AOEP and BBI at Bentley College.....say what?

Experience had a great opportunity to sponsor an event at Bentley College last week hosted by Association of Employment Professionals and it was really interesting! This was a half-day professional development event for recruiters who have a focus on college recruitment and attracted more than 90 recruiters from all around New England.

(This is Michael Collins, Vice President of Corporate Sales here at Experience helping with set up before his kicking off the events with his opening remarks.)

The theme of the event was Best Practices for College Recruiting, and it featured Scott Weighart, author (Organizational Behavior In Action; The Comprehensive Guidebook for Co-op Survival) and a Cooperative Education Faculty Coordinator, Information, Operations and Analysis for Northeastern as the first speaker. He presented on Behavior Based Interviewing techniques for employers. BBI is a strategy where the interviewer forms questions to discover how the interviewee behaves under certain circumstances. So for instance, asking the candidate to provide details about the most stressful day in his or her last internship and how he or she handled it. Scott provide some practical tips on using behavioral based interviewing to help predict how a candidate will behave in the future and fit within an organization.

The second session was a panel of career services officers—including Kimberly DelGizzo, Director, and Associate Dean of the College from Brown University; Mark Savage, Director of Engineering Recruitment from Cornell; and Wendy D’Ambrose, Director of the Graduate Center for Career Services from Bentley College—who discussed strategies for recruiting college students and recent graduates.

The key theme repeated during the panel and throughout the morning was “branding.” Both the university staff and the employers in the audience seemed to be in agreement that branding your company, the culture and more are all critical components to a successful college recruitment program. Hmmmm, I think we have been saying something similar here at Experience for a while now.

Special thanks to Mike Vangel, President, Association of Employment Professionals for coordinating this wonderful event.