Employers: Are You Ready?

Entry by Pat Patterson

Career fairs are fast-approaching – are you prepared to market your organization?  Regardless of whether you are a large or small organization, career fairs are a great opportunity to recruit new talent:

“Think about all the money AT&T, Coca-Cola, and Ford Motor Company put into national advertising and promotional campaigns,” explains Keever-Watts, president of The Keever Group. “In the arena of college recruiting, however, any company can be a ‘big fish’ on campus.”

She points out that this is due to employers dealing in a much smaller, more confined market. In addition, Keever-Watts adds, the target audience—which is composed of students—is buying what the employer is selling.

“To make things even more favorable, it’s an employers’ market, which means that students are casting a wider net when it comes to finding a job,” she notes. “While the economic downturn hurts us all, it does level the playing field for employers.”

Keever-Watts advises smaller companies not to “play small, but to play differently.” Every company has to be able to answer why talented students would want to work for it.

“Employers of all sizes need to look at their unique selling points and compare those to what students are looking for in an employer,” Keever-Watts says.

Read the full article from the National Association of Colleges and Employers here.

To help you prepare, check out our previous blog entry Career Fairs 101: Selling Your Company to Potential Interns.  A current list of career/internship fairs can be found here.