That may not seem like much until you consider that employers reduced this year’s college grad hiring by 21 percent. That seven percent is on top of this year’s cuts, meaning that there will be almost 30 26.53 percent fewer jobs being offered to the current crop of seniors than their counterparts had in 2008.

For comparison, each NACE Job Outlook from 2004 to the spring of 2008 predicted double-digit increases in college senior hiring. The spring 2008 hiring preview predict 8.1 percent growth.

Besides cutting back on their hiring, NACE’s Job Outlook 2010 Fall Preview says employers are shifting their recruiting to the spring. Not in big numbers; only about a 5 percent change from the 2008 survey when the split was 63 percent planned to hire in the fall, while the rest were looking to the spring.

The only region of the U.S. that expects to increase college hiring is the northeast, though only by about 5 percent, which, if you are following the numbers here, will still be below the 2007 hiring level.

“Traditionally, employers tend to be conservative about their college hiring when the economy is in flux,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. “Although employers anticipate doing most of their recruiting in the fall, we are seeing some movement to recruit in the spring. This is likely due to anticipation that the economic recovery will be underway by then.”

What this means for college seniors should be self-evident: Get a resume, portfolio, or profile together now; network with alums, professors, your parents friends, and your friends’ parents; go to the on-campus job fairs; talk to the careers office, even if you think it’s lame. If you’ve been thinking of grad school, apply and at least keep the  option open.

For recruiters, the survey suggests opportunities to hire top seniors who might have had their sights set on bigger fish. With fewer jobs and fewer employers pursuing them, even the kids at the top of the class are likely to be more willing to consider smaller firms who aggressively recruit now, instead of next spring.

Don’t make the mistake, though, that it will be a cakewalk to get the best. I got an unusual press release pitching the benefits of an internship with SRC (formerly Syracuse Research Corporation) in Syracuse, NY. It’s unusual in that it is the first internship sales pitch in a press release we can recall receiving at ERE.

The first line of the release says SRC is sweetening its internship benefits “specifically to increase the number of top applicants and retain the best talent for full-time positions.” By the way, “sweet” is the right adjective to apply to the internship benefits. The company is offering to pay for the temporary relocation costs of interns, a housing stipend, referral bonus to former interns, paying positions after the internship as campus ambassadors for SRC, tuition assistance, and more.

What’s more, the research and development firm makes a point of telling interns that they’ll be involved in important and valuable work almost from the moment they arrive. “SRC interns are involved in the same activities as full time employees, including research, design and development, customer interaction and occasional business travel,” the press release says.

It’s an innovative program which kills two Nestle birds with one stone: using social media (online user-generated videos) to market candy, and providing job experience that potential employees may not get elsewhere.

Nestle’s Daniel Jhung, who manages the Butterfinger brand, launched the program in June after he had been hearing and reading about how cynical young people were about jobs and employment — Gen Y’s feeling that the job market was rotten, and that many big-corporation jobs were pretty dreary anyhow. Plus, Jhung figured Nestle could stand to learn a thing or two about social media from the Gen Y-ers.

He did a pretty wide sweep for candidates. It included the HotJobs job board (Nestle and Yahoo are tight); colleges; casting-call agencies in New York and LA; film schools; the Improv chain of comedy clubs, and more. After getting about 450 applicants in three or four days, that was enough to shut down the search.

Nestle narrowed down the field to a top-10 list in each city, and had each produce a video. From there, it interviewed two per city, and made its final selection.

A.J. Mayers is a FUNtern in Los Angeles. He heard on the radio that Nestle was having an in-person event to talk about the opportunity. He couldn’t make that, but did follow-up when he saw a posting for the internship on Craigslist, which pointed to HotJobs.

The University of Texas-Austin grad got the internship right before he got brought on at MTV. Because the Butterfinger gig is flexible, and can be done during off hours, from home, or at the beach (where he has passed out candy bars), he opted to take both the internship and the MTV job. There’d be no need to commute from his West Hollywood home to Santa Monica for MTV and then back to Nestle’s building, which could’ve been hellacious. Plus, Mayers was looking for experience in the entertainment industry and wants to be a TV producer, and for Nestle, he gets to make videos as part of an online user-generated video contest. The contest is part of Nestle’s re-introduction of its “Nobody’s gonna lay a finger on my Butterfinger” tagline.

Mayers, whose Butterfinger stint ends at the end of August, is making a last video that will be a “very fun, dancing, High School Musical-esque production,” he says, “with the Butterfinger man dancing around. It’s funny, silly. It’s my way to go out with a bang.”

Other FUNterns are in Chicago, Atlanta, and New York. They’re doing different kinds of work revolving around promoting the candy bar and the video contest. The Chicago FUNtern is headed to BYU when the internship is over; the New York intern, who is also working for a wireless company, is also headed back to school. The Atlanta intern is doing the internship as part of some time off she’s taking to explore freelance projects.

Jhung didn’t say who might at some point be offered jobs from the group, but did mention that Nestle is considering one or two of them, pending among other things, the remaining videos they make. My guess is that AJ is one of them (if so, it’ll be interesting to see whether he picks MTV or Nestle; he mentioned to me that MTV is part of his TV-industry career path, and doesn’t sound eager to leave). Anyhow, below is one of his videos. Perhaps I should warn you that I’d give it a PG-13 rating.

Mehler, daughter of Mark Mehler, a founder and principal of the well-known recruiting consultancy CareerXroads, joined hundreds of her fellow Harvard MBA students in signing an oath vowing to “seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term.”

Although other schools have tried oaths or pledges for their business school students, this one was the brainchild of a few of Mehler’s student colleagues. “Business schools have been demonized,” she told us recently, as she was preparing to leave home for her job in Minneapolis. Whether rightly or wrongly, they have been blamed for failing to instill a moral compass in the MBAs they turn out, who, in turn, have been blamed for the current recession as well as most of the excesses of Wall Street and the banking community at large.

“We had a lot of discussion about the recession and the conditions that lead up to it,” she told us. “The ethical situations were discussed in every class I had.”

Some of the students, however, believed they needed something more.

As Mehler points out, “Most professions have some ethics or licensing group.” Nothing equivalent exists for business, which is what lead a group of students to come up with a declaration of principles they hoped would eventually be signed by 100 members of the Harvard Business School class of 2009. On graduation day, more than 400 took the oath at a student-organized ceremony before the official exercises.

Articles in The Economist, The New York Times and elsewhere make much about the oath being a renunciation of greed. But the eight promises in the oath include no vow of poverty. Instead, they talk about considering the interests of society as a whole and taking personal responsibility for decisions and actions.

“If this is a way to stop an individual from a making a decision that will harm others, great,” says Mehler, who who observes that the oath creates a moral contract with oneself and the other students. “When you swear an oath,” she explains, “it makes you pause; think about the stakeholders.”

When a difficult decision with an ethical component arises, Mehler says the oath will serve as a reminder to weigh all the consequences. “You sort of sit and tell yourself: This is a gray area.”

Since starting at Harvard, students at other schools have signed on to it. Today, more than 1,300 MBAs have publicly declared thier commitment to its principles.

Whether the oath and its eight promises will survive the rough and tumble of the business world outside of Harvard Yard remains to be seen. The Economist article talks about the oath being “part of a larger effort to turn management from a trade into a profession.” The author of the article notes the difficulty in achieving that goal, especially in light of the regard business schools give to Nobel economist Milton Friedman who wrote in his book Capitalism and Freedom, “There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

Like all practices that augment the capability and capacity of the organization, college recruiting needs to run more scientifically, with decisions based on data and research. If you are looking for metrics to assess the effectiveness of your college recruiting practices, consider a few of the following:

A+ Level Business Impact Metrics

The most important metrics are those that demonstrate that new college hires positively impact the business. Possible metrics include:

1. Observed Job Performance: In roles where it is possible to capture real data on job output, consider comparing performance of recent college hires to existing employees in the same role or to college hires from previous time periods. Selecting a market basket of such roles across the organization to evaluate should serve as a decent indicator of overall practice effectiveness.
2. College Hire Retention: Getting great college hires is one thing; keeping them long enough to produce a positive return on investment is another! Calculate your retention rates at six-month intervals for three years.
3. College Hire Diversity: You don’t need to prove that increased rates of diversity in the workforce positively impact business results; numerous studies have already done that for you. Instead, measure and report how well your practices are doing at increasing the rate of diversity hires you produce. Compare actual rates to either pre-established targets or rates from previous time periods.
4. % to Plan: How successful are you at recruiting the right number of college hires by the target time desired?
5. Termination Rate: Percentage of college hires that must be terminated during the first two years of employment.
6. Training Failure Rate: Percentage of college hires that fail during initial training.
7. Total College Hire Compensation Recruited: The total compensation including all one-time bonus payments for college hires generated during a specific time period.

Supplemental Ways to Measure New Hire Performance

In addition to measuring on-the-job performance, there are some other measures that indicate program performance. They include:

1. Bonus Compensation Rate: If your organization uses a variable reward structure, look at the average bonus compensation rate of recent college hires compared to hires in previous periods, adjusting for changes in the size of the bonus pool.
2. Promotion Rate: Great hires advance rapidly, be they college or experienced hires. Look at the rate of college hires promoted at six-month intervals for the first two years of tenure.
3. Training Scores: If your organization requires new hires to attend a battery of training events, considering aggregating individual scores from training assessments into a single new hire training score. Compare this score to past college hires.
4. % of College Hires in Top 50% Ranking: While some in HR consider forced rankings harsh, a true measure of whether or not your college programs are producing great hires is the percentage of college hires managers place in the top 50% when forced to rank their downstream organizations.
5. 360° scores: Average 360 scores of new college hires after one year.

Process Efficiency Metrics

The following metrics measure whether your college hire program is efficient and effective:

1. Stakeholder Satisfaction: Manager, applicant, and new-hire satisfaction with the process.
2. Employer Brand Ranking: Firm ranking scores from the Universum brand survey.
3. Applicant Quality: Percentage of applicants that exceeded the minimum qualifications. Alternatively, average GPA, or SAT of new hires (within grad and undergrad categories) or average final interview scores assigned to new hires by hiring managers for firms that use a numerical rating system.
4. Intern Conversion Rate: The conversion rate of top-performing interns to permanent hires.
5. Offer Acceptance Rates: Percentage of offers accepted (note: without looking at the quality of the candidates who received offers, the statistic can be misleading. You can get a very high offer acceptance rate because you’re making offers to low-quality candidates who no one else wants. Instead, look at the offer acceptance rate of highly desirable candidates who have offers from other firms, in order to see how competitive you are).
6. Head-to-Head Hire Rate: Percentage of hires that accepted an offer over offers from key talent competitors.
7. Cost per Hire: The cost per college hire (compared to last year and the cost of an experienced hire). Be careful, because a cheap hire may or may not be a quality hire).
8. Top Schools Percentage: The percentage of hires from “top-10″ targeted schools.
9. Local Schools Percentage: The percentage of hires from “local” schools (local hires frequently have higher retention rates and lower salary costs).

Internal Program Effectiveness Metrics

After you assess you program using a sampling of the metrics listed above, you should also look at program metrics which have an internal focus and generally are not reported outside of HR. Those program metrics include:

1. Goals Met: The percentage of program goals that were actually met.
2. ROI: ROI (benefits minus costs) of the program.
3. List Rankings: What percentage of recognition type ranking applied for were received. Include local, state, and national rankings like BusinessWeek’s Best Place to Start a Career ranking.
4. College Career Site Effectiveness: Monitor statistics related to raw hits, hits to event specific landing pages, duration of stay, and conversion (completion of application, registration for newsletter, etc.).
5. Number of Attendees: Percentage of targeted attendees at info sessions, career fairs, and interviews (note: it measures volume but not the quality of the attendees).
6. Critical Incident Count/Cost: Number and cost of EEOC/legal issues resulting from college hiring practices challenged.
7. Online Comment Ratio: The amount of both positive and negative information about the firm that can be found by applicants online.
8. Number of Applicants: The overall number of formal applications received each year (note: volume doesn’t indicate quality).

Final Thoughts

The time has come for college recruiting programs to raise the bar and to demonstrate their effectiveness and impact in the same ways that normal recruiting programs do. In tight economic times when college hire budgets are being reduced dramatically, now is an ideal time to demonstrate just how effective college hiring can be.

Steven Rothberg

As you might already suspect, internship opportunities for college students this year have been severely curtailed. Numbers are hard to come by since many internships are informal or are called something else. However, Steven Rothberg, founder and president of CollegeRecruiter.com tells us his site has about 10,000 jobs categorized as internships, which is half what it was a year ago.

“The number and quality of internship opportunities are significantly down this year over last,” says Rothberg, noting that it appears the majority of those available are unpaid. Again, no hard numbers on paid vs. unpaid internships — “that’s impossible to track,” he says — but from his conversations with employers, “They are either eliminating the program entirely or they’re eliminating the compensation.”

This comes at a time when the competition for what used to be called summer jobs has rarely been keener. Because companies across the U.S. have been retrenching, this spring’s crop of graduating seniors will face a tight job market. A survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) issued in October showed employers expected to hire the same or fewer students than they did last year.

“Overall, hiring looks flat for now and some employers are indicating some movement to cut back,” Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director, said when the report was issued. “In August, approximately one-third of employers said they were going to trim their college hiring; in our current poll, however, 52 percent said they were going to adjust their college hiring downward.”

Now, four months later, that projection looks almost optimistic. Thus graduating seniors who would have entered the labor force in years past will now be competing with juniors and sophomores for internships, says Rothberg.

“This Spring’s going to find a lot of college seniors taking unpaid positions,” he told us. “If they can’t get a paying job, they’ll be looking for the experience for their resume.”

Richard Bottner

Richard Bottner, founder and president of Intern Bridge, a consultancy that helps SMBs develop and administer internship programs, tells us, “This is a year unlike any other year.” He’s referring not only to the scramble for jobs by college students, but to the opportunities for recruiters.

“Recruiters have a bigger advantage this year than in any other year that my generation has experienced,” says the 24-year-old. “It used to be more balanced” between internships available and the students seeking them, he explains. Now, “recruiters will find it easier to find better talent. There’s a lot more competition out there for every internship.”

He laments the conversion of paying positions to unpaid because it takes out of contention students who simply must earn money for school. On the other hand, Bottner says it makes even the low-paying positions far more attractive.

“This is a year that many of the smaller companies should be able to compete for really top talent, if they don’t cut out the pay,” says Bottner, who has been advising the small and medium sized businesses he focuses on to “pay what they can, but pay.”

Though Rothberg’s view is that it is better to offer an unpaid internship than none at all, he, too, says recruiters with paying jobs should brace for the onslaught of applications. “They’ll have their pick,” he says, even if their company isn’t one of the big names.

His advice to students is to take a job “any job and then intern part-time.” Even fast food jobs, Rothberg suspects, will look better and better to college students as the end of semester nears. “Any job that is associated with a paycheck will be a cool job,” he predicts and most students “would rather get the experience than nothing at all.”

Both men do agree on this: Companies that hire interns now will be better positioned for the eventual recovery. Says Bottner, if the internship is well structured, something Intern Bridge can help ensure, then “the student the company hires and who gets something valuable from the experience is going to be a prime prospect later on.”

Once again referrals have turned out to be the leading source of external hires in the annual CareerXroads source of hire survey. In 2008, 27.3 percent of the external hires made by the 45 large employers who completed the survey came from referrals made primarily by employees, but also by alumni, vendors, and others.

Corporate web sites — a destination and not an actual “source,” insists the report — was second with 20.1 percent of the external hires coming from there. Rounding out the top three were job boards, which accounted for 12.3 percent of the hires.

No big news in those results. For the last several years the survey that CareerXroads principals Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler conduct every January has consistently found referrals accounting for about 3 of every 10  external hires made by the participating companies.

What is different this year is that 38.8 percent of all openings were filled by internal transfers and promotions.

“We found that very interesting, ” says Crispin. “That’s the highest number since we started this survey eight years ago.”

His explanation is that despite hiring freezes, critical openings still have to be filled. But, now that’s being done internally and the  jobs the transfers leave are simply being absorbed by the remaining staff.

In the report, Crispin and Mehler put it this way:

“… the significant increase in the proportion of internal to external fills in 2008 versus 2007 (28%) is at least partially due to the deteriorating economic climate during 2008. We think this conclusion is further supported by the survey respondents’ estimate that the number of contingent workers employed by their respective firms decreased from 18% in 2007 to 10% in 2008. Clearly the data reflects a shift in emphasis to filling internally and squeezing external hires.”

The report also notes that some of the surveyed companies are filling almost half their vacancies by internal promotions and transfers. That’s something those companies should report on their career sites, Crispin and Mehler say, since it evidences their commitment to career development.

The survey report also identifies a few new trends and strengthens trends first noticed in previous years. Most notably:

1. Third party recruiters and agencies as a source of hires have been in decline since their zenith in 2005 when the survey indicated 5.2 percent of hires came from there. In 2008 that number had fallen to 2.7 percent, a decline exacerbated by the overall drop in hiring.

   “Don’t place your bet on this side of the market having much of an upside when the economic climate reverses. It won’t,” the report says.

2. CareerBuilder has overtaken Monster among the job boards (28.9 percent vs. 23 percent of the total hires coming from job boards), but the report calls it a pyrrhic victory. “We believe this SOH has indeed peaked and predict it will diminish in the future.” However, the report suggests that all of the big, national boards are losing share to the niche sites, which collectively accounted for 36.2 percent of the hires coming from job boards.
3. Perhaps not surprisingly, not one of the surveyed companies said it planned to increase hiring in 2009. Showing the depths of the downturn, the companies collectively expect to hire 15.7 percent fewer employees this year than last.

Recruiters have come to regard the annual CareerXroads Source of Hire Study as a sort of guide by which to measure their own company’s sourcing. However, Crispin and Mehler caution that, “we seek to stimulate discussion about staffing issues rather than encourage blind acceptance of data at face value.”

The report is compiled from data reported by 45 firms (out of more than 200 invited to participate) who collectively filled 309,600 openings last year.

Note: The chart accompanying this post has been updated to include two categories omitted from the previous version.

This past week more than 400 ERE.net community members tuned in for a webinar on college recruiting with a shoestring budget.

Despite sour economic conditions, many organizations are continuing to hire, albeit maybe not with the gusto or resources they used to muster. Those organizations that continue to augment organizational capability and capacity with new college grads are doing a very smart thing, as several organizations that stopped college hiring following the economic collapse in 2001 can attest.

Entry-level hires from colleges and universities play a vital yet often undervalued role in many organizations. Cutting college intake even for a short time can have disastrous unplanned impacts.

Recent college graduates bring with them new skills, the ability to question tired thinking by asking “why,” and remain malleable enough for organizations to mold into entry-level management and core-contributor roles vital to the organization’s succession chain.

Organizations can cut costs, but they can’t stop time, so choking off college recruiting can lead to:

1. Acceleration of aging workforce issues. If you have an aging workforce now and you choke off hiring of younger talent, statistically speaking, the average age of employees in your organizations is going to grow at a significantly faster pace. While that may not seem like an issue in the short term, letting your workforce gray significantly may impact your ability to recruit college grads when your organization does restore its interest in college recruiting.
2. An empty succession pool. Many organizations cut college recruiting budgets entirely following 9/11. Due to a slow economic recovery following that tragedy, college recruiting budgets didn’t recover quickly. The result today is a number of organizations that have no choice but to spend millions poaching talent with 5-7 years’ experience from other organizations or hiring talent with 2-3 years’ experience and investing in rapid development programs. For organizations in that boat, they are realizing that it would have been more economical in the long run to have maintained investments in college recruiting.
3. Slowed innovation. Possibly the best thing about hiring recent college graduates is the fact that they don’t know anything. Well, that’s not entirely true. The truth is that they don’t know anything about why you do things the way you do, so they are more apt to ask why. When such discussions erupt, that’s often when new hires can introduce new thinking, new technology, and new approaches. Choking off the supply of individuals not subject to historical group think can stifle an organization’s ability to evolve and be innovative.

What follows below the webinar insert are the questions raised by those attending and our answers. If more elaboration is needed on any topic, use the commenting function below to not only engage us, but the entire ERE community!

Join me, along with talent management strategist Dr. John Sullivan, for tomorrow’s webinar as we explore college recruiting during a recession.  We’ll be taking a look at why you should continue college recruiting despite the economy, the financial impact of your efforts, and how to attract the best talent using a variety of mediums.

Dr. Sullivan will be taking questions at the conclusion of the presentation to address your thoughts and concerns regarding college recruiting. Don’t wait until it’s too late to find out why and how you should continue your college recruiting efforts in 2009. We still have plenty of space so sign up today!

____________________________________________________________
Wednesday, February 11th
2:00 – 3:00 PM EST
Register Here
_____________________________________________________________

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at brendan@ere.net.

That’s the premise behind this new site with the odd name that has nothing to do with fish. In fact, confesses founder Ted Williams, “I wish I had a cool story about snorkeling and looking into a grouper’s eye when the idea went off in my head, but the name was chosen to be unique and memorable. Sure, a lot of people think it is dumb and it may make it difficult for us to market ourselves, but it fits with our strategy — create a remarkable experience.”

Simply put, GrouperEye allows companies looking for interns to offer a sort of tryout without making any commitment other than to award a $100 prize.

Cookthink is a case in point. The cooking-oriented website figured its recipe search tool was sufficiently unique that it could be licensed to others. But the small company didn’t have the resources to hire a marketing firm. So it turned to GrouperEye, offering $100, lunch with the founders, and virtual internships for a 1-3 page summary of a licensing business plan.

The deadline for submittals has not yet passed, so we can’t say how things turned out, but Cookthink co-founder Chip Brantley likes the concept.

“I like the environment that GrouperEye creates for recruiting,” Brantley wrote in an email. “We’ve used other websites for recruiting in the past, and it all feels the same. If GE (GrouperEye) can get good people, then I think the way the site’s set up will draw a lot of companies because of the format; you can learn a lot more about a student on GE than you can through a resume or even phone interview.”

That’s the idea, says Williams, who previously launched a video production firm mostly for fun. “Students receive the chance to get noticed for a job opportunity, cash, experience, and a tangible portfolio. Companies receive access to top talent, an employee screening mechanism, original ideas, and buzz.”

Intended to help employers find top students for their internships, GrouperEye doesn’t have to be used that way. Razume, a user-mediated, resume-building site, is looking for a plan to increase participation on its site. The best plan wins $100, but no internship. Razume, however, is the exception and getting great ideas on the cheap is not the objective.

Williams, only a year out of business school himself, said the inspiration for GrouperEye came from discussions with his friends who lamented the difficulty of getting noticed by companies. “You can ask any college student and they will tell you the system is dumb. Unless you have close to a 4.0 or know wealthy people who can hook you up with a job, finding a job is the wild wild West,” says Williams. “Companies need to discover and hire the best talent. Students need a way to get noticed for their ideas and originality.”

There are other sites for students seeking internships. Craigslist is probably the most widely used, but MonsterTrak, Experience, and Internships.com are also popular. None, however, takes the competitive tryout approach that GrouperEye does.

GrouperEye charges $199, which includes the $100 prize money. Eight employers have so far taken the plunge, including Motley Fool, the investment advice site. Williams says the company now needs to sign up both employers outside the Washington, D.C. area, where it’s based and expand to colleges and universities nationwide.

Up to now, he tells us, he’s focused on developing the product. “We firmly believe that the best marketing is creating a product worth talking about. Therefore, we have spent the majority of our time creating an experience worth talking about. We are just now making the switch from product-focused to marketing-focused.”

“Everybody loves the concept, but whether we can take this love and translate it into success is yet to be seen.”

It’s a challenge all right, but Williams knows right where to go for help. He posted his project to GrouperEye.

Sound familiar? This is not unlike what we are seeing today. According to the newly-released Michigan State University 2008-2009 Recruiting Trends Survey, total college hiring will decrease by 10% in the coming year. While belt-tightening during an economic downturn is unavoidable, we argue that campus recruiting activities should not be eliminated altogether. We have been in the staffing business for 25 years and run large-scale campus recruiting programs at Fortune 500 companies, such as Agilent Technologies, Ernst & Young, CIGNA, and Honeywell. We have experienced as many down-markets as we have market upswings.

When faced with tough financial conditions, here are five reasons why smart companies continue to recruit on campus.

Improve the quality of the talent you are able to recruit

While other companies are licking their wounds and shutting down their campus recruiting machines, smart companies use this time to recruit at better schools than they have in the past to attract the best of the best. Because fewer companies are recruiting on campus, these smart companies know they can have their pick of the talent litter. “The current economic downturn creates a vacuum of sorts where some companies’ absence allows you to woo the best in class. A year ago, these students would have been already locked up by companies via a bidding war in September,” says Adam Ward, manager of Global Campus Recruiting at Qualcomm. Thus, tough economic times can actually open up doors for companies that seize the moment to compete for top talent.

Block and tackle competitors

Smart companies know that this is a great time to take market share away from competitors, and this goes for talent, too. “For a company like Qualcomm that is not a consumer-branded organization, this is an opportune time to do some real brand-building beyond the typical career week visit. We see this as an opportunity to make several return trips to campus and really maximize the time where there are not many other companies that are sharing the stage,” says Qualcomm’s Ward. Now is the time to increase your presence on campus, refine and intensify your targeted messaging to top talent, and jump into the hearts and minds of student job seekers who might have never before considered your firm.

Thwart looming retirements and a drain of intellectual capital

It is no secret that the next 5 to 10 years will produce a wave of baby boomer retirements. Hiring campus talent year after year ensures that your company builds a pipeline of future leaders. Gaps in your campus recruiting intake programs can lead to gaps in your talent supply and a weak source of talent waiting on the sidelines.

As Steve Canale, GE’s US manager of Recruiting and Staffing Services, notes: “GE’s global campus talent acquisition recruitment is mission critical — entry-level talent joins our leadership development programs and helps to guarantee our future leadership pipeline. We could not protect our knowledge transfer and be thought leaders without a steady state of top campus talent joining GE every year. Talent development is a core competency at GE and is taken very seriously across the organization.” Truly strategic companies will follow GE’s lead and recruit recent graduates who will join the company, cultivate their skills, and become the future leaders of the company.

Campus continuity pays off

Ask IBM. During the economic recession that took place in the early 1990s, IBM took a hiatus from campus recruiting. According to Eletta Kershaw, program manager of IBM’s U.S. college recruiting program, “As I understand it, it took us some time to regain a foothold at our key schools.” Today, IBM’s campus recruiting landscape looks very different. IBM actively recruits at more than one hundred universities across the country. Its presence goes far beyond traditional recruiting events: recruiters sit on advisory boards and panels, guest lecture in classes, and partner with diversity organizations. They also show students how at IBM, they can tackle meaningful projects that help the world work better. Says Kershaw, “Students like to know that as today’s world has become smaller, flatter and ’smarter, they can make a difference, from creating new green technologies to solving food shortages through smarter distribution channels.”

Their now long-standing involvement at their key recruiting schools has enabled them to get this message across to students loud and clear, and their recruitment brand has become well known among university students. These key relationships are essential to getting the best students year after year, regardless of the economic situation.

Campus recruiting is the most cost-effective way to source and retain top diverse talent

Anyone at Procter & Gamble will tell you that campus recruiting is the lifeblood of the company. Nearly 100% of P&G’s fresh talent comes from its campus recruiting program. P&G realized many years ago that sourcing top talent from the world’s best colleges ensures that P&G can recruit a large number of highly skilled candidates while avoiding the high costs of search firm fees and excessive salaries. Moreover, these recent graduate hires are groomed and promoted from within, enabling P&G to lead the way in employee retention and realize a significant return on its investments in recruiting.

One of the best-kept staffing secrets is that employees who originally came into the company as interns feel a sense of belonging and are retained at higher rates than employees who did not start as interns. This is particularly true of employees from underrepresented minority groups, which can be the most difficult and expensive group of candidates to recruit. A strategic campus recruiting program that includes a robust internship program enables a firm to gain access to top diverse talent in a cost effective way.

However, the key to a truly sustainable campus recruiting program is scalability. Even during tough economic times, many campus recruiting programs continue to thrive, and strategic companies are able to continue to have a presence on campus because their hiring programs can be scaled to appropriate levels to fit the demand. Robin Renowden, Intel’s global college recruiting manager, says it best: “It’s prudent for college recruiting managers to have a predefined, scalable recruiting strategy that enables them to dial-up and dial-down as the external winds of change are blowing. The strategy should define a minimum level of campus engagement that continues even in the worst of times. Given today’s economic environment, we need to dial our recruiting down but not be myopic. Without a predetermined strategy that outlines how to utilize resources depending on various levels of demand for talent, college recruiting organizations run the risk of being forced to cut too far.”

Conclusion

The best-managed companies with visionary leaders will seize the opportunity to exploit the current economic morass. Today, students are eschewing the glamour and high earning potential of the bulge bracket firms for more stable and secure positions in government and industry. There is no better time in recent memory for your organization to swoop up top talent from universities. Timing is everything and the time is now.

Unfortunately, many recruiters and recruiting leaders choose an opposite path, becoming more conservative in their approach. When markets head south and fear about economic issues grip the populace, consider a counter-cyclical recruiting strategy that sends a clear message to everyone inside and outside your organization that talent truly means something to your organization.

One controversial yet extremely public, effective outside-the-box recruiting approach you might consider is “proximity recruiting.”

You Must Do Internet and Physical Recruiting

Even with the tremendous growth of Internet recruiting, not everyone is actively surfing the Internet looking for a job or combing through their email in anticipation of your generic form letter introduction.

Reaching a greater percentage of the population relevant to your job searches often requires using at least three channels to reach them, one of which should be physical. The underlying concept of physical recruiting is a simple one, just as robbers target banks because that’s where the money is! Recruiters need to target physical locations where a large number of potential hires can be found.

While nearly everyone in recruiting is familiar with the dreaded job fair, there are numerous other approaches to physical recruiting that are far more effective and fun. One such approach is “proximity” or event recruiting. Proximity recruiting at professional events (tradeshows and seminars) is clearly becoming more mainstream, but one location in particular really elevates the visibility of your efforts and qualifies as “outrageous.” The location? Across the street or in the parking lot of talent-competing firms in trouble.

Proximity Recruiting with a Taco Truck

If you have been paying attention to the business press lately, you are probably aware that Internet giant Yahoo! was planning to lay off approximately 1,000 employees worldwide, the greatest percentage of which would come from its Silicon Valley headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

What you may not know is that despite a multi-year trend of notable voluntary exits by key employees, Yahoo! is still considered by many to employ some of the greatest engineering talent in the industry. This talent is extremely valuable to hundreds of upstarts working on next-generation technologies.

Yahoo!, like many organizations planning a reduction in force, kept its plans secret until the day when the axe actually swung. Because employees knew pink slips were coming, but no real guidance was offered as to who would be impacted, more people were concerned than would actually be cut.

Seizing on that fear and the actual swinging of the axe, Tokbox, an upstart enabling free voice and video calling over the Internet without any software download, engaged a proximity recruiting strategy that some may consider outrageous.

While pink slips were being handed out, Tokbox executives were setting up a taco truck across the street from Yahoo’s corporate campus, offering employees affected (and anyone else that wanted to chat) a hot lunch and information about employment opportunities.

Their approach was a simple one. They leased a taco truck and driver for the day, set up across the street in plain view, and offered a hot lunch to any Yahoo! employee who wanted to talk. Company executives were on hand and the atmosphere was light.

In order not to make anyone overly nervous, the conversations were kept short. While proximity recruiting has become more common in the Silicon Valley, Tokbox’s efforts still garnered a great deal of press both on the Internet and via the mainstream news media, earning them hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free PR and employment advertising.

Other Proximity or Event Recruiting Opportunities

If you are not ready to offer free food or display a banner, consider additional proximity recruiting approaches:

• A van with a recruiting banner. If there was a most commonly used form of outrageous proximity recruiting, it would have to be the use of the recruiting van (usually with a large banner) that is parked within easy view of a large corporate site or a commuter site frequented by target talent. The “banner van” parked across the street approach has been used both in high-tech and healthcare to target firms that are currently going through acquisitions, union problems, and workforce reductions.
• The “across the street” bar, restaurant, or gym. Almost any firm with a large number of employees has a bar or restaurant close by where a significant number of the site’s employees go for a drink or meal with a colleague. These locations are packed with employees wearing IDs, who incidentally, often have their guard down. Health clubs and gyms are also great spots to target.
• Award events. You’re almost guaranteed to meet the best and brightest at events that offer awards or prizes for excellence and innovation. Not only should the recipients be targets but you should also look at award presenters as both potential targets and as referral sources.
• College recruiting approaches. Because college students love to attend events, proximity recruiting should be a major part of your university recruiting effort. Place a “banner van” key across the street from college campuses. Consider recruiting at campus club meetings, at college sports events, at music concerts, on the beach during spring break, and even at both on- and off-campus college poker events.
• Conventions. If you’re trying to hire a nurse, it only makes sense to recruit at a bar inside or outside a nursing-related convention, or where nursing continuing education is being offered. Here again you have the advantage of almost everyone having a name tag with their own and their company name on it.
• Clubs and groups. If you are seeking individuals with certain skills or attributes, consider recruiting at clubs, societies, or organizations where individuals with these attributes are common. For example, if you’re looking for risk-takers, target rock-climbing clubs. If your search includes disciplined individuals, consider military groups, math societies, and music groups.
• Hotels where company events are held. When you think about it, companies do send their very best people to meetings, seminars, and events. Occasionally, corporate events are announced on the hotels marquis for everyone to see, making it easy to schedule your next pub crawl. This time of year, immediately before a firm’s holiday party gets underway, is another time to begin building relationships with potential targets.
• Corporate training centers. Many firms send their best employees to corporate training. Because a good deal of corporate training can be long and dull, there is a high likelihood that a large group will go out for cocktails in the host hotel or at a nearby bar. So, if you have large corporate training centers near you, consider them prime targets.
• Shareholder meetings. The bar across the street from the location of the annual shareholders meeting will almost always include a number of company employees and leaders. Go before or after the event to make contacts and build relationships.
• Miscellaneous. Firms have practiced “proximity recruiting” at other events and sites including wine festivals, home shows, in shopping malls, and at charity events.

Final Thoughts

If you are put off by the concept of boldly “raiding” other firms, you should realize that “stealing” another firm’s customers is already an accepted and common practice. Both sales and recruiting are competitive functions where the most desirable targets have already been captured by your competitors. As a recruiter, your job is to provide your coworkers with the best teammates that can be found anywhere, period.

No matter what you do, you can never successfully recruit a firm’s employees unless the firm that the employee currently works at has already failed to offer them opportunities that are superior to yours. If you are even slightly hesitant about raiding firms like GM, Ford, Chrysler, Citigroup etc. that have clearly failed their current employees, don’t be surprised when you are replaced by a recruiter who is more aggressive, bolder, and more willing to try something new.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory works on a few easy little projects such as saving the environment, reducing oil dependence, and preventing terrorism. Recruiting for the last one — preventing terrorism and nuclear non-proliferation — is the work of Rob Dromgoole.

“A modern-day moon shot,” he says of this lofty work. Eight different recruiters at the lab recruit for about 615 hires annually (about half of them interns/students), among a workforce of about 4,200. Turnover is around 6-8%, tenure about 11 years.

Many employees have doctorates, and many masters’ degrees. About half of the hires come via referrals. The rest are from direct sourcing, Monster, CareerBuilder, Facebook, LinkedIn, and from colleges.

Some of the lab’s favorite schools, particularly for candidates with graduate degrees: University of Washington, Oregon State, Michigan, Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon, and one we mentioned before: University of California-Davis.

The selling point of a job at the lab, which is one of 10 Energy Department Office of Science national labs, is, according to Dromgoole, the chance to do world-changing work.

“Having an impact and a chance to protect the country from a terrorist attack … investigating ways to get off the oil addiction … that’s the modern day moon shot,” he says.

Dromgoole notes that the United States is the “Saudi Arabia of coal, one of the world leaders in coal deposits.” But since coal is dirty, the lab is looking for ways to make it cleaner by, for example, storing emissions underground. The lab also works on such diverse projects as increasing the energy efficiency of buildings, as well as research on fuel cells. So job candidates (in addition to being promised they won’t fall into a black hole) are told they’ll have a chance to pick from a variety of interesting work. “Intel and Microsoft are telling them what products they are working on,” he says. “Here they have a lot of flexibility in terms of what they want to do. They’re not working for a company shareholder. They’re working for a country shareholder.”

Attracting people to a somewhat remote place near the Oregon-Washington border is a challenge. Having said that, it has been voted one of the top locations for scientists and engineers. And you can get a house for under $200,000 — and pay no state income tax.

The real-estate bust has made it hard to attract people from, say, San Diego and Los Angeles, Dromgoole says. When their $750,000 houses are now worth $550,000, they’re in no mood to sell them.

Another recruiting challenge is pay. While lab employees get a good retirement and health plan, “base salaries aren’t as high — competitive, but not the highest, like Google,” he says. “I can’t compete against Google. Though if it’s about the money, they’re not going to be a fit here anyway.”

The lab hires 84 foreign nationals annually. Not all of the organization’s jobs require a clearance, so it can bring in top talent from Bejing and elsewhere when it needs. Still, Dromgoole is concerned that the United States is tightening immigration as other countries — including, but not limited to Canada and European nations — expand it. On top of that, he says, only 6-7% of American college students want to go into science and engineering.

As you might imagine, Dromgoole is a fan of Raghav Singh’s immigration articles. He’s with Gerry Crispin on candidate treatment. And he agrees with Jeremy Eskenazi’s view that this recession is different. Different because recruiting the scientists the lab needs, he says, is still quite a challenge in a slower economy. And that’s not likely to change for a while. “These type of issues are beyond Democrat and Republican. If we don’t need to depend on oil from Iran and the Middle East and Venezuela, Americans are going to be more secure.”

Yet recruiting source representatives say they rarely hear from corporate recruiters, only receiving infrequent calls when a recruiter needs to fill an immediate opening.

Says Bev Principal, assistant director of student employment services at the Stanford University Career Development Center: “If I meet with a company representative during the summer, and receive information about its entire breadth of career opportunities, not just the immediate openings, I can pass that information along to students during career counseling sessions or I’ll remember to invite that company to participate in specific career events here on campus.”

Principal says she regularly e-mails students about recruiting events, and sends a monthly newsletter to engineering students. If she has information to share about an employer or its job opportunities, she passes it along.

John Weitzel, internship coordinator at El Camino College, says that employers are often disappointed in student turnout when they schedule a last-minute campus recruiting event. He starts promoting the retail holiday job fair, for example, when students first return to school in mid-August, and companies like FedEx and Disney set up campus recruiting visits a year in advance. FedEx is on the students’ radar screens because it recruits on campus every Monday.

“Not every student knows what they want to do when they finish school,” says Weitzel. “If I know Northrop Grumman has jobs other than engineering, like grant-writing and marketing, I can talk about those opportunities with students who seem suited for those careers.”

Even sources that provide experienced candidates can be better used through proactive planning. Olin King, site manager for the West Covina office of the California Employment Development Department, says that employees who lose their jobs due to offshoring receive special benefits and retraining, and he can sway them toward specific courses — if he knows local employers have hiring needs.

“We can set-up recruitment sessions, where we’ll line up the candidates and employers can come to our office to interview,” says King. “There are opportunities for employers to provide career advice to 300 experienced workers at our older and wiser seminars, which cater to job seekers 40 and older. We also bring education and employers together to fulfill specific needs in the community, but the only way to do that is through collaboration, and I just don’t hear from corporate recruiters.”

While you might have heard speculation to the contrary, they continue to innovate, particularly in the area of employment branding, where they maintain global dominance. Several years ago, I wrote a broad case study on Google recruiting that highlighted its overall approach, but I didn’t go into any depth about the company’s bold approaches in the area of college recruiting.

In this article, I’ll highlight some of the creative things that Google has tried in college recruiting, including its latest triumph, the amazing Google College Ambassador Program. (If you missed the original case study, or would like to revisit it, you can find it here.)

The King of Employment Branding

The recent collapse of the banking and financial markets has subdued much of the consulting and investment banking competition that Google once faced on campuses. Despite some turbulence, the high-tech industry is still a shining light in this economy, and Google is by far most students’ number-one choice of employers among high-tech firms.

Recent research reveals that 45% of engineering students would like to work at Google. Even outside of high-tech, Google’s employment brand still shines. It was recently selected as the number-one ideal employer among all undergraduate students by Universum. In their most recent study, 17% of the students participating selected Google, up from 13% last year. Those leads will undoubtedly be lengthened next year following the implementation of their new and innovative College Ambassador Program.

The Google College Ambassador Program

The number-one weakness of all college recruiting programs is their inability to maintain a “continuous presence” on campuses throughout the academic year. Every firm is forced by travel expenses and a finite supply of recruiters to limit the number of days they can have a recruiter on any particular campus.

Because of the cost, recruiters typically fly in, spend a few days, and then fly out. As a result of this “here today gone tomorrow” approach, some college recruiters have even been labeled “seagulls” because they are viewed as “flying in frequently, dropping a load of crap, and then leaving.”

Even Google has realized that it cannot afford to park its recruiting staff on every key campus for enough days during the year to really make a difference. As a result, they developed an “on-campus ambassador” program that I predict will soon be copied by many other major firms.

The premise is simple. Instead of periodically flying in representatives, why not recruit individuals who are already there (students) and convert them into ambassadors?

These on-campus ambassadors or representatives can then act on the firm’s behalf every day they are on campus. They can put together events and generally help spread the word about Google as a great place to work.

Some of the benefits of this “ambassador” approach include:

• Credibility. Because ambassadors are students themselves, what they say is more credible and believable to other students. This allows them to effectively spread both goodwill and recruiting- and product-related information.
• Knowledge of the campus. Because they have been enrolled at the school for years, they know the school’s culture and the best communication mechanisms.
• Enthusiasm. By recruiting enthusiastic students, the firm has an opportunity to take advantage of their energy, enthusiasm, and extensive social networks. Obviously, this enthusiasm could be picked up by other students and it would likely spill over to their work representing Google.
• Low-cost. Because the Google product and employment brand are so strong, students are willing to volunteer their time just for the opportunity to work with Google. Ambassadors will be given a small budget for expenses, communications, and events that they must operate within. They also get to share in the free food at Google events or what Google provides during exams. They also get free Google gear, numerous contacts at Google, and an opportunity to put “serving in a leadership role” for Google on their resume.
• Relationship building. Because they already regularly interact with faculty, presidents of student organizations, and other students, these “reps” can quickly build relationships and influence others far better than any time-crunched recruiter.
• Educating Googlers. These campus ambassadors also serve as a direct point of contact for Google teams. In their liaison role, ambassadors can advise Google employees and recruiters about their unique campus culture and the interests and needs of their fellow students, which are of course, different at every campus.

The program gives the firm an expanded campus presence and an immediate competitive advantage over Yahoo!, Microsoft, Facebook, and IBM (though QUALCOMM pioneered this concept).

I predict the program will get thousands of applicants and it will significantly further Google’s lead in building its college employment and product brands, but only time will tell.

16 Other Google College Recruiting Innovations

Google’s College Ambassador Program is just the latest in a string of what can only be called “bold and outside the box” approaches that Google has utilized over the years. College recruiting is a field that can be characterized as almost universally bland and one dominated by a “follow the leader” strategy.

Google stands out because it uses an array of tools and approaches, including:

1. Google games. Google is famous for holding competitions between noted schools (including Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, and Harvard). Often these competitions include Lego games because Google’s founders are fond of them because they once used Lego bricks as the external expandable casing for one of their early hard drives. Even today, they can be found all around the Googleplex.
2. Billboards. Google used highway billboards that included a math “brain teaser” to excite and eventually recruit math majors.
3. Contests. Google is clearly the #1 firm in using external contests to get ideas and to recruit and assess potential candidates. Their worldwide “CodeJams” are PR magnets as well as being extremely successful candidate and idea generators. Other Google contests have included Google Space, Android, and its famous “Summer of Code” which received over 7,000 applicants this year.
4. Focus on high school students. The best college recruiting starts early in order to capture the loyalty of young minds before other firms have a chance. Google’s “Highly Open Participation Contest” demonstrated Google’s support for the “open source” concept. It also received extensive PR and it successfully involved over 400 high school students this year.
5. Pizza during exams. Google championed the concept of giving free food and pizza at major universities during final exams. The message to students is clear: “we think like you and we understand your needs, so here is free food when you need it the most.”
6. Green recruiting. Google is committed to its green employer brand and demonstrates its deep commitment to sustainability (i.e., solar panels on its headquarter’s roof, its free WiFi shuttles, free bike repair, its subsidy of employee-purchased hybrids, its focus on electric cars).
7. A fun place to work. It’s easy to find stories on the Internet about Google’s “fun” practices. They include free food, pajama day, movie day, martini blowouts, bring your dog to work, and most important, its “20% free time.” Google even made fun of the ubiquitous “aptitude tests” that all college students have to endure when it developed GLAT. Which is a humorous takeoff on aptitude tests put together by Google Labs. Their “testing on the toilet” even makes on the job learning stand out from the traditional.
8. The value of top talent. Google leads the way in “Topgrading,” the practice of trying to hire 100% “A” players. This focus is partially driven by their bold move in quantifying the value of recruiting and retaining top talent (one top-notch engineer is worth “300 times or more” than the average).
9. CEO and founder talks at campus events. Google is among the handful of firms that have calculated the recruiting value of having senior executive speak on campus. Google also encourages employees to give talks at student professional organizations and to bring real Google problems into the classroom (a Google manager visits my management class each semester).
10. Practical training classes on-campus. Google has designed and supported actual courses related to “cloud computing” that become part of the curriculum offerings in order to educate as well as to attract and assess college students (Internet scale program).
11. Blogs. Google excels at encouraging its employees to blog. These blogs make learning and asking questions about Google products and recruiting much easier.
12. Videos for recruiting. Google has created some of the most powerful and most watched recruiting videos.
13. Faculty relationships. Google hires a large number of PhDs (on the premise that they enjoy exploring areas that no one else has explored). To accomplish this, they have developed a network of direct relationships with several hundred professors at major schools.
14. Campus buildings. Google placed buildings and staff on or near college campuses (i.e., Michigan and ASU) to improve their campus visibility. This “expensive to copy” practice also provides both students and faculty with the opportunity to work directly with Googlers and on Google projects during the regular school year.
15. Friends of Google. This tool creates an electronic email network of people who are interested in Google and its products (but not necessarily interested in working for the company). By signing up these individuals and then periodically sending them emails about the firm’s products and events, Google can build a relationship with thousands of people.
16. Internships. Google has an outstanding internship program that hires hundreds of interns each year. The program has an excellent conversion rate to permanent hires. Interns in Mountain View can hang around with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin during the company’s regular Friday evening fireside chats. They can also participate in bowling nights, scavenger hunts in San Francisco, ice cream socials, and bay cruises. Interns also get to hear free on-site talks by various business and Internet icons.

Still Room for Improvement

Eventually, even Google’s vaunted recruiting machine will be challenged by Facebook or some other aspiring firm managed by individuals who are also passionate about recruiting. So, if Google is to maintain its dominance, it can’t be complacent.

Instead, it needs to work on some areas that are still weak within college recruiting. Those areas that need improvement include “remote” college recruiting, a formal student referral program, better college metrics, and a more focused approach on new technologies that can be applied to recruiting like social networking, texting, wikis, and video games as recruiting tools.

Final Thoughts

If you think fancier posters, glossier brochures, or better pizza at information sessions will work, think again. These approaches are “so last year,” and only a few firms (E&Y, Enterprise, Qualcomm, and Intuit come to mind) have even attempted to move beyond the traditional into more exciting and productive strategies and approaches to college recruiting.

If you’re not among these elite firms in college recruiting, now is the opportune time to ramp up recruiting on campus because the economy has demoralized the competition. Don’t let the down economy distract you; instead, use Google’s boldness to inspire you to greatness!

In order, the best are:

1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Australia
4. Germany
5. Canada
6. Japan
7. France
8. Netherlands
9. South Korea
10. Sweden
11. Switzerland
12. Italy
13. Belgium
14. New Zealand
15. China

Also ranked: individual colleges and universities, with Harvard and Yale on top, and Johns Hopkins, Duke, Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, and small-but-very-rigorous Caltech also ranked high, among others. Lesser-known schools in the top 100: University of California-Davis, and Case Western Reserve, in Ohio.

Moving up in the rankings: Wash-U in St. Louis; University of California-Santa Barbara; University of Virginia; and Stony Brook, among others.

Back to the country rankings — QS says its “innovative methodology avoids the pitfalls of ranking nations simply according to the number of universities those nations have in the top 200.”

Instead, its comparison uses the number of universities in the top 500; how good a country’s system is at getting students into internationally reputable universities (calculated by taking each country’s number of full-time equivalent students at the top 500 universities, factored against its population); a score based on the position of the top institution in each country; and extra points for having high-performing schools compared with the country’s GDP.

I call this new approach über college recruiting (über is German for superior) because it is so aggressive. This advanced approach began emerging in the late 1990s and was most often associated with high technology firms like Trilogy and Cisco.

The practices were so successful, so exciting, and so out-of-the box that urban legends still abound about what these true innovators were doing over a decade ago. Recently, über recruiting has been re-energized by the antics and the advanced methods of the Google recruiting machine.

Google has adopted the über approach in part because of its use of metrics. Most firms stick with mainstream college recruiting efforts because breaking free of the status quo isn’t easy, as few in the HR world seem willing to take on the challenge and make the business case for something different.

Google, being an organization full of advanced mathematicians, scientists, and engineers took the time to calculate that a top technologist from a graduating class is worth 300 times more than an average grad. When they talk about top technologists, they are not talking about the best who approach their college recruiting booth during a career fair, but rather that one truly unique innovator who may someday change the world. Having calculated the value of such exceptional talent, Google is willing to shift its approach and spend whatever resources are needed to become the #1 college brand. They have championed the über approach because the old traditional approach just can’t guarantee extraordinary hires.

Most Firms Utilize the Traditional Approach

I estimate that 95% of corporate college recruiting programs follow the traditional model because everyone is familiar with it and they are simply comfortable using it. I sometimes call the traditional model the “career center focus” model because it relies so heavily on services offered by the career center, and very little on actual scouting for talent.

The primary steps in the traditional model are simple and straightforward:

1. Pick your top schools in the U.S. and the majors to target.
2. Arrange with the career center dates for information sessions and interviews.
3. Place ads announcing the info session.
4. Develop brochures and recruiting collateral.
5. Offer food that is good enough to attract, and give a compelling talk.
6. Hold on-campus interviews.
7. Make your offers.

It’s straightforward, relatively inexpensive, and it produces enough hires to make everyone happy. Unfortunately, most executives, hiring managers, and recruiters are satisfied with it in part because they are unaware that there are other more advanced options that yield a clear competitive advantage. The advanced college recruiting model contains more sophisticated elements designed to ensure extraordinary results.

A Checklist of the Major Elements of Über College Recruiting

The advanced or über approach contains many elements that are either under-emphasized or completely absent from the traditional approach. The primary distinction between the traditional and über models is the reduced emphasis on campus information sessions and increased focus on branding, technology, relationship building, aggressive marketing, and fact-based decision-making.

If you want to be part of the “elite” 5% that use the advanced approach, here are 9 key elements that make the advanced college recruiting model so powerful:

1. Data-driven decisions. Under the advanced recruiting model, decisions are made based on data and facts rather than emotion or past practice. Which schools to target and what majors you focus on changes each year based on previous year performance measures. Recruiting tools and approaches like sourcing and advertising are selected based on the superior numbers they produce. Metrics also tell you in which jobs and with what individual managers new hires should be placed in order to produce the highest overall ROI.
2. A written strategy and plan. It’s difficult to have a strategic impact using a haphazard approach. Unlike the traditional model, the advanced approach requires that you have a written strategic plan to focus and direct your recruiting effort. Rather than using the campus career center focused approach, the über approach uses one or more of five possible approaches including:
   • Relationship recruiting. This strategy focuses on building relationships with “insiders” including faculty, students, alumni and staff. The strategy works because when you build long-term relationships with individuals that the students know and trust, these individuals will help you in identifying and selling top students on your firm.
   • Remote recruiting. This strategy is designed to allow a firm to “cherry pick” the very best students from a number of universities without having to actually physically visit each one. The remote recruiting approach emphasizes the use of technology, the Internet and social networks to identify and assess college talent remotely.
   • Continuous graduate recruiting. This strategy is a long-term approach that focuses on “continuous recruiting” long after the top students have graduated. One element of this strategy is the “delayed recruiting approach” where you identify the best while they’re in college but you “wait” until your targeted college grads “stabilize” and are trained by another organization for two years prior to recruiting them. Other firms utilize this continuous recruiting approach because they are unattractive to college grads and can’t successfully compete on campus. However as grads mature, they might learn to consider the firm for their 2nd or 3rd job. Working closely with alumni associations is another key element in this approach.
   • Off-cycle recruiting. This strategy emphasizes the “over-hiring” of top college grads during slack periods when there is little competition. This is an excellent approach for firms that can’t successfully compete for the high quality grads during most years but can “clean up” when there is little or no competition in down years.
   • Global impact strategy. This approach emphasizes developing the capability to recruit the very best 1-3 students from every top school located around the world. The strategy uses a combination of remote Internet recruiting methods and traditional approaches using corporate staff located in key countries to identify and assess the best in every country that produces top students. Each of the available approaches must “flex” to meet the changing supply and demand of college hires. As competition for grads increases, it is essential that your strategy “scale up” to meet the increased aggressiveness and competition. When no one is recruiting, the strategy should scale back to save resources.
3. Clear and measurable goals. Goals help everyone understand what they are working toward. Most traditional college efforts have simplistic goals like hire five interns and six EE majors. However, the goals of an advanced college recruiting program might include dominating the college market and getting a disproportionate number of exceptional students; building and maintaining a measurable competitive advantage in recruiting; building an employment brand that makes every targeted college student aware of your firm; the global capability to attract the best from every country around the world; and to win every “head to head” fight with our talent competitors over top targets.
4. Employment brand. In advanced recruiting, your external image as a “great place to work” is the cornerstone of the approach. Executing a formal plan to become an “employer of choice,” so that every college kid has heard of you and wants to know more about you, is the most critical element of advanced college recruiting. Google is the model to follow when it comes to employment branding. Key elements of college branding include winning “best place to work” awards, placing on the “best place to start a career” list, being written up for your best practices in media that your targeted students read, having executives speak on campus, and scoring high on the Universum employer brand ranking when compared to others in your industry.
5. Identifying top students to target. Advanced recruiting dramatically expands the number of available approaches for identifying top students by adding a comprehensive Internet component. Traditionally, students were identified through scholarships, and assessment of those who attended your information sessions. Advanced identification tools include the use of student and grad assistant referrals, online and on-campus contests, social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and online forums. Other advanced sourcing approaches include using campus professional clubs and honor society meetings to identify talent and having interns act as on-campus recruiting ambassadors.
6. Convincing top students to apply. Advanced recruiting puts a lot of emphasis on having multiple “selling” approaches. These selling approaches are designed to get students to take the specific action of formally applying for a position on your website or signing up for campus interviews. Some of the advanced approaches that firms can use to get their message out to college students include blogs written by recruiters and employees, podcasts that highlight best points, and providing information to parents so they also encourage their child to apply. Other advanced ideas: compelling videos on your website or YouTube, texting recruiting messages, video games, encouragement from other students making referrals, and a separate corporate careers page that is designed specifically to WOW college students.
7. Assessing their capabilities. The most traditional aspect of the “traditional approach” to recruiting are the face-to-face interviews that are scheduled through the Career Center. The advanced approach varies in that it also develops a process that allows you to interview students off campus. Additional features might include computerized online assessment, online Internet interviews, and using contests to assess. The most effective assessment process, on-the-job assessment, can occur during internships and by offering students short-term projects that they can complete remotely during college breaks.
8. Making compelling offers. You can’t classify your approach to college recruiting as advanced unless you use some aggressive approaches. The foundation of the advanced approach is identifying each target’s “job acceptance criteria” and then tailoring the job offer so that best meets each of the criteria. Another approach on an advanced level are offers and direct calls from senior executives and recent hires at your firm to encourage them to accept.
9. Metrics for improvement. Most traditional and knowledge recruiting systems are “dumb” because they don’t learn from bad hires and immediate turnover. Key college recruiting metrics should include candidate and hiring manager satisfaction, the overall quality of the candidates, the percentage of diversity hires, new hire performance on the job, and 1-, 2- and 5-year retention rates.

Final Thoughts

There is a growing chasm between the corporate Directors of College Recruiting who live in an “unchanging world” and those who realize there are now many more exciting approaches and strategies available to them.

Shifting your approach is even more necessary because the way that college students communicate with each other and outsiders is changing rapidly. The growth of the Internet and new technologies now allow college recruiting to do things that just weren’t possible before. I hope this “checklist” has helped you assess your current program and understand what you need to do to transition into über college recruiting.

In part 2, I will highlight some of the action steps you can take to implement a successful college referral program including advanced approaches, tools, and some added tips.

If you want to generate a significant portion of your college hires as a result of your referral program, here are a variety of approaches to consider. Select those that fit your level of aggressiveness and corporate culture.

Things to Do

• Offer rewards. Surprisingly, many people associated with a university are willing to make referrals with no promise of a reward. Why? Because they really believe in the abilities of the students they know and work with. You don’t need to give away a flat-screen TV in order to be successful. Students will readily refer with simple rewards like gas cards, iPods, software, movie tickets, a pizza party for their friends, professional sports tickets, or a chance to win a spring-break vacation. Offer students a choice from a list of rewards. It’s best to start small and then increase the rewards if you find those under $100 are ineffective. Since every campus is different, directly asking students or trial and error are the best ways to determine what works. You can also offer campus clubs and student professional organizations larger rewards for successful hires as a result of their referrals. The key is to offer an exciting reward but not one with an economic value so high that it might cause someone embarrassment.
• Referral cards. Referral cards are under-used in both traditional employee programs and in college referral programs. Think of the excitement an individual gets when they’re handed a card that says “WOW, you really impressed me. You’re just the kind of person that would be perfect at XYZ firm!” Referral cards can be electronic (like an e-greeting card) or on paper. It’s important to limit the number you deliver (to make sure the people who get them feel “special”). It is also extremely important that individuals responding to such invitations to apply are not treated identically to applicants walking in off the street.
• Utilize your databases. Use the information you gain from other sources, including scholarships, participation in community events, and working with alumni groups. Data mine the information in order to identify potential referrers.
• Use blogs. Have recent grads and interns (and even college recruiters) write blogs that discuss what it is like to work at your firm. Blogs are an effective way both to attract and “sell” students on your firm. Ask your most successful bloggers to evaluate those that make great comments or ask good questions on their blog and to make referrals if they identify someone special.
• Social networks. Encourage your recent grads, interns, and employees who work in functions that target college grads to be active on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Ask them to build relationships with individuals who show promise.
• Ads, posters, and campus radio. Although they can produce some good referrals, your screening program has to be able to handle a larger volume than when more targeted marketing approaches are utilized.

• Global referrals. If your college recruiters are Internet-savvy and well traveled, you will find that it’s possible to set up basic referral programs at universities around the globe, without ever visiting them. The office of international programs at international universities might even be aware of and be willing to make referrals from among their crop of U.S. students who are currently studying as part of an exchange program. This allows you to get students with foreign experience and no visa issues that other U.S. firms are likely to miss.
• Referrals at student conferences. It’s wise to send a recruiter to student conferences in order to make contacts and get referrals.
• Ask for referrals from other schools. Don’t restrict referrals to students from the same school. Instead ask them for the names of students they know who are good at other name universities.
• Collaborate with other college recruiters. Where appropriate, consider making informal agreements with other recruiters who visit your campuses to “trade” non-competing referrals from majors that “their” firm isn’t targeting but yours is. For example, in the case where one firm is recruiting only engineers and your firm is recruiting writers, both firms agree to make a referral should they run across a great student in the other firm’s recruiting target area. Obviously, no cash bonus should be offered in this case where both firms benefit.

Approach These People for Referrals

• Approach grad assistants. The most successful college intern referral effort that I’ve ever encountered in my research received a phenomenal 100% success rate by asking the grad assistants of a few top professors to make referrals from the undergraduate students they had worked with. Grad assistants are easy to find, well-connected, and willing to make referrals, often without a reward. In addition, a simple call to the department office can identify them. In addition, one firm I know successfully recruited them remotely, without ever meeting them face-to-face.
• Approach officers of student organizations. Other than grad assistants, no one is likely to know the very best students better than the student president of an honor society or an elite professionally oriented student club. Student organizations are easy to find without visiting campus because they are affiliated with student government. In addition, most have webpages that list their officers and contact numbers.
• Approach honor societies. Referrals from officers and members are likely to be of higher quality than other student groups. Also ask award winners to refer other students.
• Ask your recent college hires. Obviously, recent graduates will still know and be in contact with some current students. Ask them on the first day of onboarding to provide you with referral names and to help you in convincing the targeted student to apply.
• Approach interns as referral sources. Make it a standard part of your internship program to ask students to make three to five referrals during their internship. Also consider making them “ambassadors” for the firm when they return to campus. While on campus, ask them to make one or two referrals each month. Even using former interns (who chose not to return) as referral sources can yield a few top referrals.
• Ask references to make referrals. You might be surprised to find that the references of exceptional students, when asked, also turn out to know one to three additional students who are also likely to be exceptional. To take advantage of this phenomenon, make a list of those who referred the very best and make them a permanent part of your college referral process.
• During conversations with exceptional students. Whenever you find a really exceptional student, find a way to make it part of the conversation, email exchange, or interview to ask them to identify and refer a handful of other exceptional students. Because they compete against each other in labs and classes, they will know the best of the best.
• During conversations with diverse students. Diverse and international students can feel somewhat isolated from the rest of the university community. As a result they tend to stick together and share the same networks. Take advantage of this closeness, while simultaneously improving your diversity recruiting results by utilizing referrals. The key is to educate a few leaders in each community about the inclusiveness of your firm and the success that diverse and international student hires have had there. Use your current diverse and international employees as mentors and relationship builders. Once the relationships are strong, show your contacts how they can help themselves and their community by becoming a permanent part of your referral process.
• Use current employees. Your employees with kids at top schools are likely to meet some of their children’s friends during visits and school breaks. Take advantage of these contacts and encourage your employees to make a few “exceptional” referrals. Consider allowing your employees to make one referral from among their own children if they are currently enrolled in a targeted major at a targeted school. If you know of any of your employees who teach or volunteer at targeted universities, make them part of your referral effort.
• Ask high school counselors. Some firms start identifying talent early in their academic life. If you go this route, ask counselors at top high schools to give you names of their top students. Then build relationships with them as they move through college.
• Ask community college faculty and counselors. Build relationships with these students as they go on to other schools. Often community college faculty are less reluctant to make referrals because an immediate job is really being offered.
• Employees using educational reimbursement. Ask employees who are taking advantage of your educational reimbursement at targeted schools to make a few outstanding referrals.
• Night and virtual students. At some schools, a significant portion of the student body is not on campus during most Career Center hours. However, in my experience, both night and virtual students form academic and social networks at least as tight as those formed by traditional students.
• Approach faculty. Part-time lecturers and adjunct faculty generally have full-time “regular” jobs, and as a result, they are less likely to be fully aware of the services offered by the Career Center. In my experience, they are more likely to be willing to refer individual students directly to a firm than traditional tenured faculty. If you can build a relationship with them, ask if they would consider referring one or two students a year. Some tenured faculty will not make direct referrals, but some will (I do). Ask them to identify super students who might not appear on the “radar screen” of the traditional Career Center hiring process. Especially focus on faculty who already have some relationship with your firm. Some faculty are not comfortable making formal referrals, but if you ask them directly to “name your best student,” they will give you the name without hesitation.
• Alumni groups. Recent grads who are part of the Alumni association can be asked to refer current students they know.
• Administrative staff. Outside of “top 10″ schools and in low-demand majors, where the competition is not so intense, you will find that many staff employees are eager to help the students they know get an internship or job placement opportunity. If you find a university where that is the case, work with internship coordinators, tutoring coordinators, or the director of the computer or science labs.

Final Thoughts

If you are not fiercely competitive, you might initially resist the concept of student referrals just because you, or no one in HR, had ever heard of them before. But don’t let that stop you.

If you have concerns about the propriety of referrals, remember that students are not university employees and they are free to make referrals and even to accept gifts (like free pizza at your information sessions). If you use a referral program, you are not precluded from interviewing referred students through the traditional Career Center process.

Any concern about doing something new and bold will fade rapidly when you find, like other firms have, that college hire referral programs work almost immediately and they produce amazing results.

Yet for some unexplained reason, most corporate college-hire programs don’t have a referral component.

A few firms have pioneered in the college referral area. For example, the always leading-edge talent team at Intuit has produced amazing results with micro-cash bonuses (over 50% of their hires from one university came from their student referral program).

And Endeca found that Harvard and MIT students were willing to make amazing referrals with the promise of a flat-screen TV as a reward. Bold, but effective!

Not having a referral program as a key element of your college recruiting effort is a missed opportunity because no group of potential candidates are more connected with their peers than college students.

And the stronger the connections, the better referral programs work. Students connect through social networking sites, text messaging, online forums, face-to-face in classrooms, at social events, and in student organizations. If you understand their social connections, it’s relatively easy to develop a formal “college hire referral program” that can supplement your career-center efforts and produce a majority of your intern and college graduate hires.

Think about it, you can have others do more than “half of the work” in college recruiting (by making referrals), which frees up time and resources to focus on the other half.

The Referral Concept

The basic premise of all employee referral programs is that “the very best” know other top individuals. They get to know them because top performers learn from and compare themselves to other top performers. Professionals are constantly talking to each other on the phone, through text messaging, and Internet forums.

Shifting the focus to students, it’s clear that the best students know other top students because they identify them and compete against them in classes. They also meet each other in social situations, in student groups and clubs, in honor societies, and of course, online.

All referral programs work by getting others to share with your recruiters the names of the top individuals that they know. By merely asking or by offering a small incentive, they will likely share these names.

In the case of most employee referral programs, the identification is made by your employees. In the college recruiting variation, you contact a broader array of individuals (students, faculty, and alumni) in order to compile a list of the very best. Because college students are relatively poor, it takes a much smaller incentive to get them to refer other top students.

The Advantages

Placing a significant portion of your college hiring effort into a referral program has some key benefits and advantages over relying 100% on the traditional Career Center approach. Some of these benefits include:

• Quality. Referral programs routinely produce the highest-quality candidates and new-hires. Top-quality college students are relatively easy to identify by those in the campus community because college life is performance-based. Students are constantly graded and ranked in professional programs. There are numerous awards and honors programs to recognize these individuals. And you can easily find them in the most advanced classes with the most difficult professors. As a result, if you design your college referral program correctly, it will target and accept referrals only from students and individuals who are likely to know top performers.
• Costs. Having someone else do your name identification and recruiting saves on expensive recruiter time. And because students typically expect little in return for referring their peers, effective referral bonuses can be as little as $50 or a free iPod (make sure to provide a choice of rewards to choose from to meet different student needs). If you have a strong employment brand on campus, getting student referrals is even easier.
• Remote capabilities. Most Career Center recruiting requires a campus visit. In direct contrast, most of the student referral process can be carried out electronically. This means you can identify top students at a lower cost.
• Assessment. In addition to generating names, college referrals add an additional level of assessment. This assessment may include the students’ fit with the corporation, their ability to work in teams, their leadership potential, their interest level, and their willingness to relocate. By having other students do some pre-assessment, you can end up with a candidate pool that is closer to your needs.
• Selling. Students who already know of and think highly of your firm will help your recruiting efforts by helping to convince or sell the targeted individual that your firm is a top opportunity. Peer encouragement increases the chances that top individuals will come to information sessions, apply for positions, and come to your interviews and plant visits.

Be Responsive

The key to any successful referral program is responsiveness, so treat your best referrals like they are gold.

If for any reason you fail to respond rapidly and to communicate often, you will forever “kill” referrals from your frustrated referrers.

The best way to ensure that you have the necessary time and resources for responding rapidly is to limit the volume of “average” referrals. You don’t want to clog your referral program with a high volume of students you could have found using other sources and who have little chance of ever getting hired.

To generate a small number of high-quality referrals:

• Restrict the number of referrals. Restrict the number of referrals you accept from any one individual to a handful each semester; after all, you are targeting the “cream of the crop” and need to limit referrals to truly exceptional individuals.
• Make the skill sets clear. Use detailed position summaries so that everyone who is considering making a potential referral knows precisely what you’re looking for and more important, what you are not seeking.
• Target your referrers. Rather than spamming the campus and asking everyone to refer, target your campaign toward individuals who have a higher likelihood of making quality referrals. If you have the capability, send “targeted invitations to refer” only to those individuals on a campus who you know by name or title. These students are likely to know the right candidates. This group of “targeted referrers” might include faculty, teaching assistants, heads of student groups, key administrators, and senior and honors students. Finally, when you use posters or websites that notify a large population that you are seeking referrals, be sure that these referrals are “coded” (Attn: Mary Sue or a separate webpage). This is so that your recruiters will know that these referrals are likely to be of a mixed quality.
• Avoid “they approached you” referrals. In traditional employee referral programs, it’s not unusual for a majority of the referrals to come from individuals who were “approached” by a relative stranger and asked if you would make this person a referral. I call these types of referrals “they approached you” or “stranger” referrals. The same “stranger referral” problem can occur in student referral programs when the student that “approached you” is not well-known by the potential referrer. These unwanted referrals can be minimized by telling your potential referrers up front that you don’t want them to make these types of referrals. Ask the person making the referral to answer how long they have known them; whether they have known them in a professional context; and what they know about the person’s specific skills and experience.
• Assess previous referrals. After final hiring decisions are made, identify which referrals turned out to be the best. In the future, you can weigh referrals from the best individuals and in contrast, limit or downgrade the referrals from individuals or groups with a bad track-record.

Next week in part 2, look for advanced approaches and tips for generating great college referrals.

The proposed approach is one that all but the very best talent acquisition functions scoff at, not because it isn’t possible, but rather because it isn’t easy. Beyond the business case, part one outlined the major players corporate recruiters can leverage on college campuses to reach top talent and detailed the benefits of the approach.

Now, in part two, the attention turns to the steps and activities needed to implement such an approach.

Developing a Formal Relationship-Building Process

Today, if you want to identify top students, build your brand, and “sell” the best students, you need to go beyond the career center and build relationships with the faculty who know and have the ability to influence the decisions of these students. Once your firm makes the decision to build long-term relationships with faculty, the next logical step is to develop a formal process that you can use to build these relationships in many diverse academic programs.

Who Should Have The Relationship?

Although recruiting managers can help develop and manage the overall process, recruiters are not the best ones to build relationships with faculty. Instead, the best people to build the relationship with faculty are your program directors and your hiring managers.

Directors are the first choice because not all individual managers hire graduates every year; however, directors and GMs will likely have some hiring in their organization each year.

Because senior managers are often domain subject experts, they have a better chance of having advanced education in the subject and being considered as “equals” by faculty. They also know the latest jargon, tools, problems, and opportunities. In addition, because senior managers control significant financial resources, faculty often look upon them more favorably because they could potentially offer research support and funding.

Create a Relationship-Building Template

This roadmap can guide the relationship-building process for all managers across the firm. Include the steps to take, the best practices, common errors, and the metrics for assessing the strength and the success of their relationship. The recruiting department should also provide training, advice, and guidance so that individual managers can minimize the time they spend on these recruiting relationships.

The “relationship building map” should support localization, so that the final approach best fits the type of university that you’re targeting (i.e., top-10 schools, other research institutions or teaching institutions, as well as public vs. private schools). Differences should also be allowed for international universities.

Process steps should cover identifying the faculty to target, how to communicate with faculty, and what are the current best practices for getting faculty to play nice. The key here is to utilize multiple approaches and reach school employees and staff who recruit the most influential individuals within their academic program.

Also, develop a macro-level communications process that minimizes the chances of duplicate efforts on individual faculty members and best practice/problem sharing processes among those building relationships. Add metrics in order to demonstrate the success of the process and its ROI.

Finally, put together a “toolkit” of approaches that allows an individual hiring manager to pick and choose from among the many available approaches and techniques. Rather than putting together a strict “program,” offer choices and the opportunity to learn from their successes and mistakes. This allows managers to “own” the relationship-building process, which is the No. 1 critical success factor for relationship-building programs.

Rule #1: Don’t Embarrass the Faculty Member

There is a lot of “emotional baggage” associated with building relationships with faculty. It’s also true that some practices that are fine at some institutions are frowned upon or even banned at others.

In case of doubt, don’t assume; instead, find out. If you try something that creates waves, be prepared to modify your approach so you don’t embarrass the faculty member. In most cases, they can’t be fired but they can catch flak from other jealous or politically opposed faculty members.

Some of the approaches, tools, and techniques that I recommend for consideration in your “relationship building” toolkit are listed below broken into two categories: approaches that require no money and approaches that require a budget.

20 Relationship-Building Approaches That Don’t Require Money

1. Comment on their articles. Everyone likes praise, so commenting on a faculty member’s latest work, presentation, or article will get you bonus points. Utilize the Google “alert” process and Google “scholar” to identify when they have received exposure.
2. Read their blog. Some faculty members have blogs, personal webpages, or electronic newsletters. Subscribe to their RSS feeds and comment on their work.
3. Utilize social networks. Some faculty have profiles on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. Encourage your employees to visit their profiles and periodically communicate with them.
4. Co-author with them. Almost any faculty member needs help in publishing, so offering to provide a co-author on a paper or a presentation can help build the technical relationship.
5. Offer to speak in their classes. Many professors want to expose their students to the “real world,” so offering to speak in their classes is a great way to start the relationship. As you build a relationship, offer to provide their students with a “real” problem and then agree to come in as an evaluator. Eventually, offer to “co-teach” a class with them.
6. Attend academic meetings. Not many professionals attend academic meetings but it’s an excellent place to identify top researchers and to build relationships. Consider speaking at these events. Sponsoring academic meetings and events at those meetings can increase your exposure.
7. Attend alumni events. Attend alumni social events in which faculty frequently attend.
8. Mentors. Offer new faculty the opportunity to have one of your staff mentor them in their research and consulting. This mentorship can be particularly powerful if the faculty member is diverse or is from another country. Also offer to “connect them” with other important people in the industry.
9. Access to data. Give them access to corporate data that can be directly used in their research. If they don’t have to collect huge amounts of “new” data, they will get more articles published and they will learn to appreciate you.
10. Corporate intranet access. Where corporate policies allow, provide them access to parts of your corporate intranet so they can learn more about you. The more they know about your firm and its best practices, the more likely that they will use your firm as an in-class example or assign your company to students as a case to study for its best practices.
11. Feedback. One of the best ways to involve people is to ask them for feedback on the technical education and training that you provide your employees. In addition, offer to provide faculty members with your guidance on what you believe should be covered in their curriculum.
12. Be active on Internet forums. Some academic disciplines have online forums or listservers that connect distant academics. Having your employees post questions and answers on these forums can help you begin individual relationships.
13. Not-for-profit organizations. Many faculty members are active in their community. So encouraging employees from your “local” office or facility to serve on some of the same community groups can help you begin the relationship.
14. Offer access to technical training. Provide them with the opportunity to attend your corporate technical training classes or the opportunity to utilize your technical library. This provides you with opportunities to interact with them and to help them in their career.
15. Utilize their former students. If you hire one of the faculty member’s previous students or grad assistants, let them know it. Over time, use these new hires that might enjoy keeping in touch with their “old prof” to help build the firm’s relationship with them.
16. Testers. Provide them with samples of your prototypes or new products and ask them to evaluate them for you.
17. Advisory board. Put them on your product advisory board to build a relationship. Or, put them on your college recruiting advisory board and use those interactions to build a relationship and to understand them better.
18. Show them you trust them. Few things build confidence faster than informally “guaranteeing” that you will at least interview their top five students. Some faculty want to showcase their talented students, while others like to “reward” their top students with exposure to the best job opportunities. Don’t promise jobs, just interview opportunities.
19. Invite them to sports events. Don’t do anything extravagant, but occasionally offering to share seats with them (using corporate tickets) can provide time for lengthy discussions.
20. Access to software. Often, corporate-wide licenses for business and technical software allow firms to provide copies (or access to software) to selected faculty members at little or no out-of-pocket cost.

18 Approaches That Require Budget Dollars

Most faculty face tight academic budgets and in addition, they often survive on low salaries, so providing them with resources or extra pay is often welcomed. In the cases where you provide direct economic value to the faculty member, check with the faculty member or their dean to ensure that what you offer is acceptable:

1. Summer faculty internships. The best way to get to know them and vice versa is to hire them during the summer as a faculty intern. Funding summer projects through the University is another possibility.
2. Fund assistants. Rather than offering direct payment, consider funding a graduate assistant for the best professors.
3. Hire interns. Regularly hiring their best not graduating students as interns will certainly get their attention. You will get increased exposure as the interns “talk up” your firm after they return the next academic year.
4. Offer to teach. A “can’t miss” approach to building relationships with the entire faculty is to offer some of your staff to teach technical classes (pro bono). Having your employees teach provides numerous opportunities to get known and to understand faculty needs and interests.
5. Off-time hires. Hire them or offer research support for regular faculty and lecturers during semester breaks, summers or when allowable, while they are on sabbatical. Also consider hiring recently retired faculty and use them to build relationships. You can also involve them in the design of your college recruiting program and in the selection of “target” faculty and universities.
6. Research grants. Offer them small research or equipment grants through the university to help fund their work.
7. Participate in a case study. Some faculty receive recognition for publishing academic cases. If your firm has some best practices, offer to be the subject of a case study that they write up and publish. Case studies take some time and in-depth research, so the process almost assures a long-term relationship.
8. Trips. Offer to fund a trip or conference during the summer or during the academic year when their rules allow it.
9. Sponsor student groups. Sponsor or fund student groups that they are involved in and speak at their meetings to get exposure. Don’t forget honor societies and any organization that they serve as a faculty advisor.
10. Field trips. Offer to fund field trips to your facility for their class, student group, or their best students.
11. Discounts. Give them and/or their students product discounts on your products or provide product samples.
12. Invite them to conferences. Invite them to attend your firm’s conferences or industry conferences and trade shows. This allows them to “stay current” and it gives you an opportunity to interact with them and to show them around.
13. Hire them as consultants. Many faculty are allowed to work one day each week as consultants.
14. Hire their grad assistants. Faculty can get very close to the grad assistants, so hiring them when they graduate is a not-so-subtle way to continue that relationship.
15. Buy their book. If they have published technical or professional books, buy multiple copies of their book through them.
16. Products in the bookstore. Faculty members frequently spend a lot of time in the campus bookstore. Increase the chances that they will be familiar with your products by displaying them in the campus bookstore.
17. Write articles for journals that they edit. If a faculty member is on the editorial board of the journal, writing an article for the journal can be a first step in building a relationship.
18. Hire a family member. By offering to hire the spouse of new faculty members, you give yourself an inside track on building the relationship, while simultaneously providing much-needed financial support to new faculty. Provide them with meaningful work, and be assured that your firm will be discussed at the dinner table. Another option is to hire their kids for part-time or summer jobs.

Common Errors

Typical mistakes that college recruiting managers make when they design a relationship-building program include:

• Infrequent contacts. Avoid contacting the faculty member only when you need something or right before you begin hiring each semester.
• Selecting the wrong faculty. Do your research to avoid a relationship with a faculty member who doesn’t know the types of students you are looking for.
• Failing to use metrics. Because college recruiting is often cut back during lean times (which can kill your relationships), college recruiting needs to develop metrics and a convincing business case to show the significant economic value added by recruiting higher-quality students.
• A lack of continuity. Because college recruiting managers tend to have a very short tenure, it is critical to develop written plans and guides to ensure a smooth transition between administrations.
• Risk-averse. Any time you go around the career center, you risk the wrath of their staff (some can be whiny people). Dealing directly with faculty will also draw many “that’s not ethical” accusations. As a result, be willing to take some bold risks and some heat, if you expect bold results.
• Not competitive. You must enter into the relationship-building process realizing up front that college recruiting is incredibly competitive. As a result, if you try something new and it works, expect everyone to copy it almost immediately. This means that if you want to be the best over the long haul, you must continually build obsolescence and change into your relationship building process.

Final Thoughts

It’s not a universal rule, but generally, the best and brightest minds and those seeking to learn technology go to college. If over the long-term, you need a significant number of top innovators and technologists, you simply can’t ignore college recruiting.

Because every other firm knows this, if you’re going to attract the best and brightest from competitive schools, you need to have an approach that provides you with a distinct competitive advantage.

There are other competitive advantages to consider including excelling at “remote” college recruiting, starting recruiting early in their academic careers, and utilizing contests to recruit, but the most effective long-term strategy is building faculty relationships. You already do it with your best potential customers and your best potential experienced hires, so now is the time to do it also with the key faculty that know and can help influence the top college talent that you are targeting.

Finally, it takes courage to ignore the naysayers. Ignore them, because most come from the “old school” approach to college recruiting, which is rapidly dying in this Internet age.

But smart organizations are foregoing the traditional campus activities, in favor of leveraging the Internet. In fact, if you want to attract and hire the best students, forget going to campus at all; it’s not necessary.

College students tell me they are confused by the entire recruiting process. Organizations on the leading-edge of technology are still using the most traditional of methods to recruit them.

While every student has a Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace profile, most companies do not use them in the recruiting process at all. Students are actually a bit surprised that recruiters seem to use recruiting tactics that their parents relate to better than they do. Many are involved in virtual worlds, take online webinars, download lectures as podcasts, and learn from virtual professors. Yet, they must listen to a hiring manager and watch a PowerPoint presentation about some company in a stuffy room on campus.

Unfortunately, recruiters’ belief in the efficacy of past practices is reinforced with surveys by a variety of organizations and institutions with a vested interest in the status quo. But if you take a few minutes to sit down and actually talk to students, you get a different picture of what they would like, what would impress them, and what would engage them.

As demand for college graduates continues to steadily rise, the supply and demand figures for college students should be warning that times have changed.

The number of college students is fairly flat, growing at perhaps 1% a year, and is projected to remain that way for at least another four or five years. Another little-noted fact is that more women than men are enrolled in college and, unfortunately for the high tech and engineering worlds, women don’t tend to major in engineering, mathematics, physics, or computer science. All of these fields are facing significant declines in enrollments and in graduates.

Also consider the students of all age groups graduating from virtual universities that have no campuses. These students are valuable resources for corporations that are currently almost untouched and unrecognized.

Facing these challenges, I don’t see how organizations can focus on just a few campuses or limit their reach to elite schools. Here are a half-dozen tactics to guide your virtual efforts on campus:

• Tactic #1: Become student-centered, not campus-centered. Create an employment brand specifically for students. Your goal should be to attract any student, from anywhere who has the skills and major you are looking for. Why focus on a handful of campuses when the Internet allows you to reach all of them?
• Tactic #2: Use social networks. Create a Facebook, MySpace, or other social network presence. KPMG in South Africa and IBM have created Facebook profiles that demonstrate what can be done to build interest and connect with students. And this is just the beginning of what is possible. By leveraging a customized Ning site, for example, you could create a network where students could invite other students and generate a viral marketing program for recruiting.
• Tactic #3. Create a dynamic, energetic, and exciting website geared to college students. This should be designed to inform and entertain a potential hire. It should allow you to gather enough information about the student so you can decide whether a face-to-face interview is in order. These websites should have video tours of your organizations, interviews about the positions you are hiring for, and lots of diverse information about why a student would want to work for you. These sites can also contain screening tools and allow students to build a profile or link you to their Facebook or other profile. Use the money you save by not going to campus to pay for this website. Combined with a social network presence, this can largely replace any need to go to campus.
• Tactic #4. Build a relationship virtually. Once you have connected with a student, use email, SMS, Twitter, or some combination of these to keep the student informed about your organization and also about the positions you have available and any other details about the recruiting process. Frequent Twitter updates to students who choose to follow you, or regular updates to a blog, can keep students interested for a long time. You can link to presentations about your organizations and you can email specific information to individual students as appropriate.
• Tactic #5. Build virtual job fairs. Virtual job fairs have become common and are even more useful if you have already established a talent pool of interested students with your social network profiles and website. There are a host of virtual job fairs and more organizations are discovering them.
• Tactic #6: Use every source you have vigorously. Ask every new graduate you hire to tell others on campus about your profiles and website. Get them to recommend a few friends and then pursue them with good virtual advertising and a telephone campaign. If you hire interns, use them as both in-person and online ambassadors to other students. Have them act as talent scouts. Ask employees to recommend family friends. The goal has to be to pursue every avenue to find students who meet the skill needs your organization has. Cast a very wide net and let your website and social network profiles be your filter.

There are many more ways to leverage the Internet for campus recruiting. Over the next five years, virtual recruiting will be commonplace, and organizations that still plod around campus with presentations and cheese platters will be viewed as the dinosaurs – the companies no one wants to work for.