Until not too long ago, Melissa Cummings and her five-person team would travel all over the country in search of top college talent ready to flood the work force. But then the recession set in.
Cummings, Aetna’s head of work force planning and college recruiting, and her staff are now refocusing recruitment efforts to boost their presence at colleges in states where the Hartford-based insurance giant has major operations.
The new recruiting strategy, installed last month, was partly prompted by the need to cut back during the downturn and the belief that graduating students will likely look to live at home to boost savings. Cummings said the company is still waiting to determine the demand for new hires.
“We’ve done the homework to know that the bulk of our college hiring is coming to our Hartford location and our Blue Belt locations,” Cummings said. “It doesn’t make much business sense to travel cross-country to California to woo students to move to Hartford.”
It’s a strategy that a number of big employers in the area say they are embracing as a way to cut down on costs across the board. It comes as no surprise that recruiting operations would be scaled back, especially when 22 percent fewer jobs will be offered for graduating students compared with last year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
ESPN in Bristol is cutting back its sizable intern program, which typically has churned out a roster of full-time hires. Laura Lavigne, associate director of college relations, declined to say how the size of this year’s class of interns compares to past years.
“It’s definitely smaller in proportion to what our hiring needs might be,” Lavigne said. “We’ve had to make some adjustments to reflect business conditions in general.”
In terms of college outreach, Lavigne said her operation has recently been relying on video conferences for campus calls, only saving campus visits for colleges that have traditionally been a large source of ESPN hires.
“We’re trying to maintain relationships and continue to pipeline for future opportunities because we know at some point the faucet will turn back on and the economy will come back,” she said.
Matt Hamlet, vice president of talent acquisition for Travelers, runs a team of 10 full-time university relations staff with marching orders to cultivate relationships with three of four colleges. That means holding office hours on campus and meeting with deans and professors to get classroom time.
Travelers has a collection of partner and affiliated campuses where the company maintains a strong presence, especially in the Hartford and St. Paul areas.
Hamlet said the company gets a big recruiting push from the number of University of Connecticut alumni working for the company.
“I can’t talk to the exact number of openings we expect,” Hamlet said. “We’re planning on having as a strong as a presence this coming fall as we did over the last couple of years.”
The Hartford and United Technologies Corp., both of which have announced major layoffs over the past year, declined to be interviewed for this story.
But the biggest change in this recession has been a much smaller participation in campus career fairs, according to local career services operations at local colleges.
“The college relations departments are shedding staff from a lot of companies, so we’re seeing fewer companies coming on campus,” said Lanna Hagge, director of career services at Trinity College.
With fewer jobs out there for college grads, that also puts the pressure on the colleges to get creative and get productive.
The University of Connecticut’s School of Business launched a campaign last fall not to raise money, but 200 jobs from alumni and friends to supplement normal recruiting efforts.
The school also started up an online community for alumni in the winter.
After the economy tanked last year, Trinity beefed up its career services staff with several new positions. Hagge said the school realized jobs in the financial services sector — one of the college’s major focuses — would be scarce for this year’s graduates.
“A lot of firms that tend to hire in the spring said this year, ‘We just don’t know exactly what we’ll need.’ Last year they would be sending us opportunities in January,” Hagge said.
Saint Joseph College, known for its education program, said uncertainty about the future of the state budget has scaled back area schools’ recruitment efforts.
