Recruiting with Inside Higher Ed

If you’re a college, university or other employer, Inside Higher Ed offers you a powerful set of recruiting tools that easily surpasses anything else available in academia. This section explains how these tools work and how you can make the most of them.

Read on for help with:

I’m from an ad agency — anything special I should know?
Reaching passive candidates – the key to a high quality, diverse candidate pool.
Dos and Don’ts of Effective Jobs Web Sites
Recruitment Ads – a letter to the person you want to hire
About Inside Higher Ed’s users
About posting jobs
About drawing more attention to your institution or your jobs.
About online application delivery
About the Confidential Profiles database
Getting more information

For more, visit the main Help screen

I’m from an ad agency — anything special I should know?

Inside Higher Ed values our agency clients. Register or log in to our special agency page — you’ll be able to post jobs for any client via your account, track all your postings, re-post expired jobs, even track the page views on postings for your clients.

Inside Higher Ed pays a 15% agency commission for any and all products/services sold by recognized ad agencies (we use the Standard Director of Advertising Agencies to identify legitimate agencies). Post jobs via the agency page and we’ll automatically deduct your commission.

Agencies can place postings for institutions receiving special pricing from Inside Higher Ed — your commission will be deducted from the institution price.

And Inside Higher Ed pays full commission on packages sold by ad agencies — please see our rates for information on available packages.

For more help, please contact our Vice President of Sales, Laura McFarland, at 202-659-9208, ext. 102 or by e-mail at laura.mcfarland@insidehighered.com

Reaching passive candidates – the key to a high quality, diverse candidate pool.

These days, it’s not difficult to get lots of applications for your open jobs. Post them to your own Web site and a job board or two and the job hunters will find them.

The trick is reaching not just lots of candidates, but the one great hire that will make your search a success. And the reason finding that great hire can be so challenging is very simple – great hires aren’t job hunting. They already have jobs.

That’s why your recruiting strategy has to include smart ways to get job information to “passive candidates” – engaged professionals who don’t consider themselves on the job market, but might be intrigued by a new opportunity if they learn about it.

Keep in mind Inside Higher Ed’s 10 tips for recruiting passive candidates, and surprise yourself with the quality of your next candidate pool.

Network! Don’t think of advertising as your only means for communicating about open jobs. Talk to the great people already working in similar jobs about how they found their jobs. Find out if folks on campus are members of the right professional group or association for the job you’re filling — is there a listserv? An online bulletin board? Get creative.
Advertise your institution, not just your jobs. Your marketing department is always promoting your institution to students and some of the same marketing strategies can ensure that when you have job openings, great candidates will be interested. Be less reactive (starting the recruitment process when the job opens) and more proactive (think of recruiting as an all-the-time activity, like student recruiting).
Advertise beyond the job boards. When it is time to publicize a specific opening, job boards are efficient and economical, but they’re only going to reach job hunters. Look for Web sites and other outlets that have a draw for professionals who aren’t on the hunt (like Inside Higher Ed :)
Put your job announcements to work. Passive candidates won’t dig your posting out of a database – take advantage of tools like Google AdSense, banner advertising and e-mail advertising to get messages in front of them even when they’re not searching.
Write your job postings with passive candidates in mind. Don’t start with responsibilities and qualifications (which are about what you need); instead, highlight the reasons a great hire would really love the job (more on writing effective job postings in Write Job Postings that Land Great Hires)
Make sure your own jobs Web site sells your jobs. The page candidates hit when they click from your postings or your home page to learn about jobs at your school should create an immediate, positive impression of what it’s like to work at your school (more on effective employment Web sites in Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Jobs Pages).
Never miss an opportunity to promote jobs. Make sure the URL for your jobs Web page is included in ALL institutional marketing materials (you never know whose parent might turn out to be your next top hire).
Don’t start the application process too quickly. Never assume a candidate has arrived at your site to apply for a job. Always provide them with a quick link to your job application, but also organize the kinds of links that a person who wants to explore your institution will find useful.
Keep your application as simple as possible. It’s easy to get caught up in how easy your Applicant Tracking System can make your data collection and processing and lose sight of the candidate’s experience. Keep your requirements focused on what you really need at each point in the process, not on what your database can collect.
Treat ALL candidates politely. Acknowledge applications, respond to inquiries and let folks know the status of the search and their application. The person who’s not quite right for the job you have open today could be a perfect fit for the one that opens up tomorrow.

For more useful ideas for effective recruiting, check out Write Job Postings that Land Great Hires and Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Jobs Pages. Take a look at our Recruiting Hall of Shame for some examples of effective (and not so effective) job postings — you don’t want to land on next year’s list!

Dos and Don’ts of Effective Jobs Web Sites

What’s the most important Web site in your recruiting strategy – your own!

Is your employment Web site designed for desperate job hunters or terrific hires? Does it reinforce your institution’s brand, or communicate all the wrong messages?

Take our quick challenge:

Start on your institution’s home page.
Click the link for prospective students — you’ll probably like what you see.
Now go back to the home page and click the link for jobs – if what you see makes you wince, you’re not alone.

A top-quality faculty and staff is a key competitive differentiator for any institution. Yet at most colleges and universities, employment recruiting is perceived as an administrative chore rather than an important strategic investment. Nowhere is this more evident than on college and university Web sites, one of the most visible communication channels for your institutional brand.

How can you make a dreadful jobs site into one that sells your jobs to the best possible hires? It just requires thinking from the perspective of the candidate rather than the recruiter. And following Inside Higher Ed’s 10 do’s and don’ts of effective job recruitment Web sites:

DO!	DON’T!
Create an obvious, prominent link to your jobs from your institution’s home page	Hide your jobs in confusing navigation or behind cryptic labels (“jobs” is a better link than “Join the team”)
Communicate your institution’s “brand.” Use your “prospective students” page as a model – many of the same qualities that attract students will attract employees	Communicate your ATS’s brand. Don’t make your applicant tracking system your recruiting page – remember that the FIRST thing great hires do is explore, not apply
Put smiling faces of real employees on your jobs home page	Use clip art! (it’s ALWAYS obvious)
Lead with the most compelling reason a great hire wants to works at your institution – this can be anything from your location to your benefits to your culture, but really sell it	Lead with off-putting legalese – at this point, you don’t have applicants, just prospects. Save the mentions of drug testing, criminal background checks, and campus crime statistics for later in the process
Feature your most interesting jobs prominently	Treat all jobs as equally compelling – nothing is more off-putting to a senior applicant than seeing a job list with custodians and VPs lumped together
Treat even your lowest level jobs as important – sell the groundskeepers as enthusiastically as the development directors	Consider ANY job a commodity – every hire (even those custodians) has a contribution to make to the success of your institution
Make faculty jobs as easy to find as staff jobs – even if they’re not in the same database, provide clear links and instructions from your main jobs page	Assume that no one’s coming to your site to search for faculty jobs – they are!
Sell every job! Start each posting with a clear, concise and compelling statement of why candidates want this job!	Use internal job descriptions as external postings or treat a database view as a publicly available job list.
Use language that creates a candidate focus — label the link to your application “I want this job” rather than “apply now”	Treat candidates as data entry clerks – ask only for what you really need at each step of the process and keep things simple.
Use technology to be polite – acknowledge receipt of applications, keep applicants informed as the search progresses, and remember that a polite rejection is vastly preferably to being kept hanging.	Use technology to commoditize your candidates – personalize e-mail messages and make sure message templates can be adapted to unique requirements.

For more information on effective recruiting, see Reaching Passive Candidates and The Dos and Don’ts of Effective Job Sites

And take a look at our Recruiting Hall of Shame for some examples of effective (and not so effective) job postings — you don’t want to land on next year’s list!

Recruitment Ads – a letter to the person you want to hire

Writing effective recruitment ads is not difficult, but it does take a little thought. Too often institutions use an internal job description, or the sketchy information that resides in an applicant tracking database as an ad — with woeful results. The thing to remember above all is that you’re not just writing for people who are actively job hunting (and therefore won’t be put off by jargon or a de-humanizing experience), but for terrific hires who are NOT looking. Your ad needs to grab attention with a strong statement about why a great hire should be interested. And it should be written from the candidate’s perspective.

Here are some quick tips and examples to help you write your next letter to the person you really want to hire.

DON’T

Mistake your database entries for ads – use real language not internal jargon
Start with the “screening” stuff (responsibilities and qualifications)
Send people to a generic Web site and expect them to track down the ad

Example:

Marketing and Outreach Coordinator (940710)

Position Type: Part-Time Professional Non-Instructional/Adm Task
Position ID: 854152
Grade: HI

FLSA: Exempt — Not Eligible for Overtime Compensation
The Marketing and Outreach Coordinator assists the Executive Director of the Center for the Literary Arts with the promotion and marketing of activities

Minimum Requirements:

Bachelor’s degree with two (2) years experience or an Associate’s degree with four (4) years of experience in a related field
Excellent organizational and communication skills (both oral and written)

To apply, please visit www.jobwebsite.edu

EA/EO Employer

Start by selling the job
- a compelling title
- why your great hire wants the job
Use candidate-focused language:
- “To succeed in this role, you’ll need…” not “Qualifications:”
- “You’ll have the opportunity to…” not “Responsibilities:”
- “If this sounds like the job for you…” not “Application Procedures:”
Show a little personality – your model should be online dating, not online tax filing

Example:

Join a creative marketing team supporting a growing arts organization

The Center for Literary Arts at Our University is a terrific place to work. As our new Marketing and Communication Coordinator you’ll work with talented people to create exciting marketing campaigns to support the meaningful work of the Center. All in a lively small city with a burgeoning arts scene.

To succeed, you’ll need a solid liberal arts foundation (a B.A. degree is one way to demonstrate that) and a bit of experience in marketing.

If this opportunity sounds inspiring, visit www.thisjob.ouruniversity.edu for more details and instructions on how to apply.

For more tips on effective recruiting, check out How to Recruit Passive Candidates and Dos and Don’ts of Effective Jobs Web Sites. And take a look at our Recruiting Hall of Shame for some examples of effective (and not so effective) job postings — you don’t want to land on next year’s list!

Careers

School Dean/Assistant Dean, Bouve College (111872), Northeastern University.
Northeastern University, founded in 1898 and located in Boston, is a private research university that is a leader in experiential learning, interdisciplinary scholarship, urban engagement, and research that meets global and societal needs.

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