Employers often ask, “How can we increase our presence on campus or help students learn about our company or brand?” Here are some tips on new trends in recruitment and how to make the most of employer hiring initiatives at Lehigh University.
Many years ago, career services offices across the country were considered a placement service. But more recently, Career Centers have evolved to focus on career exploration and teaching career prep. The Center for Career & Professional Development’s name change in 2015 is a perfect example of how career centers have evolved away from a “service” and to career education model. Our office intentionally provides resources and programs as a way to help students prepare for life after graduation. We don’t want students to just receive their first job after graduation, we want them to have skills that will allow them to pursue successful careers during their lifetime. This includes skills to make career transitions, interview for new or advanced positions, expand professional networks and be able to update and strengthen resumes. So when you consider how the Career Center approaches career education, its also becomes important recruiters join our efforts, as a way for companies to reach a larger audience across campus and hire talent that is thoughtful and prepared for a career within their organization.
Design Content for the Career Center’s Social media
In an effort to communicate with students, the Career Center uses social media to promote our programs, employer visits, and career events. We encourage you to share information there as well but it must be inline with the messaging and formats that we use. We are specifically focused on Instagram, but also have facebook and twitter.
It must be ready to share (without edits, resizing, or format changes)
Allow 2-5 business days to get information posted
Share png files not PDFs
Don’t make it too wordy or detailed
Use creative graphics or images
Be creative with your content. Shy away from standard “We’re Hiring” posts.
Use our hashtag #hirelehigh
Examples:
Top 5 reasons it's fun to work for your company
Images of alum on the job
Feature an intern
Share pictures from a company community service day
Take pictures of recruiters from a Lehigh Career Expo or campus event
Include a unique detail or interesting fun fact about your organization
Your welcome to include a short image description to accompany the image. When possible make your messages personal to Lehigh and share additional links or contact information for students to get more info about your organization or open positions. Remember to follow the rules dictated by the social media platform. If the content has too many characters for twitter, we can’t post. If the images aren’t sized for instagram, it won’t display well. Check out this article to help your messages be social media ready.
Contribute to Career Education, Not Just Recruitment
We love our employers who hire and interview on campus but there are lots of additional ways employers can have a presence on campus. We host a wide variety of workshops, career meetups, career skills sessions, and Executive in Residence days on campus. We love to bring employer co-hosts or industry professionals together with students as a way to teach a specific career topic (i.e. resumes, LinkedIn, interviewing, etc.). Come partner with us to teach a career skill, and also use the opportunity and audience to share information about your company and open positions.
Brian Case, Corporate Talent Manager for PPL, has been on campus several times. The Career Expo Prep workshops (renamed Expo Prep Express) typically draw 80-200 students each fall semester and as a recruiter who attends many career fairs, he has plenty of advice on the topic. “PPL values being a strong employer partner with Lehigh University. Any opportunity to be on campus is a way to familiarize students with our PPL employment brand. Resume reviews, mock-interviews, guest lectures, panel discussions, club and organization meetings, real world projects, company facility tours, and on-campus career fairs are just a number of ways we continue to be a strong employer partner interacting with students, faculty and career & professional development staff. Helping with the Career Expo Prep workshops are particularly memorable being in front of an auditorium of a few hundred eager students. Students always value insight directly from the employer perspective and it is very rewarding to assist them in any way possible. Our true partnership has resulted in many internship and full-time employment opportunities. Sharing that story happens best through a strong partnership and face-to-face interactions. We are pleased to be a collaborative employer partner of Lehigh University and value our relationship.”
Liza Blank, Human Resource Manager for Cintas, makes an effort to be involved with career workshops on campus. She explained “I have had the opportunity to co-present multiple times on effective interview skills with Career Center staff. The students attend these workshops in a classroom, which I find more personable and comfortable than the traditional recruiting environments. Assisting with career education is a great way to increase my company’s brand awareness on Lehigh’s campus. Even if a student is not interested in entering into my company’s field, they will likely spread the word if they had a positive experience. The students also have the opportunity to see that we, as a company, are invested in training and development, which is one of the most important factors that students consider while seeking employment out of college.”
If you have an interest in presenting on a career topic, please let us know! We plan our events early, so share your areas of expertise and availability at least a semester in advance. We can use zoom meetings for those that can’t physically be on campus and we are happy to brainstorm with you about the best way to connect your industry or company to career education plans.
Incorporate Alum in campus visits
Students love to connect with Lehigh alum! If you plan to come to campus, invite Lehigh alum to join you. This is a powerful way for students to see how a Lehigh education can be applied to your company and often students feel less pressure about approaching an alum vs a recruiter. Let a Lehigh alum tell the story for you including their own path to your organization.
Recently two Lehigh alum who work for Olympus came to campus as part of an event that teaches students about rotational programs to talk about their careers and opportunities for students. Lisa Brogan, Program Manager for University Recruiting, shared “We value the opportunity to partner with Lehigh on multiple programs and events throughout the academic year. Participating in networking at the Rotational Career Meetup gives us the opportunity to connect with students across disciplines. The two-way conversation allows Olympus to increase our brand recognition while also staying in tune with the pulse of what students are looking for and how we can make our programs more attractive to top talent.”
Rachel Sholder, a BS Math and MS Statistics alum, also hosted an Executive in Residence day on campus to talk about her position as a Parametric Analyst for NASA. She meet 1-on-1 with students in the morning and co-hosted walk in hours during Career Lab in the afternoon. Not only did she get a chance to mentor students but she also shared details on how to apply with her employer for jobs and leadership programs.
Our growing extern program is also a great way to increase student awareness of your company. Lehigh alum are encouraged to invite students for a day of shadowing during winter break, as a way to expose them to the work style, tasks, clients, projects and environment at your company. Refer your Lehigh alumni employees to Lehigh Connects, our mentor community that also organizes the Externship process.
Rethink your “Info Session”
Employers including EY, PwC, Goldman Sachs and Facebook have recently been to Lehigh’s campus to meet with students and reshaped the conversation and formal tone of their event by hosting a “coffee chat”. Just like the name implies, it encouraged small group conversations and more casual interactions between the recruiters and students. Free coffee was provided and resumes were shared.
Competition is also a great incentive, as evidenced by the great turn out for Google games at Lehigh. The program invited students to compete by showing off their coding skills, winning a chance to interview with the company.
Guest Post to the Career blog: Hirelehigh.com
The Hire Lehigh blog is another way we provide career education information to students. We try to have new posts up weekly, written by Career Center staff as well as partners from across campus who post as Guest Writers. We also love to include employer advice here, written by experts in their field that include viewpoints from recruiters and hiring managers like this example from Klover.
This is a great way to contribute to career education while also promoting your company or organization.
Invest in Giveaways That Students Want
Giveaways at the Career Expo or during on campus interviews are a nice way to hand out swag to students that also puts your brand on campus. According to Lehigh students here are a few favorites and we repeatedly heard that useful or practical things were the most wanted items.
Pop sockets
Stick on wallets
Drawstring bags
Pens - high end or unique designs
Stickers
Water bottles
(And my personal favorite was custom socks in colorful designs that include company name and come in sizes for men and women)
If you want to partner with us for career education or social media marketing reach out to Andrea Reger at ags316@lehigh.edu.