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Here’s a quick list to get started investigating the world’s top recruiting companies. Although this is for MBAs, not undergrads, here are the top 100 companies that MBAs would like to work for. The winner, not surprisingly, is McKinsey. (As a quick data point, the top recruiter at Stanford last year was Google.)
The Wall Street Journal features an article by Emily Meehan, who writes about twenty-somethings who move away from their hometowns to nab their dream jobs:
As twentysomethings quickly discover, sometimes getting ahead in a career – or just getting started – can mean crossing time zones, moving to far-flung places. What happens to friends and family? Conversations are long distance, and held after 9 p.m., when our cellphone minutes are free.
[They] have forsaken the safety of familiar surroundings, friends and family, hairdressers, dentists, and pubs, to pursue their ambitions. In this testing stage of our careers, it’s too early to tell what all the moving will lead to.
[…]
Ms. Meinhart says there isn’t anyone in the entire state of New Hampshire whom she knows well enough to help her change a flat tire. “I feel completely isolated,” she says. “Its harder to meet people outside of school and that social environment. I’ve learned from this experience that a job isn’t enough, I need stimulation, and social interaction.”
The last point is interesting. Young people are intimately interested in the social aspect of their work. In other words, it’s not just about the work, but who they’ll be working with. When you’re trying to recruit college graduates, don’t ignore this. Tell them how they’ll make friends and professional contacts. Will they have a formal mentoring relationship? What about trips to the local ballgame every month? Will you allow (encourage?) them to be on AIM (instant messenger) at work?
I’ll give you an example from my own recruiting experience. Whenever I interviewed at a company, I always dug around to find out what people did during lunch. Did they eat with friends? Or did they eat alone? Believe it or not, I was afraid of working somewhere where people eat lunch at desks. It was that important to me. How can you communicate the importance of social relationships to your potential recruits?
Welcome! If you’re a recruiter, HR expert, senior executive, hiring manager, or you’re just interested in learning about the new rules of recruiting top college graduates, this is the place for you. Our book, Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat the Big Guys in the War for Talent, will be released on August 2nd.
We’ll be blogging about behind-the-scenes recruiting stories and recent developments in college recruiting. We may even post articles from the cutting-room floor of the book! Along the way, we’ll show you how to compete with the world’s best recruiting companies — regardless of your budget.
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Here’s to recruiting the best!
-Ramit Sethi, co-author (along with Chris Resto and Ian Ybarra)