Late October is always a fun time of year, between Halloween, colorful landscapes and the World Series. And even though the Red Sox are busy making plans for the upcoming winter instead of facing the Phillies in the ultimate contest (not that I’m bitter), it’s been a blast watching the fall classic unfold – especially this year, with the election, the economy and everything else clamoring for our attention. Baseball is just what the doctor ordered! Rain, not so much. But I digress.

On that note, recruiting – like baseball – has its own “power hitters,” and we’ve been taking a close look at select industry verticals and how the players are stacking up with Gen Y. Last month, we drilled down into oil and gas companies. This week, employers in the technology industry are on deck – specifically those companies that are actively seeking entry-level talent through Experience.

Looking at technology employers, specifically focusing on entry-level opportunity applications, five companies in particular – Dell, Motorola, Cisco, Microsoft and Intel – are above average and at the top with their success with apply rates on Experience.com. The technology industry on a whole is batting with nine applies for every job found through search results.

Even with the cold economic climate, technology is hot. As independent surveys indicate and our own data validate, tech-minded job seekers must take notice that employers in this space are hiring. Case in point: last week I dissected entry-level placements in 2008, and the technology industry scored a close third in the number of jobs started by recent graduates. In “The Job Function Search Spectrum,” we found that the IT/systems job function was popular in job searches. Even my “Hot Cities” post identified San Francisco and its pool of technology companies as top post-graduation destination for young talent.

On the flip side, to attract major league entry-level candidates, technology industry employers need to move beyond only offering compensation packages. Like a good sports franchise reaching out to top athletes, recruiters will be successful when they meet Gen Y on their terms. And it’s not that hard – consider using internships as extended interviews, facilitating job shadowing and/or information interviews, leveraging  your commitment (or embracing a commitment!) to “being green” and emphasizing other work/life benefits such working from home, volunteering for social causes, etc.

Tags: entry-level hiring, job applications, job search, technology industry, technology majors

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Industry Trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.