The NFL Draft Is Over. Now the Important College Employee Draft Begins!

By RecruiterGuy | May 5, 2020

Purpose of a Draft

College Talent Attraction

Activity at College Career Fairs

The NFL Draft brings excitement to all following the sport – and is a signpost for the much larger and more exciting beginning of the College to Employee Draft. Will your company attract the Top Talent for your business? This is your “opportunity to draft the best and the brightest students to your business when you can afford them.” Stuart Taylor, a co-founder of Latitude Communications gave me this quote on our recruiting trip to Rice University for Latitude Communications in 2000. I have passed it on to other companies since then.

Is your company looking to the future? Do you practice succession planning?

Purpose of a Draft

Think about the NFL Draft. What is its purpose? Infuse the Team with new, younger talent. Players who are enthusiastic! Players who know the can play the game they love. Of course, typically teams will keep players who have already demonstrated their skills and consistently produce positive impacts on and off the field.

What does your company look like? Do you have a balance of younger staff with more experienced talent to mentor your younger staff? Do you employ engaged employees? How will the infusion of younger, engaged staff positively impact your organization?

College Talent Attraction

Of course, these new graduates can Learn! They spent the last 16 or more years learning how to learn; and more recently, how to research for new answers.

Obviously, there are a few cautions. They are fresh from College. There may be some business topics discussed during Onboarding that will benefit their employment experience.

Activity at College Career Fairs

Hopefully if your company is interested in College Talent Attraction, you have begun on campus recruiting. The most common activities are the Fall and February Career Fairs. I have participated in those Career Fairs many times for my clients.

My practice is to get to the hall as early as possible and set up my booth. Then I wander through the booths to see my competition for students. In another post, I will tell you how I know my competition. I also make note of their industries.

I happily welcome students into my booth and engage them in conversation to learn what type of position interests them. If my client has the same interests, I will accept their resume and nicely recruit them. If not, based on my tour of the hall, I will suggest other companies who may offer the positions they seek.

Amazingly, the representatives from many companies choose to catch up on email and “work” during the Career Fair instead of focusing on the passing students. You should see the disappointed looks on the passing students’ faces. Disappointing lack of situational awareness – and opportunity. If their Executives witnessed this lack of engagement, I imagine there may be a conversation in the booth.

Internships and co-ops are excellent ways to try before you buy – make offers to graduating college students. Additionally, you should be selling your company with interesting projects while they are contributing during the breaks between semesters or blocks.

Next week, we will discuss my practice to attract the Best and the Brightest to my clients.

Feel free to contact me directly if you are interested in learning more.

Bill Humbert is available for Speaking, Talent Attraction Consulting, and Training contracts.

RecruiterGuy@msn.com 435-714-4425 https://www.espeakers.com/marketplace/speaker/profile/23767/Bill-Humbert

USA 01-435-714-4425 RecruiterGuy@msn.com

Content is licensed CC BY-ND (Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0) The right to reprint is hereby granted, if the copyright notice and contact information remain with the article.