Category Archives: Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals

How to be an Adult! An Employer’s Edition

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Don’t buy into the hype! “Oh, just do what you love!” That’s not being an adult, that’s being a moron! Just do what makes you happy! No, that’s what a child does.

“Tim, we just want to hire some ‘adults’!” I hear this statement from a lot of CEOs I talk with currently!

That means most of the people they are hiring, aren’t considered adults by these leaders. Oh, they fit the demographic of being an adult from an age perspective, but they still act like children!

I tell people when I interview them and they ask about our culture I say, “We hire adults”.

That means we hire people into positions where they are responsible for something. Because we hire adults, they take responsibility for what they are responsible for. If I have to tell them to do their jobs, they’re not adults, they’re children. We don’t employee children.

I think about 70% of the positions that are open in the world could have the same title –

“Wanted: Adults”.

Those who read that and got it, could instantly be hired and they would be above average employees for you! Those who read it and didn’t understand, are part of the wonder of natural selection.

How do you be an Adult?

– You do the stuff you say you’re going to do. Not just the stuff you like, but all the stuff.

– You follow the rules that are important to follow for society to run well. Do I drive the speed limit every single time? No. Do I come to work when my employer says I need to be there? Yes.

– You assume positive intent on most things. For the most part, people will want to help you, just as you want to help others. Sometimes you run into an asshole.

– You understand that the world is more than just you and your desires.

– You speak up for what is right when you can. It’s easy to say you can always speak up for what is right, but then you wouldn’t be thinking like an adult.

– You try and help those who can’t help themselves. Who can’t, not who won’t.

My parents and grandparents would call this common sense, but I don’t think ‘being an adult’ is common sense anymore. Common sense, to be common, has to be done by most. Being an adult doesn’t seem to be very common lately!

So, you want to hire some adults? I think this starts with us recognizing that being an adult is now a skill in 2018. A very valuable skill. Need to fill a position, maybe we start by first finding adults, then determining do we need these adults to have certain skills, or can we teach adults those skills!

The key to great hiring in today’s world is not about attracting the right skills, it’s about attracting adults who aren’t just willing to work, but understand the value of work and individuals who value being an adult.

I don’t see this as a negative. I see it as an opportunity for organizations who understand this concept. We hire adults first, skills second. Organizations that do this, will be the organizations that win.

The Motley Fool has a great section in their employee handbook that talks about being an adult:

“We are careful to hire amazing people. Our goal is to unleash you to perform at your peak and stay out of your way. We don’t have lots of rules and policies here by design. You are an amazing adult and we trust you to carve your own path, set your own priorities, and ask for help when you need it.”

You are an amazing ‘adult’ and we trust you…

If only it was so simple!

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: Foresight – Workforce Planning Tech

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Today on the Weekly Dose I review workforce planning technology, Foresight.Foresight is billed as the world’s first Recruitment Forecasting technology.It creates an accurate forecast of hiring need across a specified tactical time frame.

About once a year I’m completely shocked and surprised by a technology and this is the case with Foresight. I told the Foresight team, and I’ll tell you, this is the most impressive piece of HR Technology I’ve seen in a long time!

Foresight was built by some corporate talent acquisition professionals that got sick and tired of putting out fires. What we know if TA has very little control over workforce forecasting it comes from hiring managers, CFOs, CEOs, etc. So, they built a technology that kept that in mind, and got them out of fighting the recruiting fires of ‘we need to hire 100 engineers in thirty days’, ‘oh, wait, we need to layoff 300 now instead’, ‘check that, hire 1,000 total across all functions’!

What I like about Foresight:

– The platform sends out an internal email to each hiring manager from the executive explaining what needs to take place, and takes them into the systems and walks them through a very short forecasting process (15 min.) set of questions (executive can also speak to the team via video as well).

– The process takes them through the main areas of: headcount planning, known active recruiting, potential growth needs, and interns/apprenticeships. Calculates everything in a roll-up, and gives the organization a predicted recruitment path for the next twelve months.

– Hiring managers have to follow the system, they can’t skip steps or change. They can leave comments to explain, but they have to put in something.

– Executives get updates on hiring managers not completely their forecast.

– The platform works off live, real-time data, as a position gets filled, everything is updated, someone leaves, another update. Real current recruitment needs are at your fingertips, across your entire organization. Update forecasts can be sent out monthly, quarterly, up to the organization.

– After hiring manager puts in the forecast, there is an approval roll-up that takes place, so when it all comes back to TA, the department is ready to go with full approval.

Basically, anyone in the organization, from TA leader to hiring managers, to executives, can get a list of every single role being recruited for and when that role needs to be filled.

I’m in love with this from the simplicity of how it works to how if used consistently it becomes a cultural driver around your talent strategy. Everyone is onboard and in the know of what’s going on. Clearly, this is an enterprise level technology. You probably don’t need forecasting tech if you’re hiring 100 employees a year, but 500-100,000 hires, across multiple locations and countries, you need this.

Well worth a demo if you find yourself in a very typical TA role of constantly starting and stopping, and not really having a great idea around what the organization needs to hire on an ongoing basis. Bad TA happens when you can’t get out of firefighting mode. Great TA happens when you have a plan and can go make real long-term strategies to attract great talent.

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

The Weekly Dose II: Google Hire’s New Gmail Add-on

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So, this week I’m giving you two doses of HR Tech because so much is happening in the space I just couldn’t get away with one thing this week! Google Hire, the ATS for SMBs, just released a new feature for their system that is something recruiters will really like!

If you haven’t heard of Google Hire, you really need to check it out if your a business under 1,000 employees and your business uses the G-suite. The G-suite being you do your email in Gmail and you use Google Calendar.  That’s important because the only way you can use Google Hire is if you’re a G-suite shop.

If you don’t use the G-suite, don’t waste your time, you can’t use Hire, no matter how bad you might want to give it a look.

So, what’s new with Hire? 

Hire isn’t even that old. It’s really only been on the market for about a year. So, basically it’s all new, but Google released a new Gmail add-on to Hire that is really great.

Check out the video below, but basically, the Gmail Hire add-on allows recruiters to do most of the heavy lifting in Hire, in Gmail, where most recruiters spend most of their time anyway (within their email program communicating with candidates).

The Hire add-on allows recruiters to easily see if a candidate is already in their system or will be a new candidate, makes it seamless to add a new candidate into Hire, and also lets them move candidates along the recruiting process from within Gmail, so they aren’t moving back and forth between Hire and Gmail.

Hire already logged every single candidate interaction within Gmail into Hire, but this allows recruiters to work within the G-suite in a very normal way without bouncing around between programs to interact and moves candidates through the stages of hiring.

One aspect I really liked within Hire is the ability for recruiters to reject a candidate right in Gmail, and choose if they wanted that message to go out immediately, or wait for a certain timeframe before sending. This lets recruiters immediately complete a candidate they absolutely know has no shot, and be more efficient with their time in touching candidates less.

If you’re using G-suite for email, calendar, etc., and you have less than 1,000 employees you should demo Hire, even if you’re happy with your current ATS. Why? Because it’s Google silly! Hire is inexpensive and Google will continue to innovate this product at a rapid rate.

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: The Top 100 Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) in 2018!

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This week on The Weekly Dose I’m taking a look at my #1 all-time favorite report that was released last week by Rob Kelly over at Ongig! The Top 100 Applicant Tracking Systems in 2018 is an annual report that Rob and the Ongig team have been putting out now for four years.

The ATS market is really hard to get data. This report measures 118 ATS platforms out of more than 1,000 on the market, but the 118 in this report make up the vast majority of the marketplace. I love this report because of how robust the data is. The report pulls ATS information from 4200+ employers, which makes it more comprehensive than anything else you’ll find.

So, what have learned about the ATS market in 2018? 

– Taleo is getting killed! In 2017 their market share was 25.51% on Ongig’s report, in 2018 their market share dropped to 19.11%. While this isn’t exact, you can bet the Oracle/Taleo people are freaking out and some folks are getting fired! My hope is this will spur the Taleo folks to finally see their solution has fallen behind the marketplace and we’ll see big innovation from them in the coming years.

– Greenhouse is moving upmarket and taking market share in a big way! Greenhouse is getting most of this market share increase from Taleo, Kenexa/Brassring, and Jobvite (who all lost market share since the 2017 report).

– Don’t look now but Google Hire just became a real threat to all SMB ATS providers! In 2017, Google Hire came in at .22% market share #44 on the list. In 2018, Google Hire is .78%, #23, but has increased their client growth by 312%! Almost triple anyone else. Don’t sleep on Hire!

– While Greenhouse is killing everyone in overall growth, iCIMS and Workday are also growing at a very high rate. Suite HCM talent solutions (like Workday Talent, Ultipro, SAP, Oracle, etc.) have some built-in advantages to growth. If you’re using their HCM, you’ll feel pressure to use the rest of the suite. But with the growth of Greenhouse, iCIMS, Lever, SmartRecruiters, etc. (best of breed talent solutions) we see a clear indication that organizations that see talent as a priority are choosing the better tech over the suite solutions.

– The ATS market is growing. Ongig measured 50 different ATSs in 2014, and 119 in 2018. One major reason is you can make money selling ATS solutions primarily because most companies don’t switch ATSs often. So once you get in, you’re usually there for a while. Plus, the options at the SMB level are now very robust with Google Hire (they want us to just call it “Hire”), Workable, BreezyHR, and Newton (now integrated with Paycor).

So, how should you use this report? 

I love this report because it truly gives every talent acquisition leader a true picture of how vast the ATS market is. The ATS is foundational to your TA Tech stack and the choice you make for your ATS will dictate many decisions you make in how you recruit talent.

Do I go right to the most used? No, but I also don’t ignore the most used. There’s a reason people are using Taleo and Greenhouse. They work. There’s a reason some systems are growing and some are not. Figure out what those might be, it’s very telling!

If you’re an SMB you have a bunch of low-cost ATS technology you should be looking at. So, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be using an ATS, even if you only hire one person a month. While “Homegrown” ATSs are still used widely, please don’t go develop your own ATS, it’s not worth your time or effort with so many great products already on the market.

Go check out the report – it’s one of the best reads you’ll have all year in TA Technology!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

The One Word Recruiters Use to Describe Themselves That’s a Lie!

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Did you catch the article on LinkedIn by Lydia Abbot, The Top 10 Words Recruiters Use to Describe Themselves? If not, go check it out. Lydia is a content marketer for LinkedIn and she puts out some good stuff based on inside data LI data.

In this piece, she basically gave us the Top 10 words recruiters use to describe themselves (based on LI data):

I’ve been a recruiter for a long or worked in talent acquisition for a long time. I think I would say most of these words are pretty good. I want my recruiters to be experienced, skilled, passionate, motivated, etc.

The number 1 word is “Specialized”, it’s also the number 1 word that recruiters describe themselves, that’s almost always a lie!

“Specialized” isn’t really a word recruiters want to use to describe themselves. It’s the word that “You” want them to use to describe themselves!

Here’s what happens. You have a super important opening to fill. The leader of that group wants to ensure ‘you’ don’t screw it up. Since you don’t have anyone on your team that ‘specializes’ in the function of this position, she wants you to use an outside firm. A recruiter who ‘specializes’ in the function of this position.

The reality is, there are a few actual recruiters who “specialize” in certain functions. My friend, Stacy Zapar specializes in filling corporate Recruiter positions at The Talent Agency. That’s all she works on. I know a guy in North Carolina who specializes in filling PCB Engineering openings in the Aerospace industry. Those are the only positions he works on, period. That’s specialization.

If you fill “IT” openings or you fill “Accounting” openings. You aren’t a specialist. You don’t have specialization.

Recruiters will tell you they are specialized because that is what you want to believe, but 99% of recruiters are not specialized. They might enjoy a certain focus, like Nursing, or Engineering, or Designers, etc. But those are still very broad fields!

Corporate Hiring Managers and Corporate Talent Acquisition want to believe the recruiters they are using, or the recruiters they are hiring, are specialized, but they’re not. It’s not that they’re lying, it’s that it doesn’t really matter!

My company mostly works on recruiting positions in Engineering and IT. The reality is we train our recruiters to “Recruit”. Give them an engineering opening and they’ll kill it. Give them a Human Resources position to fill and they’ll kill it. If you can recruit, you can recruit.

Does specialization help? It can, if the recruiter is truly specialized. If you have a pipeline of very specific talent. The reality is less than 1% of recruiters will ever even come close to true specialization, yet it’s the #1 word we use to describe ourselves!

So, what do you really want out of a recruiter if we don’t need specialization? Experience for sure helps. The reality is the best recruiters take an interest in the position, the hiring manager, the department, and the company. They’re passionate about the position and can convey that to candidates. Also, they have the skill to uncover and track down talent others can’t.

In recruiting, specialization is oversold and overrated. Whereas actual sourcing and recruiting skills are underrated because we as recruiters do a terrible job of showing how a skilled recruiter is better than an unskilled recruiter!

 

The Reason You’re Being “Ghosted” After Your Interview!

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Dear Timmy,

I recently applied for a position that I’m perfect for! A recruiter from the company contacted me and scheduled me for an interview with the manager. I went, the interview was a little over an hour and it went great! I immediately followed up with an email to the recruiter and the manager thanking them, but since then I’ve heard nothing and it’s been weeks. I’ve sent follow-up emails to both the recruiter and the manager and I’ve gotten no reply.

What should I do? Why do companies do this to candidates? I would rather they just tell me they aren’t interested than have them say nothing at all!

The Ghost Candidate

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Dear Ghost,

There are a number of reasons that recruiters and hiring managers ghost candidates and none of them are good! Here’s a short-list of some of these reasons:

– They hated you and hope you go away when they ghost you because, conflict in uncomfortable.

– They like you, but not as much as another candidate they’re trying to talk into the job, but want to leave you on the back burner, but they’re idiots and don’t know how to do this properly.

– They decided to promote someone internally and they don’t care about candidate experience enough to tell you they went another direction.

– They have a completely broken recruitment process and might still be going through it believing you’re just as happy as a pig in shi…

– They think they communicated to you electronically to bug off through their ATS, but they haven’t audited the process to know this isn’t working.

– The recruiter got fired and no one picked up the process.

I would love to tell you that ghosting candidates are a rare thing, but it’s not! It happens all the time! There is never a reason to ghost a candidate, ever! Sometimes I believe candidates get ghosted by recruiters because hiring managers don’t give feedback, but that still isn’t an excuse I would accept, at least tell the candidate that!

Look, I’ve ghosted people. At conference cocktail parties, I’ve been known to ghost my way right back up to my room and go to sleep! When it comes to candidates, I don’t ghost! I would rather tell them the truth so they don’t keep coming back around unless I want them to come back around.

I think most recruiters ghost candidates because they’re over their head in the amount of work they have, and they mean to get back to people, but just don’t have the time. When you’re in the firefighting mode you tend to only communicate with the candidates you want, not the ones you don’t. Is this good practice? Heck, no! But when you’re fighting fires, you do what you have to do to stay alive.

What would I do, if I was you? 

Here are a few ideas to try if you really want to know the truth:

1. Send a handwritten letter to the CEO of the company briefly explaining your experience and what outcome you would like.

2. Go on Twitter and in 140 characters send a shot across the bow! “XYZ Co. I interviewed 2 weeks ago and still haven’t heard anything! Can you help me!?” (Will work on Facebook as well!)

3. Write a post about your experience on LinkedIn and tag the recruiter and the recruiter’s boss.

4. Take the hint and go find a company who truly values you and your talent! If the organization and this manager treats candidates like this, imagine how you’ll be treated as an employee?

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Jobalign – Hourly Candidate Engagement

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This week on The Weekly Dose I review the hourly candidate engagement platform Jobalign. Jobalign’s candidate engagement platform helps employers Attract, Engage and Hire Hourly Employees.

Jobalign is a technology that sits between job boards and your ATS and fills the gap in engaging an hourly workforce that might want to apply to your jobs that probably don’t have a desktop computer and might not even have a smartphone.

So, what’s the ‘gap’ you might ask! Basically, there’s two the first is when candidates abandon applying for your jobs, which is a shockingly high amount of potential candidates. If all you rely on for applicants is your ATS application process, you’re missing out a large number of candidates.

Jobalign is a mobile-first platform where candidates can actually apply through SMS text messages, and it’s bi-lingual. Jobalign’s text-to-apply automation by itself is something most organizations who have large hourly hiring processes should look at.

The second gap is after apply. With an hourly workforce, you might have 24 hours to engage a candidate before they’ve moved on to another employer. Jobalign’s platform will begin working immediately in automating the screening process, so candidates are never waiting for next steps.

What I liked about Jobalign:

– Recruiters can send text messages right from the platform to candidates who apply and go through the screening process so your recruiters are only using one platform to communicate with hourly candidates, and not having to jump back and forth between their cell, your ATS, job boards, etc.

– Built-in Intelligent Sourcing Engine. Jobalign works with over 100+ job boards, local sites, and their own database of millions of hourly candidates to help you source hourly talent.

– Jobalign can also host your hourly career site to make sure your jobs are fully mobile optimized, which will help considerably with lowering the abandonment rate.

– Pay for performance. Jobalign works on a Pay per Applicant model. Basically, if they don’t deliver applicants you don’t pay. Two types of models, one that is considerably cheaper that uses their apply technology, and one more expensive that includes all of the auto sourcing technology.

Jobalign truly understands the hourly workforce and are advocates for helping them find jobs. I really like Jobalign’s Smart Apply Process via phone that will basically build a resume/profile automatically from how the candidates answer the questions. This helps both the candidate and companies.

If you do a lot of hourly hiring and you’re struggling to get enough applicants, process those applicants, or just need to do all it better, Jobalign is definitely a technology you should demo.

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

The Weekly Dose of HR Tech: @Greenhouse Recruiting Software & ATS

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The week on the Weekly Dose I review the popular applicant tracking system Greenhouse. I first learned about Greenhouse in 2015 and wrote about as a startup SMB ATS, but it was time to update that review and let you know how they’ve grown.

Since my last review Greenhouse has grown considerably (3,000+ customers) and has a number of companies using them with over 25,000 employees, so we can easily place them in the mid to enterprise market in the ATS space. Definitely, if you’re in that 1,000 to 25,000+ world, this is one of the stand-alone recruiting platforms that you must consider.

The “enterprise” HCM suites (from vendors like Oracle, Workday, etc) are generally able to support the complex IT requirements of big companies, but the Talent Acquisition module has been an afterthought and not really designed to support world-class TA functions. Greenhouse does both – handle the global complexities but with a focus on delivering the tools needed for a strategic, high-performing TA function.

What I like about Greenhouse: 

– The only ATS I’ve seen that has a built-in candidate experience survey.  If Candidate Satisfaction is important to your organization Greenhouse customers have a significantly higher rate than others based on Talent Board results.

– Built-in CRM tech allows you to keep pipelines engaged and nurture candidates in your database. Sourcing Quality Report which not only tells you where you hire the most candidates from but how far into the process do candidates get via each source.

– Blinded ‘take home’ assessments that help reduce hiring bias within the organization, combined with interview kits for hiring managers to ensure you improve diversity and inclusion within your organization.

– Predictive analytics that can help show you if you’ll be able to fill the positions you have open at the time needed, allowing you to adjust sourcing as needed to reach goals.

– Recruiter/hiring manager auto-alerts when candidates have been in process for too long, which kills candidate experience.

Greenhouse is the real deal when it comes to ATS technology. I can’t really do justice how much you can do with them, especially on the collaboration side of working through the interview process with everyone involved from approval through hire. If you’re looking to upgrade your talent acquisition technology Greenhouse is a great foundational piece to start with.

Greenhouse is definitely one to add to your demo list if you’re in the process of selecting a new ATS. I’ve yet to speak to a TA Leader who was using Greenhouse and left them because they wanted to find something better. I’ve spoken to many who have left others to go to Greenhouse and seem really satisfied.

You can also check out Greenhouse at their annual conference in New York – OPEN 2018 April 2-4, where Patty McCord (one of my favs!) will be keynoting.  

Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

1% of Job Descriptions have Pictures or Video! Why?

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Smashfly, the enterprise recruitment marketing platform, released their 2018 Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report this week and it’s loaded with data. As you can see from the image above, some things have gotten better than others!

What’s up with Job Description and why the hell can’t we figure this out!? 

So, apparently, we are really against having pictures and video in job descriptions! 1% of job descriptions having this type of media is actually a really strange stat to have in 2018. You would think by now we would have shoved just about anything into a JD to make it more appealing for job seekers. But, we haven’t!

Why?

A few things are at play here that I think corporate TA folks will want to point out:

– Job descriptions are a legal document, not a toy like job postings are, so we treat them appropriately. Okay, yes, a JD is a legal document. But, that doesn’t mean you need to bore people to death to read it! “Legal” doesn’t mean you can’t add pictures or videos. Just be smart.

– Our ATS only allows text. Okay, you need a new ATS that was built in the last decade!

– JD’s are an HR issue, not a TA issue. We’re lucky if we can get the hiring manager to look at them, let alone update them!

So, there are problems. No real problems. Mostly made up, we don’t like change problems.

There is no reason that your Job Descriptions shouldn’t have pictures and video. Some organizations have gone completely to video-based job descriptions, and guess what!? They didn’t even take those TA pros to jail! No, really! Not even a ticket from the EEOC or OFCCP or anything!

Here’s what we know. Having a job description that actually gets people excited about a job will get people to apply, at a far higher rate than a text-based document with paragraphs and bullet points. Also, you don’t have to have a production studio to do this! You have an iPhone, go down to the department and take some pics and video. Take ten minutes to work with your ATS and IT to figure it out.

We think JD’s don’t matter but they do. They matter because the JD is the one thing every candidate reads about the job and your company. They might not visit your career site, or stop by your lobby, or your social feeds. Everyone reads the JD. Also, the JD is basically the only thing we share socially and within our talent networks (which is an entire another post!):

95% of organizations in the Fortune 500 only send JD’s to their Talent Networks. Oh boy, that sounds like a great network to be apart of! Come on! We’re better than this!

Some other cool facts from Smashfly’s Benchmark Report:

– There’s a correlation between having Recruitment Marketing strategy and Revenue growth. Be careful. That doesn’t mean those with Recruitment Marketing Strategies will grow Revenue, there’s no causation, just correlation. There’s also a correlation between me starting to blog and the stock market going up 1265% since I started writing!

– Those who do really great at Recruitment Marketing will have higher Glassdoor ratings. Make sense, right! Tell people you’re awesome and people will say you’re awesome. I love marketing! It works!

– Only 15 Fortune 500 companies won a Candidate Experience Award in 2017. All 15 had Recruitment Marketing Strategies in place! Want a better CX? Probably helps to have a strategy.

– Only 1% of organizations have implemented the most talked about technology on the planet! A chatbot! Seems low. Seems like I’m running into them more and more as I look at career sites, but not surprising. We like to wait and see when it comes to TA Tech. I’m guessing that number will be higher next year!

Check out the full report, it has some great data and some great ideas as well on Recruitment Marketing!

 

 

Career Confessions from GenZ: What Does GenZ Want From You at a Career Fair?

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Career Confessions from GenZ is a weekly series authored by Cameron Sackett, a Sophomore at the Univesity of Michigan majoring in Communications and Advertising. Make sure you connect with him on LinkedIn:

Honestly, there is nothing more terrifying to me than a career fair! It seems almost like speed dating, where you have to make a lasting impression and a meaningful connection with someone in a matter of minutes. While I’m not sold on this option as a way to find potential jobs/internships, it is a great resource for most college students to find jobs.

Disclaimer: I have never been to a career fair, so my opinion is based on hypothetical situations. When I attend one, there are certain things that will definitely catch my eye.

1.SWAG: I honestly don’t care what it is, but I’m a “broke” college student and I love free things. Whether it be a notebook, lanyard, or even a dang pen, swag draws me in immediately. At the University of Michigan’s club and activities fair my friends and I will walk around for hours with the sole purpose of collecting as many free things as possible. My suggestion is to bring snacks to give away, slap a company logo sticker on the package and your set!. While this might not be as long-lasting as maybe a lanyard, I am way more likely to actually use it and therefore, think more fondly of your company!

2.PEOPLE: This is completely opinion based, but I personally feel more comfortable talking to women than men. Personally, I think that talking with a male fosters a more competitive atmosphere, thus making me nervous and less likely to approach a table. Now when it comes to women, especially in their 30s and 40s, I feel right at home. This is probably because my Mom is my best friend, but I would feel more comfortable approaching a table with a middle-aged woman at the front.

3.BRANDS: Obviously recognizable brands are definitely going to have a leg up on the competition. I’m going to be way more compelled approaching the Google table rather than a company I’ve never heard of. This is when you have to play the game by creating a cool/modern display (maybe with some technology) and bringing some sweet swag (free T-Shirts are golden for getting college students – especially if you incorporate the actual school logo). I believe the most important goal for less recognizable companies at a career fair is to be memorable and remembering the audience you’re catering to is vital to achieving this.

As I get closer to the impending doom of adulthood, I will probably have more experience with career fairs, so look out for part 2 in about a year! My biggest piece of advice is to remember the audience you’re working with: insecure, desperate, tired college students that want a job as badly as you want to fill your positions! And if you need anyone to try out some swag, I think I could help you with that 😉

 

 

HR and TA Pros – have a question you would like to ask directly to a GenZ? Ask us in the comments and I’ll have Cameron respond in an upcoming blog post right here on the project. Have some feedback for Cameron? Again, please share in the comments and/or connect with him on LinkedIn.