Developing a toolkit
Hi,
I am in the process of re-designing the material used by our Placement Department. I would like to hear from other colleagues what are you using to attract new employers and what has been more effective during this economy?
I am currently using fryers, e-mails, and lots of phone calls. New ideas please?
Hi Pablo, Very good question. The way to attract new employers is to create a list and call on one employer at a time. Find out what their needs are. Ask enough questions so you know what will make their lives easier as they look for new employees. Get to know them. Then tell them how your school can be a resource to them. Let them know that you want your school to be THE place where they can look for quality workers. Then stay in touch with these people on a regular basis by phone, email, snail mail. Ask for their involvement in career services events. Create and sustain a relationship. Hope that helps. Susan
The challenge for most Career Placement professionals is the variety of "hats" an individual must wear and the competing skill sets required to be successful. If you are good at cold calling, you may struggle with helping students write a resume and the opposite could also be true. The successful professional has to understand what they like to do and why and then have the discipline to reserve time daily/weekly to accomplish the tasks they least like to do.
It's like exercising. The toughest one you do is leaning over to lace up those tennis shoes!
Another helpful idea that has helped me in the past is contacting working graduates. A lot of grads I have worked with have since moved into managerial positions. They work as an OUTSTANDING resource for placing new grads. Definitely make a spread sheet of past graduates in hiring positions. Good luck!
You are right, Jenna. Staying in touch with grads has a lot of benefits. In fact, we suggest that all grads automatically be given Alumni status and automatically enrolled in your Alumni Association. There are so many easy offers to benefit Alumni such as tuition reductions, lifetime career services, etc. When you give a lot you can expect to ask as well. One idea that is catching on is to ask alumni to have a back link to your school placed on their company website. Thanks, Susan
We have started a Frequent Hire promotion. Individuals or companies earn a $1,000 credit toward any IT job lead they send us that results in a full time IT position for one of our IT graduates.
We send emails about the program to our corporate customers and graduates of our technical courses who are now employed in the IT industry.
We not only pick up exclusive job leads for our IT grads, we also pick up new students for our classes.
This also builds our credibility with corporate clients.
Thanks Guy. Your Frequent Hire promotion sounds very innovative. We are not sure what the $1000 credit goes towards. Are you saying it goes against a fee paid for the placement? Sounds like what you are doing is focusing on Community Outreach. We promote that - developing and maintaining relationships with the hiring people in companies that can hire your grads. In this way you find out what the company is looking for in a work-ready graduate so you can customize your programs. And you can hopefully find out about job openings before anyone else. And you are right -the company can send you students - and ideally pay for them. Thanks, Susan
