October Poll Result Recap

The results of the October Poll are in and thanks again to all of you who responded. Once again, you provided some interesting and revealing responses. Here's our take, and some follow-up questions for you:

• The #1 resource or factor that influences you to pursue employment with a particular company by a large margin is Company Reputation (81%). Not a surprise, but is there something in particular that you look for when you investigate a company's reputation?
• The #2 response was Company Size (50%). Do larger or smaller companies appeal to you, and why?
• On-campus company presentations (35%). At least we know that our time (and your time) is well spent at these events! What kinds of presentations have you found to be particularly effective? What did the company do? Who presented? Was there a social element to the event? Let us know what really knocked your socks off.
• After the first 3 resources or factors above, the drop off was quite significant. Next we can group together company-produced information, such as the company website (28%), company collateral (10%), and the company's social media sites (5%). We were disappointed of course in how the social media sites fared in this survey, but what are you really looking for when a company provides you resources to learn about them?
• Finally, the influencers (Friends (21%), Professional Societies (12%), Teachers/Professors (11%), and Family (10%)) appeared to have the least influence. These results surprised me the most. Conventional wisdom and the current trends seem to suggest that the recommendations of influencers should be the greatest resource/factor in helping you decide on what company(s) to consider, certainly more influential than the information that a company provides about itself. What are your thoughts on why influencers might not be as influential as we may of thought.

There's a lot questions posed above, please don't think that you need to respond to them all. We would like your insight however as the results of this poll challenge some of the ideas around how we and many other companies look to market ourselves to you. Thanks again for voting in our poll and thanks in advance for any comments you leave to answer some of the questions posed above.