Using Social Networks to find work
I have copied into this post an article from the Staffing Management Magazine, part of SHRM. The article talks about how to best recruit students who are just graduating from college.
I find that the article has a number of solid poitns, but the one point of the article that I diametrically disagree with is the author’s assertion that students are NOT using social networks for employment purposes.
As a soon-to-be 50 year old “millennial”, I am finding quite the opposite. My research, while not as scientific as what may be the substance of the article comes from having two sons in college and talking with them and their associates. My research also comes from my usage of social networks in my search practice and my time spent with NACE members here and in local universities.
To assert that the practices used now are “about the same as 1982″ is a little naive in my opinion. No doubt, the usage of personal networking will never go away, but the catalyst for this networking, the Net and social sites, including Google, is a far cry from my initial job search, ironically in 1981, right after I graduated.
I invite you to share your opinion on this topic. Do job seekers, especially new graduates, avoid or use Social Networks as an integral part of their job search.
Do Your Hiring Homework
Vol. 5 No. 1
What you don’t know about college students and recent graduates could hurt your recruiting efforts.
1/1/2009 By Stephenie Overman
Employers plan to hire about as many new college graduates from the Class of 2009 as they did from the Class of 2008, according to a National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) report.
Of course, that data may change as employers continually reassess their hiring needs in light of the economic downturn. But whether they’re hiring for one or 100 open positions, staffing professionals that take the time to understand graduating students’ preferences and priorities are more likely to see their recruiting efforts pay dividends.
So what do recent college graduates—part of the Millennial generation—value in a workplace, and how do they go about finding a job? Read on; you may be surprised.
There’s No Place Like Home
New graduates “tend to look close to home. They’re not all that interested in moving all around the country,” according to Edwin Koc, director of strategic and foundation research for NACE.
Koc bases his comments on the results of studies he conducts for NACE. In a study last spring, he found that a little more than half of the college students surveyed who had gotten a job offer didn’t take it. The only difference between those who took an offer and those who didn’t was how strongly the person valued location; those who didn’t take the offer valued location far more. “And when they valued location, they tended to want to stay home,” he says.
Author and consultant Julie Cunningham also finds that students graduating today “tend to want to be close to their parents. They tend to like to stay near their family when they’re spreading their wings” in the business world.
So what does that mean for your recruiting strategy? Cunningham, author of NACE’s Employer’s Guide to College Recruiting and Hiring and president of the Cunningham Group, based in Naperville, Ill., recommends reconsidering the number of colleges you visit. It may be time to recruit at fewer schools and to stay closer to home yourself.
For example, Cunningham notes that one of her clients had been going to as many as 250 schools but is cutting back. When deciding which colleges to focus on, consider where you have found the employees who turned out to be the best matches for your organization, she says. “Where have your stars come from? Where do you get your best recruitment rate, your best retention rate?”
Focusing on fewer, more carefully chosen schools, she notes, has a number of benefits: “It’s cheaper [and] you’ll get a higher acceptance rate and a higher retention rate.”
Whose Space?
This may also be a good time to rethink how you use technology to recruit college students and recent graduates. In spite of all the talk about how tech-savvy Millennials are, Koc and Cunningham find that members of this generation don’t necessarily want to use social networking sites when it comes to job hunting.
“They rely on the Internet, but they simply scour company web sites for jobs,” Koc says.
In fact, Koc’s studies indicate that the fundamental job-hunting strategies used by today’s graduates “are pretty much the same as in 1982—contact the company directly and use the [college] career center.”
Cunningham estimates that about 85 percent of college students and recent graduates are on social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace, “but they are not thinking of [using] the network for job hunting.”
In fact, she has found that about half of this population doesn’t expect employers to use social networks for recruiting purposes and finds the practice intrusive. “There’s so much talk [and] so many articles about using social networking sites to recruit new college grads that recruiters seem to forget that these are social networking sites for 19- and 20-year-olds,” she says.
Your organization can have a presence and build an image on such sites, Cunningham says, but using them for recruiting purposes is not the most effective strategy.
A more personal approach may yield better results. “To be successful, it’s all about relationships,” says Cunningham, who adds that this has been the case for the last decade or so. “You need to reach out to [graduating students], get their attention and build relationships. That’s the cornerstone.”
Companies should plan a strategy beyond just contacting career centers and student organizations and attending job fairs, Cunningham says. She highlights the importance of offering internship opportunities and suggests providing speakers, having a dinner for faculty and students, and generally being a presence and a resource on campus.
Taking the personal approach requires a lot of time, Cunningham admits, which is all the more reason to carefully choose and focus on a select number of schools.
Deliver the Experience
Students looking for job information turn to “other students or friends. They’re great at networking with people who don’t know any more than they do,” Cunningham says.
Students seem to think they are actively hunting by talking and texting among themselves, she continues. “They are fabulous at networking with each other. They rely on each other, probably too much, during their job search.”
Scott Erker, senior vice president of selection for Development Dimensions International, voices a different view. He finds that today’s college graduates are coming to interviews more prepared than in the past. “Candidates have more information about the company,” he says. “They Google the company to find out the good and bad things. They read blogs from ex-employees. It’s more like shopping for a new car—knowing the price, etc. They are more prepared to ask tough questions.” As a result, the interview has moved from a one-way conversation with the hiring manager asking all the questions to more of a two-way conversation.
Candidates’ interview experiences have “a great impact on their decision whether to accept the job or not,” Erker says.
That means hiring managers should be well-versed in “the experience” that recruiters would like them to deliver to the candidate, he says. Hiring managers should be able not only to ask the right questions but also to present the company and its culture in a positive, yet realistic way.
“The employment brand still matters,” Erker says. “You want to train interviewers to deliver a consistent company message about the brand. The cultural fit is so important. People leave or get fired because they just didn’t fit, and it’s the hiring manager who tries to determine if a person is a good fit.”
In a tough economy, there are lots of college graduates to choose from. However, hiring freezes and delays in filling jobs mean due diligence is still critical, Erker says. Even if you have only one open position that you’re trying to fill, “you had better make it the best person possible. You need someone who will learn the job and stay with you. You need people who can hit the ground running.”
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