Know-How Exchange : Strategy

My gut reaction is that you need BOTH quantity and quality, and that to focus on one to the exclusion of the other would be a disservice to your students and the recruiters who rely on the Career Centre as a resource for staffing their organizations with well-qualified individuals.

After all, isn't your mission to assist as many students as possible? You can't very well do that if you are not focused on quantity, especially in a year when you anticipate fewer job postings generally.

So quality is important, as always. But so is quantity ... as long as there are still more applicants than job openings.

Yes...wide and deep.

Deeper with who is already there and wider to increase that number.

MIGHT want to have 2 sets of doing this. Easier to have a deep crew and a wide crew so they can feed off each other.

Michael

Dear Francine,

First, do not make the mistake of letting the economy muddy your thinking or cloud your horizon. The more you do this, the more it will come through in your programs and outreach and the more it will impact your success and the success of your customers.

Second, your question is a sound one, but it's also fundamentally flawed. Quantity and quality are great, and you must aim for (and hit) both. But of greater importance is significance.

You can have quality, but if its significance for that particular student is not relevant, your message will fall flat. And you can have quantity, but again, if the quantity of information is not significant enough for any given situation, your message drops like a stone.

This means your particular messages—per niche or subject area (or career slot, it's the same thing) need to be sharper than ever before, it also means your outreach staff have got to be on the top of their game, which means you've got to train them to think on their feet and you've got to empower them to WANT to engage a student.

By this I mean each outreach person's attitude when asked a question has got to be such that although they may not know the answer directly, they must be empowered to find the answer and pass it on to the student in question, even if this means after hours or past closing time action on their part.

When the students involved receive this kind of attention to their needs, it creates a solid impression of rapport, which in turn means your overall message will click more with its audience.

Will this be easy? No, of course it won't. But that's what will make it all the more worthwhile, both to you, and to your customers.
Your aim here must be to make a sale in order to get and retain a customer, NOT to get a customer to make a sale.

This way, you create brand and message evangelists: your customers.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

First, I agree with Gary-- the lagging ecomony is an excuse but no reason. Plan some outreach to get more job postings. Think about it, in this economy your students need and rely on you more!

Sit with your team and identify the "lead" you want. Your career center has a niche-- the right candidate looks like?? And your students should be lazar sharp in reaching to those kinds of students. Conduct the meetings regularly. Do feature postings-- and send them out to find a candidate for that posting.

Why not also focus your staff on finding more job opportunities? If that's what students are looking for...make it easier for them to find them.