Where will you be recruited from?
We look for jobs when graduating from school or college and then many times during our careers.
When approaching a job search, keep in mind is that employers want to hire workers who will be rapidly productive.
Therefore, think of jobs in which you will be quickly productive and focus your search efforts towards them. This will improve your odds of getting recruited.
Getting recruited as an experienced professional
Lateral or experienced candidates tend to be recruited for skills which are portable i.e. which the potential hire has acquired elsewhere and can be rapidly deployed in the hiring company.
1. Proficiency in HR, accounting, information technology, and legal tends to be portable across industries.
2. Similarly, industry specific skills like automotive design, freight & logistics, sales for IT services, or apparel merchandizing are portable across companies within an industry sector.
Proficiency in these portable skills allows you to be productive in different companies within an industry sector or across sectors and enhances the likelihood of getting recruited as an experienced hire.
Conversely, as you grow in your career, invest in building proficiency in skills which are portable across companies. This will enhance the prospects of your getting recruited by other companies within or outside your industry
When lateral or experienced resource hiring is not an option
The preferred path for an employer would be to fill its hiring needs with rapidly productive experienced resources.
However, these resources may be in short supply, or the wage points may be higher than what an organization can afford or willing to pay. In either case, employers will look for alternatives.
When they do, they will have to make investments in training and grooming the talent they acquire and to offset this, a goal will be to acquire trainable talent at wage costs lower than those of experienced, productive resources.
One source of this trainable, groom able and lower cost talent is the school or college campus
Getting recruited from campus
Recruits from campus bring youth, energy and the willingness to adapt and learn. In contrast, they lack (for the most part) relevant work experience in the field in which they are likely to be deployed.
Keeping in mind that organizations are looking for workers who will be rapidly productive, some job streams which have a high likelihood of getting recruited from campus are
1. Jobs with well documented processes and practices like legal, accounting, IT, medicine, welding, and architecture where professional skills acquired from the educational curricula are sufficient for being productive at work, even if in entry level roles.
2. Customer service roles where the skills required on the job can be rapidly acquired through short duration training.
3. That clerical, customer care, transportation & warehouse roles where productivity tends not to rise significantly with years of experience and younger workers can quickly become as productive as veterans.
4. Where skills needed require intensive training & experience in company specific processes & proprietary platforms. This is often the case with large companies which leverage their IP or proprietary processes in the course of their work and one of the reasons why large institutions and consulting companies tend to have a healthy appetite for campus hires
5. Where demand exceeds supply of experienced resources as is currently the case in computer sciences, nursing/home-health care, logistics and freight operations.
Looking to land a job at the end of school or college, think about these work streams. Choose the one close to your interests and align your coursework, skill building, and job pursuits accordingly to maximize the chances of getting recruited in the job & company of your choice.
In closing
Organizations look to recruit the most productive resources which they can rapidly deploy and afford.
For skills which are portable within an industry sector, e.g. welding or logistics and for those which are portable across industries like IT, legal or accounting, companies can recruit experienced professionals from their peers.
When experienced resources are in short supply or the cost is higher than what they can or want to pay, employers will head to educational campus’ to recruit employees who will be trained and groomed to be productive.
Therefore, as an experienced professional
Invest in building skills which are portable across companies and industries and those which are in short supply. These will improve your chances of being solicited and recruited– and reciprocally of being seen as a resource to be retained by your current one.
And if you are looking to be recruited from campus.
Acquire skills which can be put to work with limited post campus training, or become proficient in skills where demand is running higher than the availability of experienced workers, or aim to work for companies which have proprietary processes and systems and & will train you in them.
Keep swinging!
