I am so pleased to be hosting an upcoming webinar called “Engage Gen Y with Social Media” with my two co-presenters Kim Allenbach from Verizon Wireless and Carrie Dulay from Accenture.

We’re all been adding social media strategies to our recruiting practices to brand, attract and interact with Gen Y. Below are details of the webinar, I hope you can join us!

Webinar Invite

In 2010, those who set a clear social media strategy and leverage new channels effectively will build robust talent pipelines for their organizations.

On Thursday, November 19th at 1:00pm – 2:00pm EST, Experience’s Janet Sun will host a live, no-cost webinar on social media recruiting trends in the Gen Y space. Kim Allenbach from Verizon Wireless and Carrie Dulay from Accenture will share how they are using social media today to recruit, brand and maintain relationships with college students and young alumni.

Attend and learn…

• Key research and trends covering Gen Y and social media
• How best-in-class companies leverage Web 2.0
• Opportunities social media offers to innovative employers
• How to manage risks, downsides and gotchas
• And much more

Spots are limited – register today at socialmedia.experience.com

Raytheon has jumped full bore into social media this year with two Twitter accounts @Raytheon_Jobs (experienced hiring) and @RTNCollegeJobs (college hiring).

This innovative initiative was spearheaded by Jeff Goodman, Talent Acquisition Manager at Raytheon. With over 2,000 followers, they are now one of the leading companies using Twitter to drive interested candidates directly to their employment web site. Their goal is to brand Raytheon and to engage candidates in conversations and then leverage those conversations into applications.

Having posted 600+ jobs, they are able to track conversions off of Twitter - over 23,000 people have gone from Twitter to directly to a job. Very impressive!

Raytheon offers this advice to other recruiters looking to jumpstart social media in their organizations:

• Expect that this will take a fair amount of effort and it will take time to see results
• Don’t think about social media in traditional terms - you will need to keep it up and offer new content often
• Try to go for a one company approach to focus your audience building
• Get buy in from all areas of your company so no one is surprised and all areas can benefit from a consolidated approach

If you’re using social media to attract talent, please email me. We’d love to highlight your experiences so we can all keep moving up the learning curve!

In the Gen Y space, social media recruiting (aka facebook, twitter etc) comes up in just about every conversation we have with recruiters these days. It seems everyone, I mean everyone, is jumping on the bandwagon.

As a new media company that strives to connect employers with Gen Y talent using innovative methods, we just had to find out for ourselves.

For starters, we polled our audience and found out that most Gen Y still rely on school resources, job boards and company web sites to find out about open positions (our survey runs until mid-Oct so these results are preliminary; stay tuned!) .

If that’s the case, then why all the hubbub about social media and recruitment?

One aspect that we discovered is that social media, in this case Twitter, is good for maintaining relationships. We used our @hiringbeat Twitter feed. With ~250 followers and approximately one tweet per day, we are getting as many as 20 clicks on some tweets. That’s equivalent to an 8% click rate, which is pretty good. Average email marketing open rates hover around 13% (according to Mailermailer) and click rates are a fraction of that (say 13% open an email and 10% click, that is equal to a 1.3% click rate).

What we also seeing is that our tweets, if they are good, are being retweeted by our followers, further extending our reach, touching people who may have never heard of us before.

So if you get your Twitter following up to 1000, then each time you tweet you could have hundred people or so viewing your jobs and finding about your events - a great way to maintain relationships with candidates!

To learn more about Gen Y using social media, download our whitepaper.

“Gen F.” Have you heard of or seen this term? A colleague recently shared an insightful post from Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 blog on WSJ.com, The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500, which spells out how the Facebook Generation – a.k.a. Generation F – will ultimately change the face of the workplace. Companies that don’t get it, Hamel argues, will miss out on attracting the best and brightest and may be setting themselves up for a harsh reality if the Gen F contingent is missing.

Gen F, Gen Y, the Net Kids, Millennials. Whatever you call them, the next generation workforce will comprise half of employers’ headcount budgets within the next 10 years. And if you’ve been reading my last few Talent Insights posts, you’ve also gotten the (not so subtle) sense that these young professionals thrive on social media and new technology. Add these considerations together, and I think Hamel pretty much hits the nail on the head.

Last month, more than 250 college students and young grads took our Web 2.0 Technologies Survey and told us some pretty telling things. The survey focused on collaborative and community-based online media – social and professional networking sites, widgets and gadgets, wikis, blogs, podcasts, video, etc. – and their role in the workplace.

Nearly all respondents, at 94%, reported using social networking sites. Yet when it comes to other new technologies, the largest numbers of Gen Y spend only an hour or less each week on sites liked LinkedIn, blogs and micro-blogs (think Twitter) and video chat apps like Skype. Interestingly, 20% of respondents said they use new media to make new business contacts or learn about career opportunities.

Factor in work and the numbers get more compelling, and employers especially should take note. Forty-two percent of Gen Y told us they use or plan to use social networks at work. A substantial 90% of this same group believes Web 2.0 technologies will make them more or just as productive at work, and nearly the same number – 82% – said they’d be happy to coach their older counterparts on new media if the training was needed. (Incidentally, our Facebook Fan Page members told us just as much, too.)

With cost control being top-of-mind for just about all of us, and given the tendencies of the Facebook Generation, employers have an opportunity to potentially boost productivity – and save money – by setting Web 2.0 and social media standards at the workplace. At Experience, for example, we all rely on Skype for IM and video conferencing. Personally it saves me time when I can just fire off a quick question to a coworker who resides two floors below me. Not that IM is cutting-edge revolutionary, but you get the point: simple measures add up and make a difference.

After looking at industries that had the most jobs a few weeks ago, I wanted to know how certain industries stacked up in terms of applicant preference and interest. So I polled 6700+ Gen Y and asked how 9 industries compared in terms of overall appeal. Why these nine? I wanted to present industries that hired a wide spectrum of students and grads (healthcare and education tend to hire for specific skills sets and certifications).

As expected, technology and new media topped the list with 40% or more citing these industries as most attractive. Interestingly, liberal arts majors were just as interested in these industries as business and engineering majors, which signals the broad appeal of these types of companies.

I attribute their interest to the engagement that Gen Y has had with web 2.0 and social media and the fact that tech firms haven’t been mired in the recent Wall Street bank collapses and mortgage housing crisis that we have all been watching for the past 6+ months. I expect that these firms will have the “pick of the litter” this year in terms of talent.

On the other end of the spectrum are the least attractive industries - insurance and manufacturing. Two older industries with perceived slower growth and therefore less opportunity for Gen Y. The survey data clearly suggests that companies at the bottom of the list have a brand perception issue that they need to combat, because there are fast growing, exciting opportunities to be found in these sectors.

I can’t help but think that students and recent grads are overlooking companies in these areas simply because of an overall industry perception issue, rather than what one prospective firm can offer. A perfect example of this is GEICO, the fastest growing auto insurer in the nation who continues to take market share and win awards for best customer service. And I know for a fact that they continue to hire all types of majors to grow their business. Or if you look at the Inc. 500/5000, there are 400 manufacturing companies that make the list as the fastest growing private companies in America.

Of course, all companies need to put their best foot forward when recruiting, visiting campus etc. The challenge that these less attractive companies face is finding the right aspects of their business and company culture that appeal to Gen Y (stability, training, CEO that started at the bottom rung) that allows them to compete effectively with those in the top industries.

With company layoffs announcements in the news every day, I decided to take a closer look into our jobs database, which at any time has around 200k postings, to see what industries are still hiring.  Not surprisingly, there are healthcare jobs to be found - over 30k across the U.S. Right after healthcare is engineering, finance/banking, education and technology. Given how hard the Wall Street finance sector has been hit, one might not expect to see finance/banking ranking third, but smaller banks, insurance companies and some financial services companies are still looking for entry-level talent.  Education is another bright spot with K-12 and universities looking for teachers, instructors and trainers.

I also compared industries by their relative competitiveness. The finance/banking sector, one area significantly impacted by bankruptcies and rescue mergers, has the highest applies per job, indicating many candidates chasing the positions that exist. On the other hand, healthcare with plenty of jobs is the least competitive, highlighting that there is still a tight labor market in that sector.

What we won’t know for a while is how President Obama’s stimulus package will impact certain industries (education, energy, healthcare etc.) and spur job growth. In the meantime, know that some of the industries that Gen Y is interested in are the same ones that are still hiring.

On a related note, we recently published a whitepaper entitled “Y Gen Y: Maintaining Access to Top Talent” to inform employers about the importance of the Gen Y generation to the future success of their business. Even in a downturn, it really does pay to think about the long-term. Watch the video, download the tips and share your advice with other employers.

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.

Did you hear? In November we’ll be voting for a new President of the United States. And of all the election-related things we’re hearing about in the news on a daily basis, we’re constantly barraged with “oil this” and “gas that.” Seriously, I don’t think one day goes by without hearing about something related to energy. Just this morning I read that House Democrats have embraced a plan to allow for more offshore drilling. It’s a significant issue!

But what does all of this mean for employers in the energy arena?

It’s no secret that oil and gas companies are making lots of money. They’re also hiring lots of entry-level talent, especially in the back-to-school timeframe. Over the past few years we’ve even found that the key industry players have started their recruiting processes earlier and earlier in the fall season, as hiring for geoscience majors has become extremely competitive. We’ve also found that many of these companies have augmented their programs to include Gen Y-friendly hiring and retention initiatives. But are their programs working?

It certainly seems so. The top five oil and gas companies in the Experience Network had an average of 13 applies per job with a 5 percent conversion rate (from job search results to apply). And no surprise – the largest of the bunch, ExxonMobil, led the pack in search activity. The second runner up, ConocoPhillips, interestingly is the smallest company in our list in terms of annual revenue. Following ConocoPhillips in the Gen Y search activity rankings are Chevron, BP and Royal Dutch Shell, respectively.

Whether they’re seeking drilling engineers, equipment operators, field office managers, electronic technicians or any number of specific entry-level positions, oil and gas companies – to remain competitive and relevant in the eyes of candidates – must consider more than the compensation package and embrace innovative tactics to attract and retain Gen Y talent. These initiatives can include using internships as extended interviews, providing clear career growth paths (whether managerial or technical) and leveraging green initiatives and other socially-focused programs.

On an interesting and related side note, late last year Experience polled Gen Y job seekers on issues related to the 2008 elections. In the survey, we found that candidates put more emphasis on social issues than their worries about obtaining a full-time job. Of the issues identified, energy consumption was a top concern.