Use Career Exploration Events to Build Your Brand On-Campus

Use Career Exploration Events to Build Your Brand On-Campus was originally published on College Recruiter.

Virtually every organization that recruits college students for internships or recent graduates for entry level jobs and other career opportunities has the same problem: students either don’t know what your organization does or they don’t know what opportunities your organization offers. Either way, you’ve got a branding problem. Some tried and true methods of building brand on-campus are to recruit on-campus year in and year out, hosting information events in conjunction with your on-campus interviews, and creating and enhancing your long-term relationships with the staff and faculty.
Another great way of building brand that isn’t so tried and true is to participate in career exploration programs through the college career service offices. At Kennesaw State University in Georgia, for example, the career service office brings in professionals from a variety of fields and industries to talk with students about their careers. The speakers typically aren’t recruiters. Instead, they’re recent graduates, line managers, and others who speak from first hand experience. So if your organization is struggling to recruit electrical engineers, you’d send in a recent graduate from your electrical engineering program or perhaps a manager in that department.

Each session typically focuses on a broad field such as “Career Conversations: So You Want to Work in Electrical Engineering” or “Career Conversations With Electrical Engineering Firms.” Sometimes there is one employer guest and sometimes there is a panel. Each guest takes five to 10 minutes to describe their organization, the positions they offer, and what a typical day for the guest is like so the students can better understand what your firm does and what opportunities it has to offer. Branding. Then the students begin asking questions and there are typically many of them. The guests each have an opportunity to answer the questions and that further illuminates what their organizations do and what opportunities they have to offer. More branding.
At Kennesaw State, the career exploration events are typically attended by dozens of highly targeted students. An event with a Central Intelligence Agency employee was attended by approximately 80 students.

By College Recruiter
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