RECRUITING 101

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Feb 02, 2007 by Acton, Ryann

SYRACUSE - More employers are heading back to college - not to take classes - but to recruit the upcoming crop of 2007 graduates.

Employers are turning to college career fairs, recruiting events, and on-campus interview sessions to beef up their work force with 2007 college graduates to be. The stable economy is giving employers confidence to hire again. Employers are also preparing for the inevitable. Within the next five to 10 years, employers expect to be hit hard with a mass exodus of baby boomers trading in their briefcases for retirement.

Syracuse University (SU), Cornell University, and the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) are all reporting higher numbers of employers recruiting their 2007 graduates to be. For some upcoming graduates, this could equate to more competitive job offers, experts say.

This year has been the best school year for college recruiting since the economic downturn in 2000 and the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, says Michael Cahill, director of SU's Center for Career Services. More employers are interested in recruiting on campus - 31 percent more employers visited SU in the fall of 2006 compared to the fall of 2005, Cahill says.

More employers plan to increase their college hiring in 2007, according to The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). In the Northeast, employers plan to hire 16.9 percent more new college graduates in 2007, according to NACE's Job Outlook 2007 survey. That number is slightly below national figures employers nationally expect to hire 17.4 percent more college graduates in 2007, the survey reports.

NACE forecasts trends in the job market, tracks legal issues in employment, and provides benchmarks for professionals. The Bethlehem, Pa.-based professional association connects 5,200 career professionals with 2,000 colleges and universities nationwide.

To be sure, not all 2007 college graduates will have their pick of lucrative job offers. SU students majoring in education, communications, and liberal arts are typically hired by small businesses and nonprofits that cannot afford to visit SU or hire in bulk, says Karen McGee, assistant dean for student affairs at SU's, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

In demand

Several majors in demand by employers now are accounting, banking, transportation, and engineering, Cahill says.

"Electrical and computer engineers can really take their pick among jobs," Cahill contends.

Lockheed Martin, a Bethesda, Md.-based defense contractor with a major plant in the town of Salina, recruits from SU and other area colleges. Of Lockheed's 140,000 employees nationwide, between 50,000 and 60,000 are engineers, says George J. (Chip) Eschenfelder, a company spokesman based here. Lockheed hires approximately 8,000 engineers annually, he says. Of those, 50 percent are recent college graduates, Eschenfelder says. He did not have recruiting figures for Lockheed's Salina facility, which employs 2,350.

The number of banking and consulting positions available to new college graduates are is increasing due to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act says Angela Petrucco, director of SU's Martin J. Whitman School of Management Career Center. The act, which President George W. Bush signed into law July 30, 2002, introduced strict accounting rules to prevent corporate and accounting fraud.

Recruiting at Whitman has increased 15 percent to 20 percent overall in 2006, Petrucco says. During the 20062007 academic school year, employers conducted 256 interviews with students and posted 700 job listings, she adds.

Whitman hosts several recruiting events on campus throughout the school year, including the Campus to Community Internship Fair on Jan. 30, which featured local companies and national corporations. Sixteen companies attended the fair including C&S Companies, CXtec, Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, Lockheed Martin, Clear Channel Radio, and Philip Morris USA.

Recruitment is also increasing at SUNY ESF, says Thomas Slocum, director of Career and Counseling Services at SUNY ESF. The school has fully booked its spring semester 2007 environmental career fair in late February with 50 participating employers, up from 43 last year, Slocum says. Companies will include O'Brien & Gere, landscape-architecture firms, and not-for profit advocacy groups.

"We had to turn some companies away because we ran out of room," Slocum says.

Cornell University in Ithaca is also seeing increased recruitment, says Rebecca Sparrow, director of Cornell's Career Services. The number of employers attending fall career fairs increased 20 percent in 2006, Sparrow says. About 45 percent of Cornell undergraduates found their jobs through the help of Cornell Career Services, 17.9 percent found employment through on-campus recruiting, and 5.5 percent found a job through an onor off-campus job fair, according to Cornell's 2005 postgraduate survey.

General Electric, Co., IBM, Microsoft Corp., and JPMorgan Chase & Co., Cornell University, Goldman Sachs & Co., Steve & Barry's University Sportswear, Teach for America, the U.S. Navy, and Weill Cornell Medical Center employed the most Cornell graduates in 2005, according to the post-graduate survey.