ERE Chicago, Day 2: College Recruiting – It’s All About the Interns

When you see a conference session titled Straight from the Source: What’s Really on the Minds of the New Generations of Top Candidates, well, it’s something you just have to hear.

Add in that fact that it is being led by Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler of CareerXroads, two very smart and savvy guys, and you can see why this not only played to a full house but was also a great way to kick off the second full day of the Fall 2013 ERE Recruiting Conference & Expo in Chicago.

The charm of this session — and it has been done at ERE conferences before — is that it gets bright, young in-demand job seekers (and some are newly hired) to talk about just what it is that they have experienced as interns and first-time job seekers, and how that plays with people of their generation.

No internships? “You have a big problem”

In other words, you get the scoop on best practices in college recruiting right from the very people you are looking for.

One thing that surprised me right off the bat was when Mark Mehler asked how many of the people in the audience worked for companies that had an internship program. I wasn’t in a great spot to do a head count, but it looked to me that no more than half of the audience raised their hands.

Whatever the number was, it was shockingly low, and it drew this comment from Gerry Crispin: “If you are looking at your supply chain and aren’t looking at where your supply chain starts, you have a big problem.”

Yes, an internship program is a must if you want to hire the best and brightest young talent, because the four now-employed former interns on the panel ALL were hired after going though an internship at their employer.

The four new hires were:

Elizabeth Cease, a 2013 MBA graduate of Northwestern’s Kellogg School Of Management, who now works as an associate finance manager at PepsiCo;
Kyle Newton, a 2012 Purdue University grad in the IT Development Program at Abbvie;
Brittanie Prinz, who graduated from Bowling Green State University in 2012 and now works as a brand manager for Disney Interactive; and,
Caitlin Kammerait, from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Class of 2010, who is working as a financial analyst at GE Antares Capital.

What the best and brightest are thinking

The four panelists seemed passionate and engaged in their fledgling careers, and they offered a number of tips/strategies for what recruiters need to focus on to find the best and the brightest young talent. Here are a few of the ones that jumped out at me:

Make sure you have interns. All four of these young panelists were able to turn their internships into real jobs, and the point was made over and over that if you don’t have interns, you are putting a serious crimp in your ability to recruit young talent.
Use LinkedIn, not Facebook, if you are searching social media for the young up-and-comers. All of the panelists said they use LinkedIn (and Twitter, sometimes) to look for jobs — but not Facebook. Even more troubling, some of these Millennials indicated that they and their friends frequently use pseudonyms rather than their real names when they DO use Facebook.
They use alumni networks at their university to help track down graduates who work at the companies they are targeting for jobs. And, they try to target recent grads who may be able to offer insights into the current hiring practices at these organizations.
They’re more than willing to pick up and move for the right opportunity. The four panelists drew a distinction between moving for a job and moving for an opportunity, and all of them said that contrary to some stereotypes, they ARE willing to make a move across the country if the company is offering an opportunity that seems to have a lot of upside to it. In fact, a couple of them — Brittanie Printz and Caitlin Kammerait — have already moved around somewhat and are very happy they did.

There was a lot more, of course, but I can’t possibly dig into all of it here. Suffice it to say that these sessions that Gerry and Mark do on occasion with young, up-and-coming talent are ALWAYS instructive because it gives you actual, honest-to-God insight into what the younger generation really thinks about the talent pipeline they are now a part of it.

My advice: you need to take in one of these college recruiting session by the CareerXroads guys whenever you can — if you really care about talent supply chain.

Other Great Speakers From Day 2

Of course, there were other great speakers on the second full day of the Fall 2013 ERE Recruiting Conference & Expo, and as I found on Day 1, there were still too many for me to get to. Here are some of the ones I did attend:

Dr. John Sullivan, the guy who wrote the book and a lot of ERE (and TLNT) articles on recruiting, HR, and talent management, did a insightful session on The Amazing Talent Acquisition & Management Practices at Facebook. He presented a lot of facts, figures, and first-hand observations of what goes on at Facebook, and how they bring in and leverage the great talent they have there.
Eric Knauf, the senior manager, talent management at Arbia, walked us through the era of accelerated disruption in his presentation titled Disrupt, or Be Disrupted. And,
Attorney David Morrison, a principal at the law firm Goldberg Kohn Ltd.. answered a lot of great legal questions (and offered some insights and strategy) in his session on Reducing Hiring Risk While Winning the Race for Talent.

Wish you had attended the Fall 2013 ERE Recruiting Conference & Expo and heard some of these great speakers? Well, you’ll get another chance next April 22-24 at the ERE Recruiting Conference and Expo 2014 Spring in San Diego. And TLNT will be there to cover all of the action — or as much as we can fit into our schedule.