The Employer "Short" List
What are the most effective ways to build a list of employers who are likely to hire your graduates?
It is always great when you can get an employer to come tour your campus. You can showoff your great labs, students and instructors. They can see first hand what you are doing there. When they spend the time to come and meet you on campus, they are truly interested. It's great when you can get them to do interviews on campus as well.
I love your idea on reaching out to the Alumni Associate. You can find a lot of students/graduates that want to give back to the school and want to help others. They can help speak at workshops, recruit for employees and be a great way to recruit for potential students.
The first thing that comes to my mind is networking. Cold call employers and visit employers. Share with them your services that you provide at a free cost to them. Bring the resumes with you and go from there. It's all about working with the right people and finding the right matches for your students and for your department. You have to get to know the employers and find out what is important to them and then match the right person for them. Once you get a taste of success with that employer then you have the start of a good relationship and you can continue to stay in touch. Then when the graduates hopefully continue to be successful there, they will continue to call you back with job openings.
contacting by email fax internet , graduates,alumni, open communication with current employers and Director should be commnicating with employers to inform about any activities for student and more.. once you build a good relationship with diffent employer, your carrer service department will more effectively on placing and more
The most effective ways to build a list of employers who are likely to hire our graduates is to keep in contact with these employers. The field that my school specializes in is an extremely small, close contected community. Keeping good relationships with these employers will help know who is hiring and will also help us to become the go to place for those employers to hire our graduates. Certain places in this field do not always post jobs either so by having a close relationship with them, the hiring team may contact us to see if we have suitable graduates for the job before they even post the job to others. Monitoring job postings will also help with this as well being that some places are extremely far away. Students do not always want to stay in the same region where our school is located so broadening our search for places who are hiring will help give a variety of jobs to apply to for our graduates and help them to also be where they would like to be.
While I am just beginning to learn about the benefits of a Placement Department, what I have learned (both from this forum & working with students over the course of many years), it's all about relationships. Building them, nurturing them and maintaining them.
Our placement team in comprised of instructors from each program who have worked in the field that they teach. This is a great starting point because they already have a network of people that could employ the students. We also hold advisory meeting twice a year and the goal is to get new members every time. This helps expand on our employer pool. We also regular invite employers to our campus for tours and presentations so that they can see first hand the students and equipment. All of this is in addition to regular visits to local companies.
I am a firm believer of using the resources you have at hand. This being said I am constantly in contact with teachers. They are the ones who have worked in the field and in my situation they have also worked in the area. They are constantly getting me in contact with employers in the area. They help build that relation so we can better help our students.
I also am an active member of the Chamber of Commerce. Here I meet with hundreds of potential employers who might be interested in hiring our grads. The Chamber also puts out a directory of businesses associated with them so it is easy to look through and pick out those who might want to hire our grads.
What are the most effective ways to build a list of employers who are likely to hire your graduates?
I think the most effective ways to build a list of employers who are likely to hire your graduates, is to:
1. Be involved with the industry that will potentially hire your graduates
2. Host seminars and ask the potential employers to be guest speakers
3. Keep abreast of the skills the potential employers are seeking in candidates
4. Ask potential employers to come and critique your curriculum
5. Host job fairs that have been properly advertised to attract the types of candidate potential employers want to hire
6. Ask for feedback from the employer and student
7. If a change is needed, don't hesitate to implement the change and ask for feedback
8. Ask employers if you can add them to a list, once they have hired your graduates.
9. Ask the employer what makes that graduate standout above graduates of other schools.
10. Build a list that is honest and attractive to your potential students.
These are just a few things that I think will build a sold list of employers for graduates as well as prospective enrollment
1) Employers who have previously hired our graduates, 2) asking advisory board members for other employers (possibly their competitors) that hire entry-level employees, 3) connect with staffing agencies that hire for that industry, 4) an internet search of open entry level positions, and, 5) ask your instructors!
Martha,
Community outreach is a daily job.
Dr. Susan Schulz
Martha,
It is amazing how easy it is to find job openings when a school stays in touch with employers. It does take getting permission from grads to contact their places of work. It takes having a school representative contact all other employers to ask about job openings and training needed.
Dr. Susan Schulz
the most effective way is to search in the community
We are using the community needs to search for employment for our students
Viola,
We also agree that externships can provide the road to employment and can function as an extended interview. That means that both the student and the externship site have to be prepared and have the same expectations. Students must be highly trained to deal with most expectations at the worksite. The externship requirements have to be clear and measurable. Externship supervisors need a manual to know how to consistently manage and evaluate the process. It's great to participate in community events and visit employers. We feel it is vital that each school ask employers how work-ready their grads are and add training where it might be missing. Thanks, Susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
Several of the companies who take on our externs tend to also be companies that are on the "short" list. Our goal with externships is to find sites where there is hiring potential. We are fortunate that the we have so many potential employers as the school has matched the programs we offer to what our city has to offer for employment.
I also find that attending events and being involved with the community through the various Chambers of Commerce is very helpful in building relationships with potential employers.
Amanda,
It sounds like you are overcoming many challenges that surround hiring people with challenges. You are educating employers about the benefits of hiring people with disabilities. You are training your grads to be work ready. You are communicating with employers to learn exactly what they need and possibly training they will need in the future. It sounds like you have a great community outreach program that benefits employers, your school, graduates, and the entire community. Thanks Susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
Since our student population have varying disabilities, it is important for our program to create relationships in many different fields and to hold tightly onto those relationships. Although our Job Developers do approach some businesses cold calling style, we have many companies that we work very closely with because they hire our students at their various locations throughout the tri-county area. We have donors that also hire our students at their sites, further showing their investment in our program.
Our department heads also attend various networking events in their fields offered by professional groups in the area.
We recently held an event to recognize and thank the companies that employ and intern our program. We also invited potential companies to interact with our current ones to see what we have to offer.
Jennie,
Staying in touch with employees is so great and important for success, in our opinion. It is a key to getting good information, It is dependent on how information is obtained. Your survey sounds great. We find that to get results surveys may have to be short, easy to take, and allow for comments. We also find that telephone and in person surveys garner a lot of unexpected information. The fact is that employers are your customers and have to be treated that way. Thanks, Susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
