Connecting the Career Community: Hiring Pipelines and Mobile Apps

Michael Goldman, Miami UniversityLesley Pihlajamaki, Miami University

OMIC Grantee MeetingJune 19, 2015

Agenda

• New research on hiring pipelines• Putting research into practice: • Miami University case study

• New Mobile App• Audience Discussion

What are pipelines?

Hiring pipeline examples

Recruiting~20 partner universities

Hiring pipeline examples

Recruiting~20 partner universities

Various Fortune 500s

Recruiting

Hiring pipeline examples

Recruiting~20 partner universities

Various Fortune 500s

Recruiting

Recruiting

Repeated hiring from sources

• Human capital pipelines (Brymer, Molloy & Gilbert, 2014)

• Disproportionately abundant hiring from an academy source (university, academy company, affinity group)• Relative to the qualified applicant market• Temporally dispersed and repeated

over time

Firm outcomes of hiring pipelines

• Access to scarce human capital• Reduction in hiring (transaction) costs• Heterogeneity in labor pools • Human capital differentiation between rivals• Source of inequity and discrimination

Research Questions

• Why do firms create and maintain hiring pipelines? • What are the anticipated benefits of hiring pipelines…• For hiring firms? • For source organizations, like universities? • For employees who are hired “through” pipelines?

Research thus far…

• Qualitative interviews – 26 to date• hiring firm contacts, • source contacts, • individuals hired through pipeline and considering

employment through pipeline• 7 pipelines, 4 hiring orgs., 6 source orgs.

Five themes of employer motivations

Hiring pipeline creation and maintenance motivations? Preliminary findings suggest:1. Loyalty to source organization2. Hiring efficacy and future hire performance3. Demand or cost pressures4. Fit between source and hiring firm5. Improving firm attractiveness

Five themes of university motivations

Hiring pipeline creation and maintenance motivations? Preliminary findings suggest:1. Improving status – alumni, rankings2. Pedagogical connection with industry3. Research partnerships4. Financial support – scholarships, endowments, etc.5. More attractive to prospective students/parents

Hiring Pipelines

The Miami University Experience

Employers are Facing a Serious Talent GapHiring Pipelines Are A Solution

Hiring pipelines are embedded in your career community

Student

Parents

Faculty

Alumni

Employers

Staff

Government

You Are Managing Similar Pipelines Everyday

• Admission – School Districts as Source of Students• Philanthropy – Alumni as Source of Gifts• R&D – Private Sector Firms and Governments as Source of

Grants• Supply Chain – University Vendors as Source of Products and

Services• Community Service – Not-for-Profits and Governments as

Source of Volunteer Opportunities

Universities Use Supply Chain Skills to Effectively Manage Pipelines

• Understanding the needs of the “customer”• Using data to monitor pipeline performance• Using win-win decision making• Defining mutual expectations• Communicating convincingly• Enhancing stakeholder brands

Miami Experience – Five Key Numbers

• 1,725 (employers who recruit at Miami)• 500 (employers that attend fairs)• 5,500 (internship/job postings)• 20 (sponsoring career partners)• 97.6% (placement/graduate school rate)

Identifying Current and Future Hiring Pipelines

Identifying Current and Future Hiring Pipelines

• Pipelines can be high volume or small volume; they can also be in the private, government, and non-profit sectors.

• You can help determine potential hiring pipeline employers by analyzing:

• internship/co-op and job placement data• internship/co-op and job postings• career fair registrations• corporate gifts/sponsorships, foundation grants,

sponsored research, and government research grants

Identifying Current and Future Hiring Pipelines

• Analyze employers that participate in domestic and international study programs – are they hiring your students?

• Analyze the university’s top 25 vendors—are they hiring your students?

• Analyze LinkedIn Alumni Tool data to find clusters of alumni working in given organizations—are they hiring your students?

• Engage with the university’s parents—are they hiring your students?

Lessons Learned: Institutionalizing Hiring Pipelines

• Use all media channels to build cross-brands on campus and at the employer

• Don’t let the “rich get richer and the poor get poorer” – even a 1 hire per year hiring pipeline can be very valuable (i.e., start-up or underserved major)

• Connect faculty to the pipelines – for sponsored research projects, classroom visits, case studies and short-term projects; faculty are the pumps that keep pipelines flowing

Mobile App

The Miami University Experience

Why Create a Mobile App?

State Funding

Career Community- Agile Launchpad Class

(College of Engineering and Computing)

Career Services is the client

Staff member from Career Services visits Agile Launchpad class

once per week

Mobile app is based on Guidebook technology

Shared cost with campus partners

The app is LIVE as of May, 2015

Marketing the app to students

Assess after fall semester

What is Agile Launchpad?

A partnership between Miami and business sponsors. The key objectives are to deliver working software that meets the needs of a customer while mitigating risk in the development process using Lean manufacturing techniques.

Benefits

• Students gain real world experience in a funded project

• The app is free to all Miami students and parents

• The app serves as a portal to all career resources

• Career Services gained insight into student priorities for accessing career resources

• Connects students to our office and OMJ/OMIC

Introducing the New App…

Miami colors (branding)

Apple and Android

Connects the user to our website

Register to view thousands of internship

and job openings

Major and industry specific resources

Search for internships and jobs in Ohio

4 phases- Discover, Investigate, Experience, Achieve and request an advising appointment

Student Success Services

Events, workshops, and programs

Hoyt Hall Create your own checklist

Twitter Message others within the app

Download Instructions

Sustainability

• Budget money for app renewal• Multi-media marketing campaign• Integration into curriculum (EDL100 and UNV100) and Career

Services programming• Google Analytics and student focus groups• Social media and graphic design interns

Questions?

APPENDIXES

1) Loyalty to source organization

•Embedded relationship•Deepen client or supplier relationship•Alumni within hiring firm• “An [alumnus] trustee of the [source] School of Business who recently got

promoted to executive management said, “I think you really need to look at this school. It's a great school and here's why.” That's how a lot of [recruiting pipelines] start. “ – Financial firm HR manager

2) Recruiting efficacy

• Information advantages for firm• “I think part of [it being easier to recruit from pipeline schools] is that it

reduces a lot of uncertainty about who you are hiring, because, and this goes into the notion of what you know about who you are interviewing.” – Hiring department faculty member

• Diversity goals (interesting paradox)• Socialization enabler• “You just naturally have that respect for someone when they come from [the

source] into [hiring firm] because they’ve been through what I’ve been through. They are ready to work, you know? I think that respect is naturally already there. I’ve had that experience before, I know how hard it is, so I respect someone else who has done it.” -Pipeline employee at financial firm

2) …and new hire performance

• Information advantages for applicants• “I called up [former academy company teammate now working at the hiring

firm]. We talked for about an hour. He told me everything. I was actually going to work on his team if I was hired. So that was really helpful as well. He told me straight up how everything is – the hours, the type of work we do, etc. Really put it into perspective.” - Financial firm pipeline hire

• Minimizes turnover risk• Provides future performance assurance

3) Demand or cost pressures

• Extraordinary talent needs• Volume with growing and “burn and churn” firms• Highly valued human capital• “[Pipeline hiring] is the life blood of these [Big 4] firms. They need the bodies.”

– Accounting department head•Cost environment• “Because of the expense environment, there's very little pipeline building

that's done without a very specific metric to back it up in terms of why we're spending dollars to build that pipeline…. So it's a lot more strategic than it's ever had to be in the past just because of that.” – Financial firm hiring manager

4) Fit between source and hiring firm

• Cultural• Geographic• Reciprocal• Functional• “What we are trying to do is bring our brand to the campus and we select

universities that are form, fit, and function for us. One is that it has the breadth of what our needs are. And the breadth goes from good schools with finance programs, with engineering programs, with business programs.” VP of HR at an energy firm

5) Increasing firm attractiveness

• Provides clear career pathways• “It is a matter of seeing people who you know were very similar to yourself

several years ago. You watch them going in a direction that you would like to go, meaning that you hear things about them in the office, they seem to be doing good work, they enjoy the work that they are doing when you speak to them, and so then you say a few years ago, they were in my shoes.” – Pipeline hire at energy firm

• Brand/legitimacy building at source• Particularly important for mid-sized firms without household brand

recognition