High-Tech Hiring

CD-ROM and video aid recruiters' efforts

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By Eric R. Chabrow
Issue: Jan. 23, 1995

Campus recruiters are throwing away their glossy brochures and slide shows and replacing them with videoconferencing and CD-ROM presentations.

One supplier, Netview Inc. in Madison, Wis., was formed last year to sell desktop videoconferencing systems based on Intel Corp.'s ProShare technology to universities and corporate human resources departments.

One of Netview's first customers, the University of Tennessee, uses the videoconferencing system to allow corporate recruiters to interview graduate-level engineering students at the school's Tullahoma campus, 3-1/2-hours away from the main campus in Knoxville. ProShare provides direct links between students and faculty on both campuses and corporate managers in their home offices, predicts Bob Greenberg, the university's career services director.

Video Interviews
Last fall, the University of Wisconsin in Madison equipped one of its 20 interview rooms with a desktop videoconferencing system. After an early October campus visit, a recruiter from consumer products giant Procter &Gamble Co. in Cincinnati then held a second round of interviews a few weeks later for two December graduates via a video connection. The long-distance interviews resulted in a job offer for one of the students in the consumer-product company's finance department.

The technology also could help small businesses or overseas corporations that can ill afford long-distance trips to conduct campus interviews. "Videoconferencing can also tie into our niche programs, where we only have 10 or 15 graduates a year--or not enough to warrant a recruiter's visit," says Karen Stauffacher, director of the University of Wisconsin's Business Career Center.

CD-ROM technology also is catching on among campus recruiters. Officials from the nation's largest insurer, the Prudential Insurance Co. of America in Newark, N.J., toured some of the country's top colleges and universities last fall with a multimedia presentation based on CD-ROM that was intended to acquaint potential recruits with Prudential's management-training program. The presentation mixes animation and video clips with music, photographs, and text.

Says Katherine Pojawa, VP of education and development for Prudential: "By mixing the media, you get a good feel for our corporate culture." Besides, she adds, "We needed to have a better way to attract the MTV generation."

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