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!

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.