The University Space

India’s Emerging Population of Young Professional Talent (part 2 of 2)

Ray Ferreira — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:25:50 +0000

In this second and final part of my discussion with Gerry Crispin, we discuss those aspects of career opportunities that are most influential among the emerging population of young Indian professionals… both inside India and around the world.

In this 10-minute podcast Gerry provides insightful observations on how global organizations can better compete for this new generation of Indian professionals.

Gerry, who established CareerXroads and the CareerXroads Colloquium with business partner Mark Mehler, also provides an ongoing recruiting discussion in “Gerry’s Blog”. He’ll be publishing more observations from his trip to India there over the coming weeks and months.

Please listen now and share your own observations by posting a comment below. Or, if you need to catch up on the first part of my discussion with Gerry, visit our January 6, 2010 posting.

Ray

India’s Emerging Population of Young Professional Talent (part 1 of 2)

Ray Ferreira — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 21:49:32 +0000

According to a report from the Institute of International Education, there were 103,260 students from India studying at US universities… an increase of 7.7% over the previous year. That makes India the largest supplier of international students to the United States (a 15.4% market share). Student enrollment within India is estimated to be 500 times larger than in the US, creating a one of the world’s largest and fastest growing global talent supplies.

In this first, 10-minute podcast of a 2-part series, I talk with recruiting veteran Gerry Crispin, fresh off his trip to India, about the young talent emerging from Indian and international universities today, and what they’re looking for in terms of education and career. Gerry offers some interesting and somewhat surprising insights on young Indian talent in this 2-part interview.

Please listen and share your own observations by posting a comment below.

Ray

Leveraging the Unique Talents of Domestic and International Chinese Gen-Y Candidates

Ray Ferreira — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:55:15 +0000

More than 75,000 Chinese students represent the second-largest foreign population attending U.S. universities—a number that’s growing by 8.2% annually. Facts like this present global companies with a critical choice of recruiting Chinese talent from within China, or building their Chinese presence with students who have studied abroad.

On October 29th, I spoke with Nancy Dilthey and Alexandra Levit about the emerging population of Gen-Y talent inside China. In this podcast, I talk with Corrine Chen—a member of our employer communication teams and a U.S./Chinese business connector—about the differences between “domestic Chinese” candidates (those who completed their university studies inside China) and their international counterparts (Chinese students who have studied in other countries).

Corrine draws an interesting picture of business and cultural experiences that may impact the way global companies leverage these two very different groups of emerging Chinese candidates. Please listen. Then share your own observations by posting a comment below.

Ray

Attracting Japanese Gen-Y Talent in North America

Ray Ferreira — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:52:47 +0000

Japanese students represent the fourth largest group of foreign nationals studying at U.S. universities with enrollment of over 35,000. In our previous podcast I talked with Jason Ayers and Eijiro Kawada about the unique workplace and cultural factors that make it very hard for global recruiting organizations to compete for emerging university talent within Japan.

This time we’ve invited Eijiro back to discuss the unique aspects of recruiting Japanese students who attend universities in North America. Eijiro provides a unique perspective, having earned degrees both in Japan and the United States. In this podcast, he observes the two categories of Japanese students who study abroad and offers insights on how they differ from other foreign students around the world.

Listen in, and then add your thoughts and ideas to the comments section on this page.

Ray

Competing for Gen-Y Talent in Japan

Ray Ferreira — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:31:39 +0000

With around $5 trillion in GDP, Japan ranks as the world’s second largest economy. Despite this highly visible position in global commerce, market research tells us that Japanese professionals, especially highly qualified young Gen-Y professionals, prefer to explore Japanese employers over multinational companies.

In this podcast I talk with Jason Ayers, a seasoned executive recruiter and founder of Sector Five, an executive search firm that serves clients in Japan, China and Korea. Joining our conversation is employer branding research professional (and colleague) Eijiro Kawada, who has had experience both as a student and as a communications professional in Japan and the United States.

Listen to this podcast to hear some of Jason’s and Eijiro’s ideas for helping multinational companies find a competitive position in attracting and recruiting young Japanese talent. Then add your thoughts and ideas to the comments section on this page.

Ray

The Race for Millennial Talent in China

Ray Ferreira — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:55:43 +0000

In most parts of the world our current economic state will be remembered as “hard times.” In China, however, the perspective is likely to be very different. With an economy still growing at 8.9%… and in an age of intellectual capital… global businesses are scrambling to capture their stake of a talent pool that is nearly a billion people deep.

In this podcast I talk with two experts about the emerging population of young Chinese professionals… Gen-Y authority Alexandra Levit, a syndicated workplace columnist and author of Millennial Tweet:140 Byte-Sized Ideas for Managing the Millennials, helps us assess how the Chinese Gen-Y candidate compares to the global Gen-Y model… And veteran university recruiting leader Nancy Dilthey talks with us about finding our way through the recruiting-process chaos that we find inside China today.

Listen to our podcast and join the conversation by posting your comments on this page.

Ray

PS: Follow us on Twitter @TheUSpace.

Optimizing Face-to-Face Student Interactions

Ray Ferreira — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:44:53 +0000

We all recognize that it’s the face-to-face interactions with student candidates that are truly the most valuable part of our campus recruiting activities.

Properly preparing our extended recruiting teams to make important on-the-fly assessments with students can make or break the results we work so hard to achieve.

In this podcast I talk with Dr. Michael Kannisto, a frequent contributor on ERE.net (the Electronic Recruiter Exchange) and Director of Staffing, University Relations, and Employment Branding with BASF, about how to optimize candidate assessment during this powerful point of contact.

Please listen in on our discussion, and then share your thoughts and insights with us by posting a comment.

Ray

Courting the Elusive Gen-Y Audience

Ray Ferreira — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:38:58 +0000

Even in a down economy, capturing the attention of today’s emerging university talent feels more difficult than ever before. We know there’s more noise in the university recruitment marketspace. We also know that media channels have been turned upside down by emerging technology. Still, it seems the Gen-Y audience wants to be reached in a totally new context.

We’ve invited Gen-Y expert Lindsey Pollak back to help us get to the root of these challenges. Lindsey is a noted author and speaker on Gen-Y topics. Her book “Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World” is published by Harper Collins. Lindsey also runs a career advice blog for young professionals called “The Lindsey Pollak Career Blog.”

This 7-minute podcast may change the way you attract emerging university talent. Please listen in and extend our conversation by posting your comments here.

Ray

PS: Follow us on Twitter @TheUSpace.

When you get to campus this fall, will students REALLY know who you are?

Ray Ferreira — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:50:20 +0000

Has this happened to you? You feel like you’ve done everything to promote a Campus Information Session for weeks in advance. When it’s event time you’re explaining to your high-level guest presenter that “sometimes only a few students can make it to an event.”

The problem may not be your event promotion. And NO, you should not back down from tapping great executive speakers from within your organization to help attract top students toward your company’s career opportunities.

Sometimes recruiters — the people who are paid to be able to tell anyone, at any time, everything they need to know about working for a company — may not recognize that many students, especially undergrads, have not yet “discovered” their company and its career potential.

As much as we may think our company or its branded products have saturated the consciousness of their respective target markets, that’s not always true for employment candidates. In fact, unless you have a compelling employer brand AND help candidates see people working within your walls, the idea of employment with your firm may NEVER enter the minds of some of your best prospective candidates.

If the name of your company is hidden behind a collection of killer brand names, the situation may be even worse. Candidates probably don’t realize that “International Soy Products, Inc.” is the same company behind the stylish shampoo they’ve used for years. Or, they may fail to recognize that your company’s diversification takes it deep into an industry that excites them.

What to do???

Conduct surveys among students on campus—or among interns, co-ops, and graduates whom you’ve recently hired. Find out what they thought of your company BEFORE they really knew you. Ask them if they had ever thought of WORKING for your company.
Access existing research from resources such as the WetFeet/Universum Employer Rankings, which can help you get a handle on which companies candidates think are hot tickets during the season of “Corporate Information Sessions.”
Find a knowledgeable firm that can help you develop a strategic plan around employer name recognition on campus.

It’s not too late to take action!

Ray

PS: Follow us on Twitter @TheUSpace.

Making the Right Impression with Students

Ray Ferreira — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:58:17 +0000

It’s late August and thousands of corporate university recruiting teams are preparing to hit the road in search of the top emerging talent from this year’s graduating classes.

Ensuring that your teams ALWAYS make the right impression with students can be a big challenge. Even when etiquette blunders are a rare occurrence, they can have a devastating impact on your employer brand equity among candidates.

In this podcast, I chat with Susan Fitter Sloane, founder of Global Manners and an expert in lifestyle, manners, and interpersonal skills. Susan holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology, is credentialed in etiquette and international protocol, and teaches interpersonal relations at the university level.

Listen in as Susan and I talk about some of the obvious blunders as well as some of the more subtle missteps that we’ve seen from student feedback surveys.

After that, please share some of the obvious and not-so-obvious interpersonal challenges that you’ve encountered by adding comments to this blog post.

We look forward to your comments.

Ray

PS: Follow us on Twitter @TheUSpace.