One Job + One Job = One Job

Did you see today's Career Journal section of the Wall Street Journal? I don't know about you, but "Help Wanted: Senior-Level Job, Junior Title, Pay" caught my attention. The piece discussed a trend that's apparently becoming more and more common at companies adjusting to a weakened economy: combining what were two or even three jobs into ONE job, then giving it a lower-level title and offering a lower-level salary to match. Employers are doing this to cut costs any way they can and stretching assets -- in this case, people -- is something now on the table.

Yikes!

As professionals in career services, we all know that Gen Y candidates are graduating and entering the workforce at a breakneck pace. Some recruiters are capitalizing on young grads and in some cases are offering entry-level salaries but dishing out more responsibility than what you'd expect for a first job out of school. According to the article, these recruiters are figuring younger workers might not notice or might even be grateful to take on a job with more responsibility than the typical lower-level position.

But is it worth it? Near term, maybe. Long term? No.

The first thing that comes to my mind is the 'ol "churn and burn" factor. I'm all for multitasking and getting my hands dirty when it comes down to the work at hand, but at the same time a person can only do so much before quality of work vanishes in favor of quantity. Other major considerations, which the article notes, are everything from morale issues to retention concerns. In the end, savings will not be fully realized if employers need to continually run ads, post jobs, engage in on-boarding, etc. Their company brand can also get tarnished from an employment perspective. Who would want to work for a company that has a reputation for being a revolving door?

In the article, Amy Armitage, a partner at Capital H Group, a human-resources consulting firm based in Chicago, offers a quote that's definitely worth pondering. "You've got to look very closely at what jobs are being cut and ensure you don't cut into the bone, into the things that are really adding value to your customers and to what's really creating the growth engine of your company."

Have you seen this trend as your young grads search for and start their first jobs? Or, if you're a recruiter, what are your thoughts on this strategy?

Photo by xdjio

A Refreshing Two Days in July

Every year in July we get together with our university board of advisors. This year, like prior years that I can remember, was another hot and humid couple of days in Boston.

This year, unlike all prior years, we had employers from our employer advisory board join the meeting and advance the conversation.

Some of the most interesting trends and questions posed and discussed by the group were:

How do employers select target schools - employers seem to do this very differently. Schools and employers both believe some aggregation of school profile information would make it easier for employers to figure out which schools to target.

Lower on-campus recruiting turnout - reasons included career fairs becoming the primary point of employer interaction, internships as a pre-recruitment tool, and some students going direct to employers.

Parental involvement - the "CEO parent" (previously known as the "helicopter parent") was mentioned as a phenomenon that both groups are seeing that doesn’t seem to be going away...

Fall recruitment is happening earlier – push for certain talent – business, engineering - is happening even earlier in October. Companies want their interview schedules earlier each year. Career centers are trying to accommodate but it's hard when everyone wants the same timeframe. Some career centers are working with employers in the same industry to align offer and notification dates when they can.

Getting involved with faculty, student groups and athletic organizations on campus – employers want to “fish where the fish are” so are engaging different parts of campus. Some career centers offer to be the coordination point for this activity; others prefer that employers manage on their own.

So yes it was hot, but the dialogue, idea-sharing, collaboration and camaraderie was refreshing and invigorating for all of us at Experience.

Photo (left to right): Stan Jackson (Experience), Cindy Henderson (Northern Illinois University), and Mike Sciola (Wesleyan University).

Screaming for Ice Cream

There's an ice cream truck that parks itself at my favorite Cape Cod beach, and it's always a treat to get a Chipwich or a good old-fashioned Popsicle in the heat of the summer sun. Last weekend, when buying a treat for my son and one for myself, I randomly thought of one of my favorite Far Side cartoons by Gary Larson. Called "Failed Marketing Gimmicks," the strip features the driver of an asparagus truck (looking just like an ice cream truck) calling out to the neighborhood: "I cuss, you cuss, we all cuss for asparagus!"

As a marketer who spends a lot of time in Gen Y land, I'm constantly thinking of how to better engage the 18 to 30 year-old demographic who interact with Experience in one form or another. And like the driver of the ill-fated asparagus truck, there are times when trying to persuade college students to actively engage with career services feels like selling veggies to kids who just want a sundae. Know what I mean?

With the fall semester and recruiting season about to begin, the team at Experience is currently producing many back-to-school themed marketing messages for our partner schools. Our clients can then tailor these messages to market career services directly to their constituents, including everyone from incoming freshmen to seniors looking to set up interviews with employers. And as is always the case, we're walking that fine line between what we think will be both creative and effective.

Getting one's career off the ground is serious business. It can be stressful and even scary for some. So as we enjoy these dog days of summer, treat yourself to some ice cream and then take a look at what you've done to connect with college students and young grads -- whether it's marketing messages of your own, a job posting, direct emails or even advertising. Are you giving Gen Y what they want? If you're not, you might as well be driving that asparagus truck.

Photo by Roadsidepictures

Happy 50th Birthday NASA from The Launch Pad!

Today I'm recovering from a migraine and coming down with something else so I can't guarantee I'm going to make any sense. Therefore, read at your own risk :).

NASA is celebrating its 50th birthday as a government agency which merits pause for thought in my book. It's amazing to think that someone's vision to travel into space became a reality. Really. In many ways I take space exploration for granted, when it's a reminder that (as cliché as it sounds) anything is indeed possible.

If we all took the 'anything is possible' approach to our lives and our careers what would the world look like? Don't get me wrong, I recognize that 'dreams' are all relative and don't have to be as big and bold as walking on the moon. I just wonder how many dreamers get stuck because they don't know how to bring their dreams to fruition.

Moreover, what can we do to motivate each other?

I know I'm inspired by lots of people, particularly my colleagues (some of whom I'm looking at right now). There are many people here at Experience who juggle family and work while still managing to pursue other dreams like running marathons, traveling around the world, volunteering in Africa, snowboarding and more. There is also a guy who is differently-abled and relies on a walker to get around. His commute to work each day is like serial obstacle course that would send most of home for good. Yet, he's here each morning eagerly sharing his daily struggle just to show up to work, like a great adventure!

It's unlikely I will every invent something that changes the way people live or travel to space. But, I do feel like I am living my own little dream each day. Do you?

The Best Takeaway

I don't know about you, but the fact that August will be here next week just blows my mind. August's arrival means back-to-school is right at our doorstep. It also means the fall recruiting season is about to kick into high gear.

It certainly has been a busy summer, though, and before I get into the meat of this post I want to say thanks to Erin for covering for me a couple of weeks back. Thanks, E! As she mentioned, I attended the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partners Conference (WPC) in Houston along with my colleague Ray Matthews. Ray and I, representing Experience at the Microsoft Students-to-Business (S2B) booth, spent the week speaking with Microsoft partners from all over the world. Of all the folks we talked to, a good chunk of them being from overseas, nearly every single person told us the same thing: finding good, qualified and reliable talent is becoming harder and harder. And all of them seemed blown away by the value S2B brings to the table.

As an online community (a talent community as Erin alluded to) geared towards technically minded students, young grads and the employers looking to hire them, Microsoft S2B is well on its way to being the ultimate destination for IT and MIS candidates looking to put their know-how to work. And it's not just about the highly targeted job and internship postings. In addition to the opportunities, students and alumni who join the S2B community -- for free -- will have access to training materials, insightful industry content and software. As for the partners, a VP of Sales from a large Southeastern software vendor said it to us best: "this is the best takeaway from the conference!"

To me, that just about says it all.

Are You Tired Of Hearing About Interns?

Okay, so anyone who knows me is tired of my rants about the importance of internship programs to any recruiting strategy, so I decided I will instead write about the topic for now on. Despite that the economy is sluggish and gas prices appear to be soaring to $7 per gallon,
recruitment is still highly competitive. Particularly in disciplines like engineering where
the number of graduates with engineering degrees drops about 20 percent each year,
while the number of engineering positions continues to increase.

So, in order to get their attention start an internship program where you recruit freshman and sophomores in addition to upper classman. An internship program is a great way to build a talent pipeline and also drive employee retention because the program allows prospective full-time employees to test drive you as well.

One suggestion for those of you who don’t know where to being is to create a baseline job description for an intern who can work on cross-functional teams or for several people in one department. Of course you’ll need one dedicated manager so the intern doesn’t get lost but it’s a great way to introduce an internship program to your company while you determine where the immediate and long term need is for interns throughout the company. Another suggestion is not to focus on hiring the students with the best GPA from the best schools. Bring in a wide variety of candidates and hire based on fit…..I guarantee you will not regret it.

In the fall of 2006, we had an intern from Boston University named Evonne who interned for the Employer marketing team. She reported to one person but wound up working on a variety of projects for others (including me). I had enough exposure to her work and her personality to know that she was definitely somebody we needed to bring in full time if the opportunity arose. So, when a position opened this spring in our marketing department, she was the first person we thought of and as a group made a very quick decision to hire her.

Why? Because we knew she was dedicated, professional and thorough and that she has great attitude and was a great fit for a high energy culture.

Evonne has showed up and blown away some very high expectations we had for her. I think a huge reason for her success is that she interned for us so we knew what we were getting and she did too. Evonne could also have graduated at the top of her class or the bottom of it….it didn’t matter because she’d already shown she was more than equal to the task of working for Experience full time! So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Moving on to non sequiturs, I realize I was was remiss in congratulating the Celtics on their win in the NBA finals in my last post! For anyone who watched you finally got to see what how good Pierce really is and how on-point Shaq was when he named him The Truth!

Enough out of me.

Where is Mark? What is Student-to-Business?

So with Marketing Mark (we have a DBA Mark too) off to Houston, TX to Microsoft’s worldwide partner event I decided to jump on the blog and tap away in his absence. I’m sure he won’t mind. In case you’re wondering why Marketing Mark would attend it is because we have partnered with Microsoft on their Student-to-Business community initiative.

The S2B program is program is designed to connect Microsoft partners and customers with qualified students for
entry-level and internship positions. Experience is powering their job site portal which directly connects job seekers with information technology (IT) career opportunities. Through our network, Microsoft's 10,000 partner companies can post jobs or internships and find personnel entry level talent.

So very cool in my opinion! Why you ask? Because talent communities are the next generation of recruitment (again…in my opinion).

Recruitment has evolved from newspaper listings to online posts and now everyone is in agreement we need more. The way I see it, building a loyal community of prospective candidates that interact with and offer by offering them more value (in S2Bs case it’s free software and more) than just your job lists so that you build a rapport and a mutual understanding of who you are as a company and establish relationships with prospects who are the best fit for your organization. This costs more money upfront but I believe this pays for itself many times over in employee productivity and retention….

What do The Celtics and College Recruitment Have in Common?

Nothing. It's been over 20 years since the Celts have won a world championship so I wanted to take the opportunity to gratuitously say Go Celts!

So what's going on in the recruitment world this week? Engineering and accounting industries are still hiring like gangbusters according to Robert Half and many other reliable sources. As for the rest of us, we are supposedly not in a recession.....it just looks like one :).

The tip off for me that the economy was in trouble was was last summer when gas prices began their meteoric rise. That was followed by a record year of recent graduates accepting job offers, not necessarily because it was the job they wanted but because they are hard to come by. Our goal is to work with students while they are in school so they can pursue to a career path they love and not 'take the first job they can find' after they graduate.

What do you think? Are we in a recession? If so or if not, tell us how that is impacting your hiring budgets, practices, etc?

Speak Into the Mic

If you haven't read it yet, check out the recent Cheezhead.com post on the topic of audio resumes. Apparently the company JobCircle has introduced a new tool called VoiceIntro, which as a self-proclaimed resume enhancement the product is designed to do just that -- give candidates the opportunity to "introduce" themselves with their own voice via a prerecorded audio snippet.

It works like this... you sign up for the service for free, call a toll-free number and leave a 60-second resume voice introduction. The site even plugs how easy recording your message can be: "You don't need a microphone or fancy recording equipment - just a phone and the ability to talk about yourself."

I don't know about you, but my confidence in this is about as high as it is with video resumes (see my related post). It’ll be interesting to see if this kind of thing takes off. My guess is that it won't... at least not now, not with the "dial-an-intro" phone concept. It screams awkwardness to me. Similar to video, if the resulting audio voiceover isn’t polished and compelling it will most likely undermine the candidate’s efforts. Conversely, if the audio winds up sounding like it’s the guy from MovieFone, that probably wouldn’t do much good either! Both would either tick off recruiters for wasting their time or just get some laughs.

In my former life as a local radio advertising salesperson, I had a boss who drilled this mantra into my head: "it's the delivery, not the leave behind."

You could be the most qualified candidate of them all. Your resume could be absolutely perfect. But unless you record a flawless and genuine message, the audio introduction will only be a disservice... and ultimately you will not sell yourself.

Isn't that the point?

Photo by Duchamp

Mass. Exodus - Is it Only Massachusetts?

Scott Kirsner published an article in The Boston Globe today that focused on a couple of key topics near and dear to my heart. The first is something that’s been written about for the last 10 years, the exodus of talented college graduates to other states after they receive their degree from a Massachusetts-based college or university. The second point is what the state and industry can do to change it

There are a lot of variables that have contributed to the decline of the 25-34 year old population in Mass. including the out-of-control cost of living and the completely inflated housing market. That along with lousy weather and long suffering Boston drivers make me wonder why I still live here. That said, the cost of living and housing markets are even worse in California which continues to grow in population.

Scott suggests campaigning college students to keep them where they are after college.

“Every year, students at local business schools fly west for the annual "Tech Trek." They visit companies like Genentech, Google, Apple, Boeing, and Starbucks, getting tours of the headquarters and an opportunity to question senior executives about strategy. Amazingly, only the Sloan School of Management at MIT organizes a tech trek of Massachusetts companies, visiting businesses like Bose Corp., Boston Scientific, and Zipcar. Why don't student groups, profs, local companies, and trade associations get their acts together to create opportunities to drop in on Massachusetts businesses, either during a single concentrated week, or throughout the academic year?”

I agree with Scott that the state needs to do more but I also think employers and schools in Mass. (and nationwide) can be doing more as well. Employers need creative recruitment practices give students the opportunity to experience the company brand, facilities, culture and more in real-time. If that sounds like too much, remember it can be a one-day event or once-a-quarter event. Also, if you have the budget to travel to on-campus events or post nationwide job listings than you can probably relocate some of it to educate great candidates in your community on what you do and why they should join your company.

Schools should be working with employers to drive these programs on campus. It won’t cost them anything to do it and will only help their student base find amazing internships, work-studies and jobs.

My soon-to-be husband is a Texan who stayed in Mass. after graduating from Northeastern because of a girl (not this girl). It didn’t work out with the girl but it worked out with Mass. and he stayed long enough for us to meet. (I lucked out :) However, you can’t count on love to retain great candidates. State government, employers and schools should all be doing there part to keep great candidates in state after graduation.

Some will leave anyway but many will stay if they are given solid reasons for doing so.
As for me, despite that I'm New Englander (born and raised) I may leave eventually because I’m still not used to the weather!