I promised in an earlier post to tell you about my June traveling roadshow- HCI, MonsterTrak and Monster MediaWorks teamed up to go on a three city tour across our great country with pitstops in Chicago, LA and New York City.  Along the way, we showcased some great information about recruiting young people on campus, and met some terrific recruiters.

Our first stop was Chicago, and the event was held at the University Club of Chicago.  I love these old clubs- the decor of the space was so collegial and last-century.  (I’ll include some pictures that I took along the way here as well.)  For those of you that haven’t been to an HCI Innovation Tour- it’s a great experience.  Typically these are free, breakfast, networking and information events.  In this tour, we decided to feature the co-authors of Recruit or Die, Chris Resto and Ian Ybarra.  Chris was the keynote speaker in Chicago.

I’ve already written a bit about Recruit or Die here.  After Chris’ keynote, we had a panel session with Chris, Ian, and Carrie Dacey from Accenture.  We started out the panel discussion with my proposition of the following main challenges facing employers looking to recruit college grads.

The Challenges…

• Finding the right young talent
• Exponential growth in social media
• Crafting an appealing message
• Delivering the message
• Standing out in a crowd!

If you have suggestions of other challenges I missed, or would like to delete one from the list, feel free to say so in comments.

We ended the day by engaging our panelists in some thought-provoking questions, and the couple that I found the most interesting were:

• Q:What are some examples of innovative ways organizations are using social media? 
• A:From Chris and Ian:  Don’t just use it to use it.  Make sure you already have a great recruitment process in place and that your social media strategy works to elevate one or more aspects of Career, Glamour, Gossip.
• A:From Carrie: I’ll be writing about Accenture’s awesome strategy in the next few days.  They include blogs, Facebook, podcasts and SecondLife, among others.
• Q:How are employers delivering (career opportunity) messages?
• A:From Carrie:  Accenture uses an integrated web-based approach to delivering messages to recruits: Drive candidates to website or dedicated landing page through electronic newsletters, email campaigns, online banner ads, one-on-one conversations, search marketing tactics, campus events and presentations, print ads and on-campus ads, and print collateral.
• A:From Chris and Ian:  Compile case studies of past hires - their background, other companies they could have worked for, how they grew in their roles, options they had later and where they are now.   Post-offer management - multiple contacts at firm, visits to office, extended decision periods, and community building