We’ve had the pleasure of enduring temperatures in the 30s all week here in Boston. And there’s no relief in sight! With Jack Frost knocking at the door, I thought I’d take a page from my first Talent Insights post - which I wrote during a time of seasonal transition - and look back at October 2008.

October is historically the busiest month in terms of online recruiting activity - the activity of Gen Y searching for opportunities and accessing career-related resources, and the activity of employers targeting candidates online and on campus for entry-level jobs and internship openings. In Goodbye Summer, Hello Fall: A Look at the Busy Season Ahead, I predicted that October would once again be a very busy month. And now that it’s behind us, let’s take a look at exactly what happened – and consider some recommendations for 2009.

October has been Experience.com’s busiest month so far this year, representing 14% of all page views in the first 10 months of 2008. When combined with September (at 13%), more than a quarter of our page views to date fell in the several weeks that followed my first blog post.

Digging deeper into our October data, we’ve learned that Gen Y accessed career tools and job listings most frequently at the beginning of the week, with Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday leading the pack, representing more than half of all page views on average per week. Respectively, M-T-W garnered 19.0%, 18.2% and 19.4%. Interestingly, candidates on average accessed Experience.com most frequently between 10:00am and 4:00pm in October - a bit earlier in the day from where we were tracking at this time last year.

The end to the fall semester is now a few short weeks away. And as I’ve mentioned before, when students return to campus in January and young professionals get back to work following the holidays, they’ll be recharged and focused on their goals at hand: to either find internships for the summer, land full-time jobs by May and/or use online career resources to help them be successful.

Recruiters that plan to target Gen Y talent in early 2009 have the opportunity to attract an engaged pool of candidates, perhaps more so now than ever before, thanks to all the economic (and competitive) factors all around us. Keeping in mind the lessons from October, I definitely encourage employers to pour through their own traffic reports and consider implementing focused call-to-action messaging and innovative content - including Web 2.0 initiatives such as real-time chat, video integration and more - so that their brand and opportunities resonate with candidates exactly when they’re online.

Wow! What an historic past couple of days we’ve all witnessed. Regardless of your age, affiliation or background, you’ve got to admit that the renewed sense of engagement and excitement within our country’s political system is pretty inspiring.

As expected, Gen Y’s impact on the election was huge. Just take a look at this post-election analysis from MSNBC.com. As we predicted a few weeks back in our 2008 Jobs and Economics Survey, entry-level job creation – a key concern in our troubled economy – would likely play a pivotal role among other critical issues at the polls. In particular, global warming and climate concerns, hot-button topics for millennials, also ranked highly with our respondents. More than a third of young voters identified these issues as top concerns for the next presidential administration.

Focusing in on all things ‘green,’ last week we dove deeper and surveyed Experience members to find out how the green trend has impacted careers and career choices in our politically charged environment.

Of the 230+ survey respondents, we learned a few interesting things – with 71 percent saying ‘yes,’ the notion working at a green company was appealing to the vast majority of college students and young alumni. Here’s one respondent their own words:

I would like to work for a company that is green, because to me it shows that they are not just about making a profit. It shows that they are willing to give back to the people by not only finding ways to go green, but to also use them in everyday practices.

And what does Gen Y think constitutes a ‘green company?’ Again, in more of their own words:

My definition of a “green” company is one who is even in the slightest sense environmentally friendly and aware. Things such as recycling/reusing paper or having washable washcloths in the bathroom instead of paper towels are some of the simplest things a green company can do. Also, one that sends e-mails rather than letters in your mailbox constitutes a green company for me.

A green company takes a proactive step towards improving their carbon footprint, educating employees about making smarter decisions and interested in changing the way they do business.

A green company minimizes waste, practices policies and procedures that are environmentally concious [sic], and uses their green status as an incentive for their employees.

Looking back at a green-focused April 2008 Experience survey in which nearly 2,800 millennials responded to, four out of five respondents – nearly 80 percent – said they would be more likely to accept a job offer at a green company over another company, when evaluating two similar job offers.

Employers need to consider these significant numbers and clearly communicate their environmental commitments and socially responsible practices throughout all recruiting programs. Frankly it’s what’s needed to attract top entry-level talent. Just take a cue from the Obama campaign – targeting Gen Y with messaging that resonates with their passions is what will make the difference.

The lure of “being someplace else” gets very strong in college. After several years toiling through school, the idea of finding someplace new, different, fresh and exciting can be very appealing. As an undergrad at Ithaca College in Central New York, I knew I needed a change of pace after graduation. I never wanted to see snow in May again! And eventually I got what I wanted – I moved to Boston in the late ‘90s and have been here ever since. I’ve even endured a few April blizzards, but that’s another story.

Last month, Experience launched its 2008 Hot Cities Survey and polled students and young grads on the topic of what makes a city desirable. But we also dug a little deeper and asked about factors on relocating both domestically and internationally. Gen Y told us some interesting things – things that should affect how employers are luring entry-level talent to not just their companies, but their cities.

New York City led the pack of most desirable cities, at 12 percent ranking it number one, followed by Washington, D.C., Chicago and San Francisco respectively. Seattle/Tacoma, Atlanta, Boston and Charlotte tied the fifth place slot at a 5 percent response rate each. Other cities in the top 10 included Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Interestingly, a whopping 85 percent of Gen Y indicated they were interested in relocating inside the country, and 70 percent even said they’d consider moving abroad if presented with the right opportunity. By far the most popular reason for relocating was chasing career opportunities, but survey respondents also reported that the social/cultural scene, proximity to family, weather conditions and availability of public transportation were important considerations as well for a big move.

Given this information, it’s pretty clear that employers have the opportunity to attract a larger entry-level talent base by sourcing beyond their geographical boundaries. Candidates will make a significant move for a job, provided the “extracurricular” considerations add up. Recruiters must know what drives Gen Y as young grads make big moving decisions – and then they should use this knowledge to optimize their workforce development efforts. By promoting the aspects of living in a specific region in their outreach, employers can not only ensure they’re dipping into a larger candidate pool – they can positively affect their local, regional and even state economies.

Welcome to our inaugural Talent Insights post! Every week, we’ll be providing employers, professionals in career services and career-seeking candidates with relevant and actionable data-driven insight, covering all things Gen Y, to help you do your job better – whether it’s setting recruiting strategy, helping others or looking for a new career.

With Labor Day behind us and the back-to-school recruiting season officially off and running, we thought we’d take closer look at the general assumption that college students look for and pursue job and internship opportunities most actively in the fall. As we sliced and diced our data on total Experience Network page views over the past year, we found out some pretty interesting things. The most significant observation: though the “fall is crazy busy” assumption did hold true, there was a substantial activity boost in early spring that we must consider as we plan for 2009 and beyond.

Starting with August 2007, and then tracking each and every month through this past July, you can clearly see there was a bump in Experience Network page views in the back-to-school timeframe. Interestingly, the most significant peak was not in the fall – it was in the middle of winter. Looking at the trends, nearly a quarter (24%) of our traffic came in between January and February 2008. This more than doubles the numbers from last December, and it’s a jump up from September-October 2007 (which represented 21% of our annual traffic over this time frame).

It’s pretty clear that following a two month downward trend leading into the holidays and winter break, students returned to campus recharged for the spring and most likely focused on their goals at hand: to either find internships for the summer, land full-time jobs by May and/or use all the industry content and career resources available in the Experience Network to help them find success.

There are probably a host of reasons why the page view ups and downs are what they are. Regardless, we can extrapolate the numbers to consider the bigger question: should employers seeking Gen Y talent recalibrate their efforts to better reach candidates when they’re most actively engaged throughout the year?

On that note, welcome once again and happy fall!