As employers or someone in charge of recruitment for a company – the man or woman in charge of filling student job vacancies – there are many different ways to tweak recruitment strategies so that you can go a long way towards not only finding the best young talent and harnessing that talent, but also giving yourself a much better chance of improving staff retention by encouraging new recruits to stick around in the future and benefit the company in years to come.
In the past, we’ve suggested how you can make life easier for yourself and increase the possibility of employing the most suitable candidate for job vacancies by looking at essential interview questions. These questions could also help you gage whether or not you think your bright new recruit is intending on building a career within your company.
There are also many initiatives out there to help employers who are investing their time in employing young people such as school leavers or those young people who either don’t want to, or are unable to go to university. Running apprenticeships might be a viable option for your company or, depending on the type of field you are in and the size of your firm, setting up School Leaver Programmes could also prove invaluable. These types of initiatives can run alongside existing graduate programmes you might already have in place – it doesn’t always have to be choice between one or the other.
E4S is all about providing students and young people with opportunities to find work – anything from part time student jobs at evenings and weekends to seasonal work, both in the United Kingdom and abroad, to graduate jobs and other full time roles such as apprenticeships. If you are considering ‘what’s the point of giving young people a job’, we’ve looked at how employers can benefit by employing students and young people by offering holiday jobs and we’ve also seen that 2015 is projected to be a year where job vacancies will be on the increase. So, with this being the case, it’s all well and good having systems in place where students and young people can feel themselves to be a valuable part of the team in the workplace, but, when student job vacancies do arise, how do you go about attracting graduates, school leavers and other young people to apply for your vacancies?
How To Attract Young People To Apply For Student Job Vacancies
Job Vacancies Are A Chance To Promote Your Business
As well as recruiting staff, when you have job vacancies to advertise, this is also where you get a chance to market your company to others. Whatever type of job you are advertising, how do you want your company to appear to job seekers?
You can go a long way to attracting the best young people if your company comes across as dynamic, forward thinking in your job adverts. And, especially where students and school leavers are concerned, does your company come across as somewhere where they will have fun while working hard and receiving training? Just as companies want to know potential interview candidates are taking their job application seriously and are committed to working for the company, in return, young people want to be given the impression that their student jobs, apprenticeships or other roles will be both rewarding for them and beneficial for them in the long run.
A job vacancy description that is a few lines if generic text is not going to have a very good chance of catching the eye of young people. Mix up your fonts, text size and colour; use images; and, it goes without saying, make sure your company logo is clearly visible. After all, you are the company demonstrating to young people that your recruitment strategy is tailored to them. If someone has been looking for student jobs, apprenticeships or graduate careers for some time, you need your company to stand out above the rest in order to hook in the best young talent.
Tailor your job vacancies to the people you are looking for
If your company is investing in young people and has vacancies in student jobs such as summer jobs or other seasonal work available, is your recruitment strategy tailored to attract those students and young people?
When it comes to university students, many students live away from home, on campus or in student accommodation. During the summer holidays, Christmas break or Easter, for example, some will need to return home. If your company has branches around the United Kingdom, could you offer students holiday jobs and seasonal work closer to their home during those periods so that they can return to their positions in the area where they are studying during semester time? If that is a possibility for your company and you can make this clear in your recruitment material, this could be a good way of encouraging young talent to stay with the company after graduation to develop a graduate career and perhaps move into management or head office positions further down the line.
If you are offering apprenticeships or school leaver programmes to young people and you are looking for young people and students with particular skills or a particular type of personality, how is your recruitment strategy tailored to attract those people? How are you making your company look open and welcoming to new, young talent?
Use Social Media To Promote Job Vacancies To Young People
We all know that these days, used well, social media is a powerful tool for promoting your company, and it can also be used to attract young people to apply for your student jobs and other positions you might have available. Obviously, most younger people are very active on various social media outlets and how you are represented on those social media outlets can make a difference in the types of people you attract into applying for your jobs.
Many companies are represented on Linked In and this plays a big part in their recruitment strategies. While Linked In is clearly important for recruitment, especially for recruitment for graduate jobs and possibly School Leaver Programmes, other social media outlets shouldn’t be neglected. Have you attracted students and an all round younger audience to like your page on Facebook or follow you on Twitter? Have you dipped into other social media outlets such as Pinterest or Instagram? Again, how you are making use of these outlets can entice the best young talent to apply for your job vacancies, whether that is graduate jobs, student jobs or other employment opportunities.
Use Video To Attract Young People To Apply For Job Vacancies
Video is increasingly popular in the United Kingdom, especially amongst younger people, so visuals like this can be a great way to promote your company and your job vacancies. If your usual job vacancies are posted as a ream of text, this can get lost amongst all the other companies who are posting their job vacancies as ream of text, too. Video asks people to watch and listen rather than read through paragraphs of the type of candidate you are looking for.
This links to the social media point above. Has your company got a YouTube account and, if so, how is it being used? YouTube can be a valuable asset in your recruitment strategy and you don’t even need to be an expert film producer or director. If you are hoping to encourage young people or students to apply for summer jobs or Christmas jobs, for example, yoıng staff who are already a part of your team can be a part of informal videos, talking to the camera about their role and why they like working for your company. And when it comes to staff retention, if you have got managers or staff in other senior roles who perhaps started out in student jobs or as young apprentices, they could also do informal videos to describe their career path through your company.
Video can of course be incorporated into your other social media and online presence elsewhere, too. None of these need to be mutually exclusive methods of attracting young people to apply for student jobs and other roles.
Use Job Boards Such As E4S To Attract Students And Young People To Apply For Job Vacancies
Yes, so where do sites such as E4S fit into all this? E4S are dedicated to getting young people into jobs such as student jobs that could could be seasonal work or part time jobs at evenings and weekends. Apprenticeships, School Leaver Programmes and graduate jobs are also advertised on our site, as well as other vacancies. And the good news is, young people and students use E4S to look for jobs and careers.
Within the E4s site, it is possible to have your company profile – with your company logo – which tells job hunters a little about your company, the types of roles you might have available and the types of people you might be looking for to work within your company. The text of your company profile isn’t too long (around 600 words). Just enough to give students and other job seekers a flavour of what your company is all about.
A promotional video from your company, your Facebook page, Twitter feed or links to the career section of your website – everything mentioned in the points above; these can be included in your company profile on E4S so that you can promote your job vacancies and target them to the right people.
E4S is the most visited student job site and, as we say in our About Us page, we are passionate about helping clients find students to fill their vacancies, and we are totally committed to helping students find jobs. A win win situation for both parties.
There is no one way to attract students and young people to view job vacancies and apply for roles when they arise; rather, it should be a combination of factors, some of which are mentioned above. The type of role you are advertising and the type of candidates you want to attract can be reflected in each individual advert. Whatever type of roles you have available, whether that’s summer jobs, part time vacancies, graduate careers or other positions, if you are looking to invest in students and young people, why not take a look at our E4S About Us page, and our page showing the E4S services, for more information about what we do for you and what you can do to try to fill your vacancies with the most suitable candidates.
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