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In Part 1 of this series we looked at the first 35 of 70 exceptional employee referral program features. This episode continues with 36-70 and covers features related to program responsiveness, communications, special needs/populations, technology, and process management.

V. Program Responsiveness Features

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

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

VI. Communicating with employees and applicants

High-performing referral programs require frequent and effective communications. keep reading…

There’s nothing that different about Millennials that age doesn’t explain. So concludes an interesting study by the Kenexa High Performance Institute on the work attitudes of Millennials.

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

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

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

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

Taking a page from the Teach for America playbook, a new program aims to put top college grads in entrepreneurial jobs in struggling U.S. cities.

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

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

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

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

Source: Challenger, Gray & Christmas

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

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

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

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

Following the release of the June unemployment figures, House Speaker John Boehner released a statement that began with: “The American people are still asking the question: where are the jobs?”

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

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

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

Two good news developments for colleges and their students: starting salary offers are up , and a new Facebook app to help career centers promote jobs officially launches.

First, the salary news.

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

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

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

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

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

Would that it were as easy today as it was in 1967 when Walter Brooke gave Dustin Hoffman a word of career advice: “Plastics.”

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

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

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

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

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

If college grads of the last five years had it to do over, most would still go to school, but they would pick different majors and get more internships.

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

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

College hiring is looking up, which is good news for this year’s graduating seniors who have had to endure three years of warnings about their future job prospects.

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

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

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

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

It pained PwC when it axed its leadership training program held at Disney World for 11 years. The Big 4 accounting firm was doing what it could to save employees in 2008, even if it meant cutting programs.

No longer.

PwC has revived its program with Disney, where interns who get hired on at PwC start out by spending a week at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. “We’re back again this summer,” says Amy Thompson, U.S. recruiting operations leader. “It’s a program that was difficult to cancel. It had a lot of history and from a firm perspective it was well known. We saw it as one of our signature events.”

Eight hundred hires will go through the program starting August 1. Then, 800 will do it the next week, and 800 the next. This is for people who are between their junior and senior years in college, with an offer in hand but a year or so away from starting the job. They’ll get leadership training that involves interactive hands-on activities for four days, activities such as culinary training, designed by the Disney Institute and PwC.

PwC sees Disney, though obviously in quite a different industry, as a pretty logical partner: both, for example, want to pound home the importance of customer service, whether the customer is a shrieking 6-year-old or a business owner.

I asked Thompson how big the Disney program is to PwC’s recruiting message — its value proposition. keep reading…

Pam Strohmeyer of the Michigan-Ohio-Florida financial services accounting firm Rehmann talks about the challenges of recruiting on college campuses when you’re not Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and KPMG. She also talks about transparency in hiring — giving prospective employees a chance to call your current workers and ask what it’s like to work there.

Strohmeyer also explains the No. 1 thing job-seekers ask her the most, all in the video below. keep reading…

Students ranked Disney as their first employer preference for the fourth year, according to a survey of top students.

First, let me explain who conducted the study and who took it.

This is the fourth annual survey of the National Society of High School Scholars — high-achieving students ages 16-22. The previous survey results were published in the March 2008, April 2009, and April 2010 issues of the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. Our 2011 career survey will appear in the Journal, too, which is a paid PDF.

The 10,000 respondents are members of NSHSS, an honors organization founded by Claes Nobel, a senior member of the family that established the Nobel Prizes. The Society currently has a roster of 700,000 members internationally. This group of respondents consists of both college-bound high school students and currently enrolled college students; the respondents include 3,300 college students and 7,200 high school students.

Students ranked Disney as their first employer preference for the fourth year, and continued ranking highly those companies that reflect their interests in technology, such as Google and Microsoft; medical-related fields, such as St Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Mayo Clinic; and trend-setting firms such as Abercrombie & Fitch. keep reading…

College hiring brightened in February, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

The monthly NACE hiring Index took a 5.4-point jump from January to February, meaning more actual hiring of college students took place. A second measure — of recruiting activity — took a 5-point jump.

“The February figure is the highest yet recorded since NACE launched the index poll in October 2009,” the organization reported, “indicating that the Spring 2011 recruiting season will likely be brisk.”

The increase brings the hiring component almost even with where it was in October, while the recruiting activity measure is stronger than it was a few months ago. keep reading…

This was the seventh year of the ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards, but it was the military talent category, added for the first time, that was mentioned by more judges than any other category, as employers searched for creative ways to attract the many returnees coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

One judge (Rob Dromgoole) wrote on Facebook:

Finished voting for Recruiting Department of 2010 and Military Recruiting Program of Year 2010 for ERE. Lots of great applications. I’m humbled by how great some programs are.

And another (Gerry Crispin) emailed to say about the “military talent” category:

EVERY ONE of the Public and Private Companies and Agency firms who submitted to this category are winners. They are ALL engaged in ensuring that an underutilized but highly prized segment of our population is getting up to bat for jobs and competing for openings.

The judges took this project seriously, some showing me the spreadsheets and algorithms they created to keep track of their entries and sending me feedback on what worked and what didn’t.

As always, you’ll hear a lot more about the finalists throughout the year. At the Spring conference in San Diego, the winners will be announced, and you’ll be able to ask them how they did it, how they overcame challenges, and so on. We’ll also talk about them more on this site, in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, on the ERE.net site, and we’ll ask some to speak at ERE’s Fall Conference in Florida (September 7-9, 2011).

This year’s finalists, in alphabetical order within each category:

keep reading…

As might be expected from the pickup in overall hiring in the U.S., college seniors are looking at the best job hunting season in at least three years. And a new popularity monitor from AfterCollege is offering insights into where the students will be hunting.

A survey out last September from the National Association of Colleges and Employers predicted employers would increase their 2011 hiring of graduating students by 13.5 percent.

So far, that prediction seems to be holding. Though down seasonally from November, December’s monthly NACE Index, which tracks hiring intent and recruiting activity, was solidly on the positive side. The Index, based on a survey of NACE’s 111 member companies, was substantially above where it was a year before. For the December survey, 46.5 percent of the respondents said they expected to do more college hiring in 2011 than in 2010.

Those numbers track well with the September prediction that had 47.7 percent of the NACE respondents expecting to do more college hiring. keep reading…

Personalized marketing and mass customized manufacturing are powerful concepts that when adapted to recruiting can provide a strategic opportunity to successfully recruit even the most difficult candidates. keep reading…

For those who attended my session at the ERE Fall Expo, you heard first-hand about CACI’s Predictive Staffing Model and were the recipient of a “secret recipe” which when prepared correctly will make you a “talent hero” at your company. CACI’s Predictive Staffing Model is a proactive, forward-looking talent approach driven by this secret recipe which was concocted in the hollows of Wild and Wonderful West Virginia, which I’m proud to say is my home state. The secret recipe for your success is simple and has three key ingredients: keep reading…

At last month’s ERE Expo in Florida, Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads assembled a panel of four of today’s sharpest young job seekers. Among the findings:

• Only one of them used LinkedIn
• They were not swayed by free swag at job fairs
• They were hesitant to be contacted by Facebook and SMS, which is often regarded as impersonal, unprofessional, or even spam.
• It they’re receiving text messages from a recruiter or employer at 9:00 p.m., it’s a bad sign that they’d be working until 9:00 on a regular basis at that company

Click below to watch the video and read more.

keep reading…

A pair of surveys about the use of social media for recruiting shows that while the waters are promising, navigating them is trickier than it might seem.

One of the reports, done by Universum, which surveyed U.S. college students on social media, as well as on other means of employer communication, found the company website to be the place where more than half of them look for information. Professional and social networks were not considered as useful, and, in fact ranked behind on-campus career fairs and even job boards.

In fact, Universum says that by a large percentage, college students would rather not be receiving employer information via social networks like Facebook. According to the report, 59 percent consider it “unattractive” to receive information through that site. Business networks, LinedIn for example, are a different story. Ninety-three percent of the students say it’s ‘attractive” to get employer information there.

Does that mean employers can skip Facebook and concentrate just on professional and business sites? No, says the second report by the Bernard Hodes Group. It found that 52 percent had some sort of employment-related discussion on a social networking site. By far the biggest percentage of them (68 percent) mentioned new job opportunities, while 42 percent had discussed the job search experience or were involved in a discussion about a company’s work environment. Almost 25 percent checked out a potential employer’s social networking site. keep reading…

Fidelity has upgraded its college recruiting brochure, creating an interactive online version, and has made its online jobs information more friendly to mobile phone users.

Allyson Holbrook, Fidelity marketing director, HR MarCom, says that Fidelity is getting about 1,000 monthly views on the college recruiting brochure. Holbrook’s initial plan was just to update the normal company brochure. As she looked into it more, she realized the brochure was expensive, wasn’t even handed out by recruiters all of the time, and sometimes ended up in a trash can even when it did make it into a candidate’s hands.

So Fidelity rebuilt its brochure for both print and online, and made it more interesting than most. keep reading…