So I've a friend that is a college recruiter. But not like you'd probably think. Most people hear the term 'College Recruiter' and think of a fast talker looking to get new grads to attend their college because of this sports program or that sports program. Others might imagine a corporate (or professional sports) type that hits the colleges to impress juniors and seniors with great corporate culture or career opportunities.

My friend recruits for people to attend college to get a (gasp!) education. Their goal is to recruit people that are interested in furthering their education or expand their skill set to help move their careers forward. Easy job? Probably not as easy as we'd think - especially given the economy lately.

In talking with them yesterday I was asking 100 questions in typical RecruiterGuy fashion.. and as a result, I got to thinking...

I know that there are colleges that have recruiting teams or representatives that make the rounds to bring in new students. But these efforts are primarily geared around diversity recruitment or new and/or specialized programs. What if all colleges had a recruiting program that ran like a business recruits passive and active job seekers? What if, in today's economy, you had to take hold of a recruiting initiative to boost college attendance? And you needed to be a little more proactive than slapping a referral link on some coozies or the latest football program... What then?

Our conversation naturally progressed to SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - right after we beat referrals to death. With services like Indeed.com, (that just separated from FreeBug, btw!) SimplyHired.com, and JuJu.com gathering passive job seekers together is a whole new game. So why not passive college seekers?

Sure, some colleges are using SEM to attract students - but most of what you'll find today for many colleges is done by third party pay per click generic college hubs. Need an example? Check out sites like collegesurfing.com.

Why vertical search? Easy! This growing market already includes major players like the above mentioned as well as several others that are drawing a stronger line between job search engines and job boards than has ever existed before. In summary, these job search engines actually index (reach out and grab) jobs from various sources on the net while the traditional job boards (like monster.com, careerbuilder.com, etc.) push job postings out in an advertisement fashion. Basically this means that rather than looking on a job board for jobs posted to THAT job board, job seekers can go to a single aggregated source and find jobs posted on literally hundreds of boards.

And if you think that the coolest feature of these handy little sites stops there, think again. Customers now have the pleasure of paying for performance rather than readership. To clarify how the "Pay per Click" model works I'll use a newspaper ad (/me shudders!) as an example.

Print media usually charges it's customer for projected readership - meaning that you will pay for how many people the publishing channel *thinks* will read your ad. The higher the readership or distribution of a magazine or newspaper then typically the higher the price of running marketing through them. Whether or not you get any response from that ad - you pay the agreed upon price.

"Pay per Click" changed everything. Rather than paying for how many people someone thinks your ad might be seen by, you pay only for how many people take action upon seeing it. This means that if you run an ad on a website and 500 people see your marketing but only 7 of those people actually click on it... you only pay for the 7 clicks. But wait, there's more! When your ads are placed online they can be found in any number of places like Facebook, MySpace, Ning, or even engines like Google and Yahoo! - even more importantly is your ability to target certain demographics... like college students.

Is there value here? Does it make sense with the recent changes in today's economy for colleges to get aggressive about making a secondary education more attractive through their 'student brand?' As someone that is supporting a college senior and that has two more young students in the making - I'm a little frustrated with tuition rates continually on the rise - and someone had better do something to make "college A" look more attractive than "college B" if they want my money.

Could taking even the simplest of corporate recruiting tactics like SEM be beneficial for college recruitment? What's the down side? Other tactics to consider... Career portals vs. sites, Job Board postings, sponsorship/hosting with direction to sexy landing sites.

Hey, I'm open here. Whatcha' got?
Originally posted here...