At the closing session today in Florida, ERE Expo attendees mentioned some of their key take-aways, suggestions, and other thoughts from the last three days:
- College recruiting programs should be much more social-media-oriented, with fewer on-campus interviews involving large numbers of people who may not fit the company’s culture and needs anyhow
- Recruiters should get more objective feedback and much less subjective feedback. Record recruiter voice mails to assess telephone skills.
- Use internal employees’ networks and contacts more, and encourage them to spread the word of your company through their networks. This may sound both common sense and commonplace, one participant said, but recruiters think this is happening more than it is.
- From the panel of college students: remember that this is a business of people. Again, this isn’t a novel idea, but it’s easy to forget when so much of recruiting is electronic.
- Explore video interviewing options (a Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership article on this topic is in the works)
- LinkedIn, while valuable and wildly popular, isn’t universally used by college students
- When recruiters text people at all hours of the day (9 p.m. on Monday night, for example), that’s an indication people at the company have a work/life that’s out of balance
- Social responsibility is highly desired by some students looking for jobs, and perhaps need to be highlighted more on corporate career sites
- Recruiters should be as transparent as possible and share with their peers their tools and techniques — not just what they did but how they did it and what they used to get it done. Also, recruiters should share with their peers both what didn’t work and what did work.
- Search engine optimization is effective in sourcing for nurses, as is the website Indeed.com
- Remind employees of how they came to a job and a career in the first place. Employees who enter healthcare, teaching, and other professions often do so because of a passion, and as the passion fades amidst their day-to-day work, it can help to reinforce the connection of their job to people’s lives.
- Onboarding doesn’t have to be expensive to be done well, or at least better than the status quo at many companies