With ALCA’s Student Career Days right around the corner, there is no better time than now to start planning to get the most out of your time and effort in recruiting interns and full-time employees. Although the ALCA Student Career Days is the most heavily attended career event in the industry, there are other recruiting opportunities, too, many sponsored by two-year and four-year schools. Your prep work now can apply to any and all of them.

Decide whom you want to take … This is probably the most important decision a company recruiter will make. Take along employees who can sell your company and who are committed to the event (who want to be at the fair). You certainly do not want employees in your booth who are taking phone calls every 20 minutes; you want people who are interested in the process. It is important, as well, that students can relate to your recruiters. If they happen to be alumni of the school holding the fair, that is a plus, too, but avoid selecting recruiters on that merit alone.

Decide on which career events to attend …Chapel Valley Landscape Company attends between four and eight college career fairs annually, not including the big ALCA event, which represents a huge part of our recruiting effort. We normally meet students at the individual fairs held by colleges and then “seal the deal” at Student Career Days (to be held in 2004 in Columbus, Ohio). We have a list of school career days we generally go to and strive to attend one new school event a year. We also evaluate every career fair we attend.

 Follow-up is important. Approximately two weeks after the fair, we contact everyone who interviewed with us or stopped by our booth. If the student is a potential intern or employee, we may use this opportunity to solidify a future interview or visit. If we are unsure about the student and his or her intentions, we thank him/her for stopping by our booth. We also invite that student to inquire more about our company, either at an upcoming career fair or by querying us in a follow-up letter.

 Our recruiting season starts in earnest in September and carries through the winter months, reaching a crescendo at ALCA’s Student Career Days. Throughout the process, our company expends considerable time and effort to find students who we think will make excellent additions to our company and who we think will benefit from their experience with us. Recruiting is a two-way street, and just as students try to sell us on their abilities, we try to sell them on the merits of working for us.

 

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