The turbulent 2009 economy has not deterred college students and recent grads from pursuing their goals. In its fifth year running, the results of our annual Placement Survey shed light on some of the employment trends surrounding the Class of ‘09 and their plans for the real world.

More than 630 Gen Y’ers completed the 2009 Placement Survey (dubbed “Share Your Success with Experience”) between the beginning of June and the end of September, and 63% of respondents said “yes” when asked if they were on their intended career path. At nearly two-thirds in the middle of a recession, that’s good news.

So what about the other 37%? Some just had change of heart and others (16%) modified their career paths due to the economy. Forty-three percent of students chose jobs because it was their field of interest and other reasons that followed were advancement opportunities (12%), company culture (9%) and lack of other offers (12%).

What made certain young grads stay on their original tracks and others switch? Obviously, the economy is a major factor—even though we’re finally seeing the light as the recession lifts, students are still moving away from fields such as Finance, which is down when compared to the results of our 2008 Placement Survey. Interestingly, industries like Accounting have seen an uptick in hires. Also in the same vein as last year’s survey, Education was one of the top industries young grads are gravitating toward with 8% of the total respondent base.

We all know that internships help the next generation workforce get experience and exposure to help them decide which career path to pursue. Interestingly, in 2009, roughly two out of five grads (42%) told us they never held an internship during school. On the flip side, nearly three out of five (58%) held at least one internship and, in some cases, more than that. Of those who held internships during school, close to half (44%) landed a job in their desired field.

Now more than ever, there is a direct correlation between students who take on internships and receive jobs and those who don’t. Bringing on interns for full time entry level employment is a great way to fill your pipeline with the right kind of talent in the most cost effective manner. If you hired an intern (paid or unpaid) and they ultimately applied for a full-time position within your company, odds are you’d lean towards your intern vs. other candidates.

One last thing to keep top of mind as you are looking for entry-level employees is that those students who will be graduating in 2010 are looking for positions NOW.  Top candidates are not waiting to get themselves set up for life after college. Follow their lead: promote your internship programs and entry-level openings to help position your company in the right place in the Gen Y world.

To get more insight, check out our Gen Y Insights whitepaper – Internships Becoming a Very Effective Sourcing Strategy – for tips on how to use internships to bring on the best new hires possible.

“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.

When I was a kid, when someone was telling me something I didn’t want to hear, I used to cover my ears and sing the theme to The Flintstones. These days, with the economy in the state that it’s in, the tunes from my childhood are resonating in my head – a wish perhaps to block the headlines we’ve all become accustomed to hearing over the past half year.

Millennials, on the other hand, while realistic about the current financial landscape and how it impacts their careers, are not covering their ears. Experience’s latest survey is telling us Gen Y is adapting to changing workplace situations by bucking conventional wisdom and doing what it takes to stay ahead - and remain positive - with their career prospects.

Last month, nearly 1,650 college students and young professionals took our 2009 Economic Impact Survey. We measured the impact of the US and global economies on Gen Y’s attitudes towards higher education and career paths. In the face of economic recession, many millennials told us they feel bullish about the overall job market: half (50%) say their employment or job prospects are positive. When you compare this stat with general population polls, like the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal survey which covered the economy in part, the confidence level of young adults significantly outpaces Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers. And in a related light, 37% of students and alumni say their college education will be even more valuable now and in the years ahead given market conditions.

Gen Y’ers are also shifting their expectations — and our common perceptions — about how they will tackle the workday in order to keep their jobs. Respondents told us that they’re prepared to work more hours to improve job security (33%) and take on more projects or help colleagues with their work (30%). Another big shift: two-thirds (67%) of young talent are more likely to stay in their current job. Though that now may be a given, it’s quite a departure from the 70% job hopping contingent I discussed last year in A Look at Life After Graduation.

Employers seeking entry-level talent want to get everything they can out of Gen Y, especially in tough times. At the same time, while doing what they’ll need to do to stay employed, young adults are concerned about career development: more than a third (35%) of respondents expect fewer professional development opportunities. To better attract millennials and to reduce attrition, managers should emphasize training programs and help Gen Y carve clear career paths within their organizations.

On a related note, last month we unveiled our 2009 Gen Y Trends report and video which detail what organizations can do to better connect with millennials in today’s climate, including leveraging Web 2.0, providing agile feedback and  building loyalty. Check it out at http://genytrends.experience.com.

Earlier in the month, I hosted a presentation at Experience’s client conference that focused on the so-called “Net Kids.” I discussed common Gen Y traits (namely their comfort with technology) and Web 2.0 media, and why combined they all matter in setting effective career services strategy. Citing the Experience Online Usage Survey we ran late last year, I suggested in my presentation there’s a clear opportunity for social networks– a key Web 2.0 component — to make a serious impact on those of us who live and breathe all things Gen Y careers, not to mention the candidates themselves.

Love it or hate it, social networking is here to stay. The biggest player by far is Facebook, of course, with its 130 million (and growing) active users. Half of these active users access it at least once every day.

In our survey (which I detailed last month in “What’s The Use”), respondents were asked to check off a list of the social networking sites they use. An overwhelming 85 percent of Gen Y surveyed reported being active with Facebook. MySpace was a distant runner up, followed by LinkedIn.

Being social on social networking sites is of course the primary focus, but those of us looking to connect with Gen Y — employers, college career services, alumni associations and everyone in between — have an opportunity to use these networks to engage young professionals on their terms, and on their time. More than a quarter of our respondents indicated they use social networks in the context of careers, whether it’s hunting for jobs, making new business contacts or staying in touch with co-workers. In our current economic recession, career-related activity on Facebook and the rest will only increase come spring and summer.

On a related note, Experience on Tuesday announced the Best Places to Work for Recent Grads, a top 20 list of the leading employers that “get it” when it comes to recruiting, hiring and retaining Gen Y. Many of the organizations highlighted in Best Places fully embrace and support social networks at the workplace. They’re committed to fostering communities and affinity groups (professional and social) at the workplace through new media. As a result, they’re fostering a more productive work environment by building trust between younger workers and managers. Check out the report and get some ideas for yourself.

At the end of October, Experience refurbished its Facebook Page and we’ve seen some great traction with our growing fan base. As the universally regarded #1 online destination for Gen Y, college students and young grads alike flock to Facebook daily to do everything from connect with friends to discovering new music to joining communities (like Experience!) that resonate with their interests.

Tied in with our Facebook relaunch, last month we surveyed more than 230 Experience.com candidates with our Online Usage Survey which was designed to gauge how millennials spend their time online. And whether it’s catching up with friends, watching videos, reading the news or looking for jobs or internships, our respondents told us many interesting things - especially when it comes to looking for entry-level opportunities.

One specific area of interest the survey covered was job sites. In addition to Experience.com (which took the lion’s share of responses) and using offline college and alumni-related career services offerings, candidates most often use the big brand-name job sites. More significantly than who made the list, our respondents told us some important things that we should consider when reaching out to Gen Y.

Q: What challenges do you face when searching or applying for a job online?

As you can see in the graphic above, the biggest area of opportunity for recruiters is to optimize their job descriptions. Though the top challenge identified in the survey was “unable to find what I’m looking for,” this frustration is caused in large part due to the description-related challenges identified. Vague job descriptions or not relaying the right (or enough) information can prevent a top candidate from connecting with an opportunity that just might be that “perfect fit” in reality. Candidates may not be finding what they’re looking for because sometimes the descriptions aren’t up to par with the opportunities and employers themselves.

As I mentioned in my post from last week, there’s only one chance to make that first impression. Maximize your recruiting dollars by ensuring your entry-level job and/or internship descriptions are up to snuff and are hitting all the notes Gen Y wants to hear. If you haven’t yet checked it out, I encourage you to read our whitepaper on the subject.

Next up, I’ll take a different dive into this Online Usage Survey and will specifically look at social networking and how it factors in to the career discovery and job search process. Stay tuned!

As we enter the final stretch of the final quarter of 2008, and especially coming to work each and every day after reading the morning headlines, I often find myself thinking of some classic proverbs. One of my favorites is “if we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting,” attributed to Stephen Covey. So true in business, and so true in life. Same goes for another one you’ve heard since you were a kid: “don’t judge a book by its cover.”

When it comes to recruiting Gen Y with targeted job postings, however, candidates – no matter the industry vertical – do tend to judge books by their covers. First impressions can make all the difference on whether or not the most qualified talent will even look at your opportunity, let alone apply for it.

Diving deep into the data on one of the most popular Experience.com job search terms, we’ve found some interesting results – results that all employers should consider when crafting messaging for their job opportunities. Millennials that searched for jobs using the search term “analysts” in early December 2008 were presented with hundreds of relevant titles. The top five performing related job titles, illustrated above in terms of click throughs, collectively represent 71.7% of all returned titles that were clicked on. The employers with these titles are seeing success on clicks because they know that they only have one chance to make that first impression – and they kept things simple.

Gen Y employers are most successful with job posting click throughs when their job titles match or are directly related to the terms candidates are searching on. Easy, right? But it can be tempting add a lot of noise into the title in effort to grab attention. And at the end of the day college students and young alumni see right through this. Using ALL CAPS or an abundance of exclamation points to garner MORE CLICKS will most likely BACKFIRE!!! Believe it or not, a good number of job titles that were returned in this “analysts analysis” used such tactics.

In our It’s Time for a Job Description Makeover whitepaper issued earlier this year, we analyzed what Gen Y values and what they’re not seeing in job postings. Whether you’re recruiting an intern or a full-time entry-level hire, make it your New Year’s resolution to reassess how you write job titles and their descriptions. Make sure your words clearly and concisely spell out key benefits for your candidates – because this is what will ultimately decide whether or not top talent will take the time to submit applications, connect with your company and tell their friends all about the experience.