A typical interaction scene with recruiters and college students in college goes like this: Recruiters come to college and talk to students about the company .The moment the presentation finishes they are mobbed by students with questions about available jobs/internships. Some of the more ‘serious’ students ask questions about the company/ about the presentation, a presentation which usually bores you to death. Everyone present tries to get business cards (the achievement of the networking session for students).
Universities encourage you to network in this painful way to land jobs. Students who attend these presentations unfortunately most times aren’t interested in the company, they just want any job. A recruiter will not get the smartest person interested this way, ever.
Networking is about starting a conversation. A genuine conversation which gets both parties interested. How does the genuinely smart student get through this mob of students and differentiate himself in 30 seconds of personal interaction?
We need to start networking over some tangible platform. Over great work, like a tangible project or a great marketing idea, instead. Saves time for everyone and is much more effective. This way both parties are interested, the recruiter in knowing more about the student and the student in knowing what the recruiter wants for the job.
Just a note to all recruiters: presentations don’t interest us unless you are Google.
Tangible platform? I have approached companies in which I really wanted to work, engineering and energy firms. I researched their current projects, student launch programs, white papers and the like. But most recruiters who turn up for presentation are either HR people, or some college alumnae with 2-3 years experience and most of them turn a blank stare when prodded on these topics.
I managed to get a business card from whomever I have wanted to and I really don’t consider it an achievement. It would be interesting to find out who does.
Many companies, in the present economy, come to presentations and career fairs just to maintain their relations with the universities; most of them don’t even intend to recruit! This whole idea of starting a genuine conversation doesn’t fit the bill unless they really want to recruit. Moreover, most HR people are smart enough to spot the fakers.
Parijat – The system has a lot of flaws. College recruiting teams need to become more engaging and start what you call “genuine conversations.” They will. The smart ones – Google, Facebook, Microsoft do this. Others will follow. We are trying to create a tool which makes it easier to facilitate these conversations (and thus more likely to happen). When students and companies start working together on real projects, it is not just going to create a powerful recruiting tool, it will create ideas. Ideas worth talking about.
Thank you for the comment.