BEST PRACTICES FOR MBA RECRUITERS - GradLeaders · 2016-08-01 · schools as desired. With one job...

BEST PRACTICES FOR MBA RECRUITERSTips for connecting with Business Leadership Talent using GradLeaders Recruiting

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Best Practices for RECRUITERS | 2

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With 20+ years in the industry, GradLeaders is the premier thought leader in recruitment technology and an expert source for knowledge on the subject of candidate outreach. More than 75,000 recruiters from over 40,000 companies have used GradLeaders to recruit students and alumni from the world’s top-ranked MBA programs. Through our school, professional association, and corporate partnerships, we have created the most advanced network in MBA recruitment.

For decades, our team has provided partners with our combined recruitment expertise in the form of consulting services. By publishing these proven strategies for connecting with candidates and promoting employment opportunities, we are offering an additional tool for your recruitment team to fulfill it needs for skilled leadership talent.

This guide is designed to help maximize your company’s outreach efforts through the most complete and up-to-date best practices in the industry. We strive to provide relevant information that is both timely and useful. As our network continues to grow, we will share what we’ve learned by continually updating this guide.

This eBook offers ways to

• Enhance outreach with virtual tools.

• Personally connect with candidates.

• Market your company’s brand and opportunities.

• Better understand your target audience.

No matter your hiring volume or frequency, there is a chapter of this eBook for your MBA recruitment needs.

IntroductionEverything You Need to Know to Navigate this eBook

Candidate Icon - This icon will appear on the bottom left of a page detailing tips for connecting with candidates.

Recruiter Icon - This icon will appear on the bottom left of a page detailing tips for connecting with industry thought leaders.


How to Connect With Candidates ................................................ 4

Source ................................................................................................. 5Evaluate ............................................................................................... 6Email .................................................................................................... 7Post ...................................................................................................... 8Mobile .................................................................................................. 9Diversity ............................................................................................ 10Events ................................................................................................ 11Social Media ...................................................................................... 12Video .................................................................................................. 13Report ................................................................................................ 14Print ................................................................................................... 15Offers ................................................................................................. 16

How to Connect With Industry Thought Leaders ....................17

Connect with Other Recruiters .......................................................18Connect with the Experts ................................................................19Seasonal Calendar ...........................................................................20Sources .............................................................................................. 21

Table of Contents

Last Updated 1.27.2015


How to Connect with Candidates


GradLeadersAs the market leader in MBA recruiting, GradLeaders connects leading employers with candidates from the world’s top graduate business schools, creating a niche network of qualified business leadership talent for our corporate partners.

Graduate Business Schools Each business school has a specialized group of unique candidates with their own skill sets and concentrations. Use our Single School Search function to filter candidates at each school by criteria specific to that school.

ClubsStudent clubs are a great resource for discovering niche groups of candidates. Clubs can help you quickly identify students with specific interests, skill sets, and professional goals, as well as diversity. Use our Club Affiliation filter to search for members of different groups

Professional AssociationsProfessional Associations help recruiters quickly identify candidates who are seeking to further themselves professionally through leadership and networking opportunities. GradLeaders partners with several professional associations for employers to connect with these niche groups of candidates.

Have you been having trouble filling jobs due to lack of skilled talent that matches your company’s specific hiring needs?

According to ManpowerGroup’s 2014 Talent Shortage Survey, 36% of the 37,000 employers surveyed are reporting difficulty filling jobs. The top 10 jobs employers are having difficulty filling include skilled trade workers, accounting & finance staff, management executives, and sales managers. Finding the “right” business leadership talent can be a time consuming and rigorous process without the correct resources. Too often, employers are searching in a diluted mix of unqualified candidates, resulting in more questions, less answers, and misdirected efforts.

As employers continue to recruit more inexperienced prospects from unscreened candidate pools, they’re finding the consequences to be expensive and wasteful. According to a CareerBuilder study, 27% of U.S. employers reported that a single bad hire costs more than $50,000. Further, according to the Wall Street Journal, experts estimate it costs upwards of twice an employee’s salary to find and train a replacement.

The proper recruitment resources can help you avoid these outcomes and dodge the effects of a talent shortage. Improve your quality of hire and discover leadership talent by searching within a niche network of candidates. GradLeaders Recruiting, our comprehensive database of global business leadership talent, is proven to save companies time and money. Hailing from more than 75 of the world’s top business schools, our exclusive network consists of skilled MBA students and alumni, vetted by their program’s admissions and career service office. With our advanced search filters and integrated outreach tools, you can begin to proactively source your next generation of business leaders and be certain to connect with only “right-fit” talent.

Because of the cost investment and the rigorous admissions process that dictates the caliber of candidates types accepted into a graduate business school, MBA recruiting is much different than recruiting other candidates.

SourceDiscover Vetted Leadership Talent


Are you finding yourself in an MBA recruitment comfort zone? Skilled MBA candidates can be found at every graduate business school, regardless of size, rank and location. Many employers limit their recruitment efforts by singling out schools in their “backyard”, focusing on a small number of top ranked business schools, sticking to old habits, or simply recruiting from the alma maters of their senior executives year-after-year. As recruiters look to find the leadership candidate “needle in the recruitment haystack,” a diversified search can help them discover high potential candidate sets they would have otherwise missed.

Any graduate business school student is ahead of the game, going above and beyond in pursuit of higher education in preparation for the future. Value isn’t always defined by a “top five” reputation. Take a lesson from some of the most well known names in business: McKinsey and Amazon.

McKinsey, the world renowned consulting firm, is always on the lookout for exceptional candidates worldwide. Brian Rolfes, Director of Global Recruiting, explains that “there is no McKinsey ‘type,’ (…) Our culture is defined by the diversity of our people and the strength of our values.” Seeking “people who thrive in a fast-changing environment”, Amazon recruits talent from a wide range of locations. According to CNN Money, last year the tech firm hosted over 170 interns from more than two dozen business schools.

By strategically sourcing talent from a larger pool of candidates online, virtual recruitment allows companies to explore MBA talent across the board. Instead of narrowing a search by school or location, recruiters can use a global search to discover valuable candidates based off of their experiences, skills, preferences, group involvement, etc. Whether a job requires a Mandarin speaking consultant with a marketing background, or a French speaking financial advisor from the west coast, the comprehensive GradLeaders Recruiting database and its advanced search capabilities will help you extend your reach to business leaders from more than 75 leading graduate business schools around the world.

EvaluateBroaden Your Talent Search

GradLeaders RecruitingGradLeaders Recruiting offers the most comprehensive database of business leadership talent from around the globe. With GradLeaders Recruiting, employers immediately access over 75,000 students and alumni from more than 75 graduate business schools, including 24 of the world’s 25 top-ranked MBA programs. GradLeaders Recruiting is equipped with tools to flag candidates, take notes on candidates, andcreate candidate sets to organize and track your evaluations.


HTML Email/Red212HTML emails allow you to create clean and consistent formatting in your email campaigns, delivering content that looks great and matches your brand. You can create and upload your own HTML email templates to GradLeaders Recruiting, or use preexisting HTML email templates in GradLeaders Recruiting. Contact our partner Red212, an agency with extensive expertise in employer branding, if you are interested in a more customizable template for your company.

Company Culture/YouTubeCreate a YouTube video that captures different aspects of your company culture, such as the office life and employee personalities, company values, events, community involvement, its history, and where it aims to be in the future. Embed the video in your emails and on your website, and include it in OCR presentations. Then, encourage candidates to record a video in place of their cover letter, describing how they’d be a good fit, that they can embed on their resume.

Social MediaSocial media platforms are a quick and easy way to communicate your company’s brand and culture to a large audience. Be creative and provide fun, interesting, andrelevant information about your company in an authentic manner. Attach pictures, infographics and videos for candidates to view, and keep a consistent theme thatclearly represents your overall message.

Having issues presenting your brand to job-seeking candidates and keeping it in front of them? Wish current MBA students understood your company’s culture?

It’s an important issue and often one of the biggest pain points for recruiters at both lesser-known and well-established brands. Without the proper employment branding, recruiters miss an important opportunity to engage their target audience, creating gaps for their competition to better attract those candidates over and over again. Additionally, a well-communicated company culture can prevent unfit employer-candidate matches from the get-go, funneling those with similar values, and avoiding the headaches of bad-hires down the road.

According to a survey of more than 4,700 talent acquisition decision makers, up to 50% of savings in cost per hire is associated with a strong employer brand.

Redirecting the cost of bad hires towards the price of employer branding can, in turn, improve your company culture as a whole, lowering the chances of turnover and establishing a clear concept of where your company currently stands and hopes to go.

Once your company has defined its brand, who better to enforce and promote it to candidates than its recruiters? Recruiters can act as an extension of your marketing and sales team, generating interest through every channel of communication, attracting the kind of talent that will ultimately make up a piece of your corporate puzzle and leadership team.

Whether face-to-face, through emails, on social media, or on your website, creatively conveying your company’s brand has become a key part of the recruitment process. Each component of employer branding will improve your company’s presence and generate interest on and off campus.

Don’t have an email marketing tool? GradLeaders has integrated these tools within GradLeaders Recruiting to help you convey your company’s brand to our database of business leadership talent.

Email Brand Your Employment Opportunities


PostMove Beyond Traditional Job Postings

Concerned that the number of qualified candidates responding to your job postings is in free-fall? Feel like you’re wasting time copy and pasting the same opportunity from one job board to the next?

All too often, recruiters post their company’s openings to generic job boards and end up flooded with unqualified candidates, and not one person to fill the job. On the flip side, posting an opening to specific job boards, school-by-school, can be time consuming and ultimately limit your options.

With JobMatch, integrated within our MultiPost and GradLeaders Recruiting products, employers can efficiently target quality candidates at as many or as few of our partner schools as desired. With one job form, recruiters can access top international programs and reach candidates from more than 75 schools, including hard-to-reach alumni. This gives employers the chance to build their own job postings, customizing the job distribution list however they prefer.

With every posting, our JobMatch technology automatically searches the pool of current job seekers and returns a list of candidates that match the job requirements, making the job board the first step in a more proactive and effective sourcing process. Additionally, students in our database sign up for Job Alerts, so they can be notified directly with recently posted jobs that match their preferences and qualifications. The more information you include, the better the match will be. This innovative technology helps recruiters move beyond old-fashioned job postings and reach an exclusive database of business leadership talent in a timely, effective manner.

MultiPostWith MultiPost, employers can post their job openings – instantly – to as many or as few of our partner schools as they’d like, allowing them to conveniently reach thousands of students and alumni from 75+ programs around the world.

Job MatchJobMatch is an automatic way for employers and candidates to proactively find each other. After an employer posts a job withour exclusive MultiPost job distribution system, our JobMatch technology performs an advanced search of the database andreturns a list of candidate profiles and resumes that match the job description.


GradLeaders Recruiting Mobile AppWith the GradLeaders Recruiting mobile app, you can better manage recruitment activities as you travel, while collaborating with colleagues back in the office by sharing your assessments. If you’re a current GradLeaders Recruiting user, you can access your MBA recruitment system anywhere, anytime from your tablet device.

OCR IntegrationThe GradLeaders Recruiting mobile app gives you the power to search for and access candidate profiles within the network, add recordsand resumes for non-network candidates using your device’s camera feature, making recruitment easier than ever while on campus. All of your calendar and event information syncs too!

Candidate AssessmentsThe GradLeaders Recruiting mobile app lets you take notes, rate, flag and sort candidates based on pre-interview and post-interview evaluations, and follow up with individual and/or batch emails.

Nobody likes paperwork. It’s easy to misplace, clutters your desk, and is a waste of natural resources. Additionally, you need to have a system of filing and organizing all this important information for future use. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to store resumes, cover letters, notes, business cards, and appointments in one place?

Fortunately with the advent of technology, there truly is “an app for that.” Apps exist on every platform that allow recruiters to scan business cards, review resumes, orchestrate video interviews, connect with job-seeking candidates, and more! Today, there are a slew of mobile apps proven to save employers both time and money. According to a 2012 study by the Small Business and Entrepreneur Council, companies that use mobile apps to help manage their operations are saving more than 725 million employee hours and an average of $14,000 annually.

Mobile technology is especially helpful for on-campus recruiting. First, it helps you manage all your contacts, appointments, and resumes from your mobile device, providing a one-stop shop for all your recruiting data. Second, it allows you to better manage the interview process so that you can more effectively assess highpotential candidates. And finally, new technology makes it increasingly easy to quickly find a candidate who visits your booth at a national recruiting event. Together, these new mobile recruitment tools promote more handshaking and less hair pulling.

If you feel like you could benefit from a service like this, download the GradLeaders Recruiting mobile app, available for all registered users of GradLeaders Recruiting. Optimized for use on both Apple and Android tablets, the GradLeaders Recruiting app was designed specifically for recruiters on-the-go, with integrated search, schedule, outreach, and follow-up tools to help you manage your appointments while finding optimal candidates to fill your positions. And like most technology today, everything syncs in the cloud so that anything you do on the road is waiting for you back in the office.

MobileRecruit On-The-Go


Professional AssociationsProfessional diversity associations help recruiters quickly identify diverse candidates who are seeking to further themselves professionally through leadership and networking opportunities. GradLeaders partners with several professional associations for employers to connect with these niche groups of candidates.

Student ClubsProfessional diversity associations help recruiters quickly identify diverse candidates who are seeking to further themselvesprofessionally through leadership and networking opportunities. GradLeaders partners with several professional associations for employers to connect with these niche groups of candidates.

Do you wish you were getting more out of your diversity conference investment? Having trouble finding diversity talent that matches your unique hiring criteria?

Not only is diversity hiring encouraged by law, it’s also embraced by the thousands of successful companies that hire diversely. Diversity hiring is just as important to your bottom line as it is to your corporate culture.

African-American and Hispanic leadership candidates have long been a desirable talent demographic for top-level management positions. Clubs such as the African-American Business Association and the Hispanic Business Association and professional organizations like MLT (Management Leadership for Tomorrow) or ROMBA (Reaching Out MBA) are established and proven sources of excellent candidates.

The amount of women pursuing MBA degrees has risen dramatically over the past decade. Searching for talent in clubs like the Women in Business Association and professional organizations such as the Forté Foundation help you tap into this increasingly important candidate pool.

Another growing diversity group is the LGBT community. Members of this group bring a vital and unique perspective to business leadership and can be found in student groups like the Gay and Lesbian Business Association and professional associations such as Reaching Out MBA.

But finding the “right” diversity candidates can still be difficult Fortunately we have made the process easy with our diversity club profile criteria and professional association partnerships. At GradLeaders, 6.9% of the candidates in our database are affiliated with diversity clubs, and 12.3% are affiliated with professional diversity associations. And the GradLeaders Recruiting recruitment platform offers integrated tools that are proven to help you source and hire the specific diversity talent you need.

DiversityRecruit from Clubs and Associations


HTML Email InvitesUpload your HTML templates to GradLeaders Recruiting, or use pre-loaded templates from Red212, and send out batch emails to candidates about your upcoming OCR events. Invite candidates to engage with your ambassadors, introduce your opportunities, explain your company brand, and let them know where and when you’ll be on campus.

Event Booth/SwagDraw attention to your company’s campus presence with an eye-catching event booth, along with fun and useful “swag” for everyone to walk away with. Employers have been known to advertise their upcoming events in the cafeteria with tray liners, set up food trucks by their booths, bring their brand mascots to events to hand out free products and take pictures with candidates, set up themed photo booths, etc. These simple andeasy ideas will keep your brand front of mind and draw a larger crowd to your booth.

Disruptive MarketingNon-traditional marketing methods are great for on-campus recruitment. This strategy can deliver fun, exciting, and unexpected goods and services to students, while communicating key aspects of your company culture. Employers have utilized this technique by creating and organizing pedicab rides for students between classes, co-branding bike-share programs on campus, etc. Disruptive marketing will set you apart from your competitors and attract talent that might otherwise walk by.

Does your company set itself apart at on-campus recruiting (OCR) events? How memorable are your hiring efforts in today’s talent war?

OCR opens up a great deal of opportunities for your company to make a name for itself on campus and have direct interactions with candidates. Creative MBA recruitment techniques, some disruptive marketing, and an attention-grabbing presence between classes can be the difference between a small group of homogenous applicants and a larger, more diverse pool of responsive job candidates. Out-of-the-box recruitment strategies generate word of mouth, peak student interest, and ultimately help uncover highly-demanded leadership talent. If you want to hire the skilled and experienced 2nd year MBA, who already has several job offers and an internship under his/her belt, you can’t expect to recruit them with a generic strategy.

As stated in the Bloomberg BusinessWeek article, Tempt Talent with Creative Recruiting, “Many recruiters have thrown out their old playbooks and dreamed up new, experimental approaches for grabbing the attention of hard-to-reach candidates. ‘They’re more passive in the process, so you have to go out of your way to do something exciting,’ says John Sullivan, a recruiting consultant and professor of management at San Francisco State University. ‘Free pizza at a job fair is not that exciting.’”

Creative recruitment must be balanced, thought-out, and wellplanned for proper execution. Make sure that your OCR efforts match your company culture and help to communicate relevant information about your current opportunities. Once you’ve caught the attention of the MBA students you’re targeting, prove to them that it’s worth their time to learn more by personalizing the remainder of the recruitment process and continuing to differentiate your company. More than ever, students want authentic, genuine and passionate company representatives at school events.

EventsRecruit On Campus at Graduate B-Schools


TwitterCreate a Twitter account for your company’s recruitment initiatives, and designate which office member will keep your social media pages up to date. Tweet daily with something timely and interesting, such as industry news, fun facts, applicationdeadlines, and networking opportunities. With 140 characters, you can keep your Tweets simple and to the point, and insert shortened links for more info. Make sure to use hashtags related to your company, the position, or industry.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Google +Create a Facebook page, a LinkedIn group, and a Google+ circle dedicated to your company’s recruitment initiatives. Oncea week, post a list of new openings, OCR whereabouts, company information, and other relevant news. Your messages canbe longer than your tweets, but keep them brief so candidates can stay engaged with summarized information.

BlogsCreate a blog dedicated to your recruitment program, internship program, and/or company culture. You can link your blog to your website, social media pages, and in emails. Candidates interested in learning more about your company and its opportunities can stay updated with more detailed information than your social media posts, but with more informal and timelyinformation than your website. Unlike your other social media posts, your blog posts can be of any length and take on a more personal spin. The more engaging, the more likely candidates will feel connected to the recruitment process and know what to expect down the road.

Looking to create a well-rounded approach to candidate outreach, without a high price tag? Hoping to engage your younger target audience?

Social media is one of the most valuable marketing tools and one of the most effective communication platforms today. Interconnected webs of people, places, pictures and information produce incredible advertising opportunities. Today’s growing desire for quick and easy access to relevant information makes social media an increasingly ideal outreach device and recruitment tool. As you target millennials, it’s important for your company to establish itself as an engaged participant in social media recruitment. You can’t recruit your target audience if you’re not where they are, and currently they’re making connections through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

According to Jobvite’s 2013 Social Recruiting Survey, 94% of recruiters use or plan to use social media in their recruitment efforts, and 78% of recruiters have made a hire through social media.

Most, if not all, MBA students and alumni have some sort of presence on social media. Additionally, 70% of job seekers use mobile devices in their job search, according to Forbes. The present social networking environment, strengthened by the convenience of mobile communication, creates an almost endless number of channels for recruiters to promote new and existing opportunities. Social media also provides another avenue for you to promote your company culture, enhancing the recruiting experience for those you’re interacting with. It is important to build the quantity of your social network, but the quality is what will set your opportunities apart from unwanted solicitation.

Social media is a user-friendly, virtually cost-free, and continuously growing space for your recruitment team to successfully advertise all that your company has to offer to job-seeking candidates.

Social MediaCommunicate Through Social Platforms


Not all employers have the opportunity or resources to recruit on campus. Whether candidates are on the other side of the country or the other side of the world, issues created by time, weather and distance can be very limiting to your recruitment efforts.

Virtual interviewing is increasingly popular, as it enables recruiters to conveniently administer job interviews over the internet, eliminating the costs of airfare, hotels, and ground transportation associated with the interview process. This opens the door to a wider selection of candidates, allowing employers to diversify their applicant pool and reach talented individuals regardless of their location.

InterviewStream, a strategic partner of GradLeaders, can work as a complete and enterprise-wide video interviewing solution. With this tool, you can schedule, conduct, pre-record, live-record, review, and share online interviews. Highly customizable, you can also utilize it for online company presentations and branding initiatives. Whether you use virtual interviewing for first-round screening, or the entirety of the hiring process, you can remove barriers associated with international recruitment while still building personal relationships with candidates through face-toface video communications.

Additionally, utilizing virtual interviews demonstrates that your company is tech-savvy, limiting its carbon footprint, and reducing time-to-hire. Instead of finding the best of the candidates in your backyard, virtual interviewing lets you discover the best candidates – period!

VideoConnect with Candidates Around the World via Virtual Interviewing Tools

Live Video InterviewingLive video interviewing makes the interview process easier, while reducing the time-to-hire. Speak to any candidate around the world with a webcam and an internet connection, and screen them in real time. Live video interviewing provides all of theimportant aspects of face-to-face interviews without the expense of travel. Be mindful of your outfit and environment, as theycommunicate your company’s brand and culture to the candidate.

Pre-Recorded Screening ToolsSend candidates pre-recorded question sets and using their webcam, they can record and send their responses. This can be helpful for interviewing candidates whose availability is limited and does not overlap with your workday. Providers, such as InterviewStream, offer flexible screening tools, best practices and allow you to conduct group interviews, record and share interviews.


Candidate Analytics ReportThis annual report, presented by GradLeaders, offers an in-depth look at the current population of job-seeking MBA students and alumni in our network.

Employer Demand AnalysisThis annual report, presented by GradLeaders, offers an in-depth look at the resume database searches and job postings by the thousands of employers in our network. This can be utilized for employer industry benchmarking and ongoing recruiting trend analyses.

Usage StatisticsGradLeaders Recruiting offers several types of reporting tools for employers to use as needed. As a GradLeaders Recruiting Partner, GradLeaders also provides year-over-year usage comparison summaries. These summaries provide statistics about usage, logins, searches, emails, printed resumes, exported candidates, etc. to give you an idea of how well your company’s recruiters are using the system and where they can improve.

Have you tried to better understand your target audience? Are you interested in evaluating your overall recruitment efforts and the success of your company’s job postings?

One of the biggest benefits that technology provides is the ability to capture big data and break it down into useful information. Statistics give companies concrete indicators of where they are progressing, where they are lacking, and what steps they need to take for future advancement. Additionally, data can uncover trends in the recruitment market, providing insight into the career goals of their target audience.

Wired article, Transforming HR Recruitment Practices With Big Data, explains how “…the recruitment landscape is gradually changing as social networks and portals […] are eliminating information asymmetries and empowering job applicants and HR personnel alike. Furthermore, both the companies and candidates are increasingly acknowledging the potential benefits of big data in recruitment and are more open to embracing technologies to that extent. Today, almost all applicants have a comprehensive digital footprint that almost completely captures an applicant’s characteristics.”

GradLeaders candidate and employer analytics are more robust than ever, providing detailed analyses of the students and alumni registered in our system, and the companies looking to hire them. Our reporting tools, as well as our annually published Candidate Analytics Report, tell you the preferences, qualifications, and experiences of candidates from more than 75 of the world’s leading graduate business schools.

GradLeaders Recruiting also provides user data, giving you an idea of how often and how well your recruitment team is utilizing the system.

GradLeaders now publishes an annual Employer Demand Analysis report, detailing the searches and job postings performed within our system. Each of these provide you with an opportunity to improve your recruitment practices, as you better understand the MBA candidates, your competitors, and your own recruitment behaviors.

ReportUtilize Data to Improve Outreach Efforts


BrochuresAlways bring brochures to OCR events and company presentations. Distribute them to candidates so they can quickly get an overview of your opportunities and what makes your company unique, and include key contact information, a calendar with important dates, and instructions on how tomove forward in the recruitment process.

Business CardsAlways handy, business cards continue to be the industry-wide standard for exchanging contact information during face-to-faceconversations. Ensure that yours doesn’t get tossed or forgotten by making them unique, eye-catching, and usable. Add a QR code that links to your careers website, your company app, or your social media page. Use colorful graphics and bold text, making them stand out from the hundreds of others beingexchanged at OCR events. Candidates want a point person to follow up with after events and/or applying, so be sure to offer lines of direct communication.

Flyers + PostersCreate eye-catching flyers and posters to distribute at events, include in mailings, and hang around campus. Include a cleverslogan or highlight some of the fun activities you’ll be hosting as part of your “disruptive marketing”. Anything that will drive candidate interest and engagement is a plus!

Where technology fails, old-fashioned outreach efforts can often be successful. With the proper delivery, face-to-face interactions, printed material, and word-of-mouth have the ability to create the most meaningful impressions. Don’t forget that at the end of the day, good recruitment practices can come down to a memorable conversation at an OCR event or a well-branded brochure describing your company and available opportunities.

Technology provides a cost and time efficient method for communicating information to large groups of candidates, but there is still value in outreach efforts beyond the realm of the internet. Print material gives people something to walk away with and hold onto, instead of getting lost in the shuffle of online correspondence. Meeting students and alumni in-person puts a face to a name, making your company more memorable in the long-run. In an increasingly technological and paperless society, personalized messages with some tangible aspect can be extremely effective simply because of its scarcity.

Tangible outreach efforts tend to require more time and may be more costly on a large scale, but as you narrow your recruitment pool, you can target those specific candidates you’re most interested in hiring. Prioritize your outreach efforts, and determine what level of personalization you believe to be appropriate for the specific stages of recruitment. Make sure its authentic information to complement all your other outreach efforts, providing candidates with something that best represents your company and why they should become a part of it.

PrintCreate Branded Materials


Verbal OfferRather than sending an email, have the recruiter they’ve interacted with the most or the hiring manager make the first offer verbally. Whether this is over the phone or in the final interview, it personalizes the conversation significantly more than an email and lets them know you’re excited to inform them of the opportunity right away.

Formal Offer LetterA verbal offer should be followed-up by a formal offer letter, detailing the position and all negotiated terms and benefits, as well as how to proceed in formally accepting the position. Add a personal touch and let them know they are wanted.

Candidates, especially highly-sought individuals looking for points of job differentiation, want their offers to be personal and to communicate these specific reasons why they’re a great fit for the position.

“Preparing for the job offer process – like any sales meeting – involves research, strategy, and preparation long before the job offer is accepted,” explains new media strategist and HR consultant, Jessica Miller-Merrell. “Much of this decision to work together is made in the candidate’s impression of the job ad and interview, but the job offer is a tangible affirmation point. The key to having a job candidate accept your job offer is through engagement, conversation, and learning of how the job opportunity can help them obtain their career, personal, and professional goals. Focus on these and you’ll learn how not only to make a job offer, but how to have a candidate accept your job offer.

A personalized job offer further communicates a value match, and should explain how the person can make a difference in the company. Candidates want to know what they could be saying “yes” to, beyond the position, including the long term opportunities, how this fits into their career path, what to expect in the first year, the people, the benefits, and the company culture. Specifically address any issues based off of the candidate’s previous requests or interests, making it known that you value their personal goals and will continue to take them into account throughout their employment, in order to avoid future discrepancies.

This final piece of the recruitment puzzle can be thought of as the first step of the onboarding process, giving them confidence in the company and the vital part they can play there. Let them know that your company has a lot to offer them, as you believe they have a lot to offer the company.

OffersPersonalize Your Job Offers


How to Connect with Industry Thought Leaders


The easiest way to improve your recruitment process is by networking with other recruiters at conferences and events, as well as via online networking groups.

As part of our exclusive network, GradLeaders invites you to attend our annual Connections Conference and topic-centered Focus Forums. These events are specifically designed to share and encourage best practices, debate issues and facilitate networking between our partners and other industry leaders. With the common goal to effectively match top MBA talent with employers around the world, our team and attendees provide unique and valuable insight into current and future recruitment practices.

Our Connections Conference continues to be the premier event for thought leadership in MBA recruitment. There is always something new to learn, and we appreciate the ideas, comments, and willingness to share year after year. The rich and open dialogue that takes place at this one-of-a-kind event helps us to understand our partners’ needs so we can best accommodate them in the future. Whether you have attended one of our Connections Conferences in the past or not, we guarantee you will profit from the collaboration between the industry’s key players.

Co-hosted by several of our corporate and school partners, our Focus Forum events take a closer look at MBA recruitment within specific industries, such as energy, technology and healthcare. As business activities and industry demands evolve, so does MBA recruitment, and there are unique issues to address in each and every industry.

Connect with other Recruiters


Corporate TeamTodd Erdy Vice President, Customer Success – Corporate [email protected] King Director, Customer Success – [email protected]

School TeamHeather Krumpak, Vice President, Customer Success – Higher [email protected] Swonger Manager, Customer Success – Higher Education [email protected]

In partnership with the world’s top-ranked graduate business schools and professional associations, GradLeaders has created the most comprehensive recruiting network available. For more than two decades, these school partners—and the companies that employ their students and alumni—look to us for advanced recruiting technology solutions, best practices, and innovation.

We are proud to connect today’s business leaders with tomorrow’s, providing an ever-expanding range of opportunities through our:

School Partnerships & Professional Associations —

comprised of the world’s top graduate business schools and professional associations, we have created an exclusive network of business leadership talent, spreading across 4 continents. These programs count on us for their online resume books, job boards, OCR tools, and office automation needs in order to increase the visibility of their candidates, while providing their students and alumni with more diverse and quality career opportunities.

Corporate Partnerships & Global Recruiters —

recruiters around the world gain access to our exclusive school and professional association network to quickly and costeffectively identify and attract top business leadership talent. Our advanced recruitment technology solutions mean better control of the recruiting process, and ensure that corporate recruiters never again miss high-potential and high-performing talent.

For 20+ years, the team at GradLeaders has worked to provide our school partners, professional associations, and corporate clients with premium recruitment technology, innovative strategies, and superior service. Always up to date on industry best practices, our partners look to us for relevant information and insight. As an extension of your recruitment team, we are happy to answer your questions, address your concerns, and respond to your input. If you did not find the information you were looking for in this guide, we invite you to contact any one of our team members.

Connect with the Experts


Daily Tweet something specific and relevant to candidates or career

services about new job openings, OCR whereabouts, and link to relevant articles

Weekly Proactively search for candidates through GradLeaders

Recruiting Post on Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn news and

information about the types of candidates you’re looking for, list out current job opportunities, give advice to candidates on how to prepare, and share insight on MBA recruitment best practices.

Annually Submit OCR requests for the next season Prepare OCR travel calendar Invite candidates to OCR Host presentations on campus Attend MBA career fairs Attend annual industry and career conferences Download annual GradLeaders reports

As Needed Post jobs via MultiPost Review job applicants Conference sourcing and outreach Host online information sessions and presentations Interview candidates Make offers to candidate Attend industry events

Designed to coincide with the recruitment calendars of our partner schools and corporate clients, GradLeaders maintains a year-round outreach schedule. This calendar serves as a guide for activities each audience is engaged in throughout the academic year. It not only helps to outline our schedule each year, but should also aid our partners in planning timely outreach.

The best time to start building relationships with career services, students and alumni is right now. By merely aligning your outreach efforts with the peaks of recruitment activity, your recruiting team isn’t taking advantage of the surrounding preparation and response periods. Plan ahead and build relationships with career services, associations, industry experts, and your MBAs throughout the entire year to create a steady and balanced approach to recruitment.

Use our calendar of recurring activities to build your own MBA career service calendar.

Download Seasonal MBA Recruiting Calendar (PDF)

In order to keep our outreach activities organized and itemized, GradLeaders maintains a detailed to-do list. By outlining our daily, weekly, monthly and annual strategies, we can be sure that we are staying on schedule by consistently moving forward with our long and short term promotional objectives.

To pace your outreach efforts through uniformed priority, we suggest that your recruitment team creates a daily, weekly monthly and annual to-do list as well. Mapping out your recurring tasks will create a straightforward system of your outreach efforts and essential updates. Keeping your office in a state of consistency and your team in the know will maximize the effectiveness of your career services.

Use our to-do list on the right as a rough outline of standard upkeep activities to include in your own schedule.

Seasonal Calendar

To-Do List


1. http://www.manpowergroup.com/wps/wcm/connect/ec2b6e68-bc26-4e5a-8493-78a9b53c5ab8/2014 +Talent+Shortage+Infographic-Final.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&ContentCache=NONE

2. http://www.careerbuilder.com/share/aboutus/pressreleasesdetail. aspx?sd=5/8/2013&id=pr757&ed=12/31/2013

3. http://guides.wsj.com/management/recruiting-hiring-and-firing/how-to-reduce-employee-turnover

4. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/pf/jobs/1205/gallery.top-MBA-employers/6.html

5. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/pf/jobs/1205/gallery.top-MBA-employers/2.html

6. http://www.slideshare.net/VeronicaSegovia1/employer-branding-with-social-media-for-brightwebinars

7. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/10/mobile-apps-save-small-businesses-time-an money_n_1269049.html

8. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-03-25/tempt-talent-with-creative-recruitingbusinessweekbusiness- news-stock-market-and-financial-advice

9. http://web.jobvite.com/rs/jobvite/images/Jobvite_2013_SocialRecruitingSurveyResults.pdf

10. http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2013/10/27/5-ways-to-use-mobile-to-recruit-top-talent/

11. http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/transforming-hr-recruitment-practices-with-big data#axzz2v0hLCOer

12. http://www.smartrecruiters.com/blog/how-to-make-a-job-offer/

Sources

We’re the market leader in b-school recruitment technology, connecting leading employers with students and alumni from the world’s top-ranked graduate

business schools. Our exclusive school partnerships and industry-leading recruiting products make us the #1 choice of companies seeking business leadership talent.

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BEST PRACTICES FOR MBA RECRUITERS - GradLeaders · 2016-08-01 · schools as desired. With one job...

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