Making the Right Impression with Students
Listen Now:
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.
August 17th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Gen Y respects transparency, great work, and culture. I don’t think companies get this. Every company is doing the same boring stuff and then they sit their and wonder why innovative students go to work for startups and never walk into the doors of their career center. College recruiting needs to wake up - most of it’s practices are ancient and a waste of resources.
Companies need to engage students around meaningful work - when this happens (and it will eventually), companies will see a rush of interest from student talent.
August 25th, 2009 at 3:21 am
It’s a great podcast and a useful subject for companies now planning their on-campus activities. Eleni Antoniou, Employer Relations Manager at City University London, also gives some interesting advice to employers on how they can best prepare themselves for a career fair or recruitment day. Feel free to read here seven tips for on-campus presence at http://www.employerbrandingtoday.com/uk/?p=280
August 25th, 2009 at 7:53 am
@Ted, you’re point here is BIG issue. Not only has the world of formal (marketing) communication changed… the world of interpersonal communication is very different today than it was ten years ago. While some experienced recruiters, or executive advocates, are keeping up with new customs and patterns, many are not.
Love the 400+ internship profiles at http://groupereye.com/profiles.php.
August 25th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
@Christopher, Eleni’s seven points are a great resource for job fairs for students. Notice that most of the point center on interpersonal skills rather than on content presented. So often we see people underestimate the intense value contained within the face-to-face interaction. By far, these interactions are where most of the communicaiton takes place.
Thanks for the additional resource!
August 31st, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Great website and podcasts! Excellent tips on improving the effectiveness and credibility of corporate recruiting on campus. Your discussion also highlights some the structural and organizational challenges confronted by college relations departments. Often times, campus teams are comprised of management and functional representatives who receive only MINOR recruitment preparation. Hence, the inappropriate messages and/or circumstances that could undermine an organization’s brand on campus. Part of any solution should incorporate on-going on-campus recruitment training (quarterly, semi-monthly, etc.) that increases knowledge on topics and trends such as these. Thanks again!
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:28 pm
@Miguel…
Your dead on. Real preparation and ongoing support are critical (beyond just the basics).
Enjoyed your site as well (http://www.admentis.com).
Thanks!