computer science, or mathematical ability for engineering.

On the other hand, the advice about internships is spot on. The National Association of Colleges and Employers says employers in a recent survey reported 39.1 percent of their entry-level hires from the Class of 2010 came from their own internship programs.

Of their interns, 58 percent were hired into full-time jobs. “That’s the highest conversion rate we’ve seen since we started tracking this on an annual basis in 2001,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director.

Good news, then, for those who manage to find internships. Finding work, however, is likely to be as challenging this year as last, says a report from CareerBuilder.

The company’s annual Summer Job Forecast says 21 percent of employers plan to hire seasonal workers this summer, about the same percentage as last year. More than half of these employers (57 percent) expect that some of the positions will be or could become permanent, making competition even keener than it might otherwise be.

CareerBuilder’s survey says 58 percent of employers will pay more than $10 a hour; 8 percent will pay better than $20; 31 percent will pay between $8 and $10.

What’s the best way to land a job? Hiring managers told CareerBuilder that being specific about accomplishments, whether in previous jobs or in school or volunteer work, is most helpful (55 percent). Referrals and interest in the company were mentioned by 37 percent and 35 percent respectively.

And don’t forget to send a cover letter and a thank-you note. Each was lauded by about a quarter of the surveyed managers.

If you want to spend six weeks interning for startup MyCube.com, a self-described “social exchange,” you’ll need to do more than what those hiring managers suggest.

Headquartered in Singapore, where 30 interns selected from 20 countries will spend the summer, MyCube is offering $3,000 Singapore ($2,418 U.S.), plus housing, plus airfare, plus a shot at a $10,000 grant. Applicants have to tweet about why they want the internship, submit an article or video, and fill out an application.

What’s the internship for? The site says the interns get “training in company formation, fundraising, product development, marketing, financial management and more.”

No doubt the intern program is part PR, part awareness building, and part goodwill for MyCube.com, an in-beta site that explains its purpose is to provide a place for individuals and group to ” store and share their information, updates, and content with others, while retaining full privacy, ownership, and control.”

Just what that means isn’t at all clear. However, its founder and president is Johan Stael von Holstein, a successful entrepreneur and tech visionary, who has been involved in a number of ventures in his native Sweden. He’s been a speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which also named him a technology pioneer.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers last week reported that its survey of employer plans found them expecting to hire 19.3 percent more grads this year than last. That’s a significant improvement over their plans just seven months ago, when the prediction was for a 13.5 percent increase.

“This is the first time since 2007 that we’ve seen a double-digit increase in spring hiring projections,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. “That’s a good indication that the job market for new college graduates is gaining momentum.”

NACE also found employers are receiving fewer applications for each opening than they did a year ago, when they averaged 40.5. Now, they are getting 21 per opening.

That’s not because students are sending out fewer resumes.

NACE found the total number of applications companies receive from seniors is up 45 percent over 2010.

According to a survey by Beyond.com conducted between February and March a third of all seniors had already sent out more than 41 applications in pursuit of a job. Over half the seniors had sent out more than 20 applications.

Global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas says its own analysis shows the spring 2011 college recruiting season will be the strongest since 2007.

“Entry-level hiring has not returned to pre-recession levels, but this year’s graduates should find markedly improved job-search conditions. Colleges and universities around the country are reporting increased on-campus recruiting and surveys of employers indicate more graduate hiring, as companies rebuild their bench-strength after massive layoffs during the downturn,” says CEO John A. Challenger.

The consultancy pointed to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the 20-24 age group saw the largest employment increase over the first three months of 2011. Employment among 25- to 34-year-olds and 35- to 44-year-olds each grew by less than one percent, and employment among 45- to 54-year-olds fell by 1.1 percent.

Campuses across the country are also reporting increased visits from recruiters, according to the Challenger analysis, citing reports from the University of Michigan, Texas Christian, and the University of California-Berkeley, which returned its annual job fair to a two-day event.

Even with the improvement in college hiring, Challenger warns that finding that first job won’t be easy. Hiring improvement is not uniform across all disciplines. A broad, 4,600-company survey conducted at the beginning of the school year by The Collegiate Employment Research Institute predicted a 10 percent overall hiring pickup for students graduating with a bachelor’s, driven by large employers and small firms and fast growth companies.

The report predicted MBAs will struggle, as the Institute saw little growth there. The hottest opportunities will be for top students in accounting, computer science, e-commerce, marketing, math, public relations, economics, entrepreneurism, and even liberal arts.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas also points out that besides competing against each other, seniors are also facing competition from last year’s grads and even those from two and three years ago, who may have had to take jobs outside their field.