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Ask HN: How Best To Reach Hiring Employers?

5 pointsjfi7 comments

My startup is building a recruiting platform geared towards college undergrads. (You can check us out at collegejobconnect.com)

We have had 200 students join in our first few weeks of growth on that side. On the employer side, we have a few companies in the wings (friends of friends, family and professional network connections).

We're trying to expand our reach beyond these first few companies. Beyond emails and cold calls, has anyone had any luck reliably getting in touch with small to medium businesses? (HR in particular, but we'll pitch anyone.)

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One way recruiters sometimes do it is to send a blind resume, with the identifying data removed. But that's gotten harder to do thanks to LinkedIn ("Went to Dartmouth, worked at Bridgewater, lives in Dallas? There's only one in the whole wide world.")

You could still give it a shot, though: find companies that are hiring, email the hiring manager if you can find his/her contact information. One slightly iffy tactic that recruiters use is to ask where people have interviewed, then to ask who they interviewed with. That at least gets you a name, though you may want to be vague about where you got it ("I was just trying to find a job for that guy you decided not to hire...").

Very much appreciate your feedback. I've seen a few job placement services that employ such tactics. I feel like that borders on spam and would very much like to avoid it.

One of the biggest challenges is we want to do it "right", but there are many overly aggressive / shady services out there in this space that make employers run for the hills when you reach out. Ideally this should be mutually beneficial for student and employer (and us). Thank you again for the comment!

Are you only accepting applicants from the schools list in the footer?

We're a small team, and early on we are focusing marketing efforts on a short list of schools in order to keep things manageable. We're certainly accepting resumes from other schools but we can't promise any results just yet :)

I only asked because my school address does not end .edu which is required for the signup form. Although I attend school in Canada

yeah, that is the issue - send me your email address to jeff@collegejobconnect.com and I'll get you set up

sent

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