While this year’s graduates face one of the toughest job markets in decades, Illinois graduates have a little leverage. A branded, coordinated marketing campaign by the career services offices on campus is helping ensure that the employers who are recruiting hire Illini.
The HireIllini campaign is the brainchild of the Career Services Council, a coalition of representatives from the career services offices across campus. Although the offices differ widely in the types of students they serve – from very focused, graduate/professional students to bewildered undergraduates still seeking their purpose in life – the career services offices all have a common mission: to effectively reach employers and increase the number of possible recruitment opportunities for their students.
About three years ago, the council “decided that we’d like to increase the number of employers coming to campus, but we’d also like to encourage companies to do some one-stop shopping,” and expand their recruitment efforts to other colleges or departments on campus that they might not have used previously, said Nell Madigan, assistant dean and director of career services in the School of Labor and Employment Relations.
During spring 2006, the council developed a marketing campaign to promote the UI as the pre-eminent place to recruit talent. The campaign obtained a three-year (2006-2009), $105,000 grant from the Office of the Provost. The goals of the initiative included introducing employers to the vast opportunities for entry-level and experienced hires in all majors at Illinois; ensuring that current employers are aware of the wide range of quality human resources available from other disciplines on campus; and promoting cross-campus hiring for employers with multiple-discipline human resource needs.
The HireIllini brand was designed so that each of the individual career services offices could use it to promote themselves.
A Web site, HireIllini.com, was created as a centralized entry point to the campus Career Services Network. It provides links to the career services offices, job fair calendars and provides facts about Illinois’ exceptional people, its academic rankings and other information of interest to potential employers.
Promotional materials developed for the campaign include a HireIllini e-card, a Five Easy Steps for Recruiting at Illinois brochure, and fliers that were distributed to various constituents, including current and prospective employers, alumni and donors. More than 6,500 employers in the database of the National Association of Colleges and Employers and more than 2,000 members of the American Association for Employment in Education received HireIllini brochures. The outreach efforts also have included banner advertisements with groups such as the Society for Human Resource Management.
Hire Illini ads have beckoned from the pages of several issues of Illinois Alumni magazine, encouraging alumni who might be making corporate hiring decisions to consider recruiting their fellow Illini.
And, on April 11, about 50 runners who competed in the inaugural Illinois Marathon and half-marathon in Champaign wore HireIllini shirts.
During the 2007-2008 academic year, more than 3,200 students registered and participated in career services events and activities. Despite a struggling economy and flagging labor markets, 3,356 employers – including 40 of the top 50 Fortune 500 firms – recruited at Urbana and held more than 27,800 interviews on campus.
Madigan said the numbers for AY08-09 probably will be down, as the economy has forced many companies to reduce their hiring, although science and technology fields have not been as deeply affected.
The bleak job market facing graduates – and the trend of dwindling state support facing the university – makes employer outreach more important than ever, Madigan said.
“If a company is happy with the human capital that they’re able to bring into their organization, then they want to have a stronger partnership with campus,” Madigan said. “They come back, and they want to know other ways they can be involved, whether it’s through sponsoring research, scholarships, speaking to classes or working with student groups. At a time when our budget is frightening, these are the relationships that we want to cultivate.
“It used to be these things were just nice; now, they’re desperately needed.”
