Last night at a networking event, we kept running into college grads who are job hunting. What are they doing? Sending out resumes and drinking cocktails.  They lack some clue in the area of job-hunting and networking. (Can you say Entitlement?)

In my experience, people usually don’t know that much about the company they are interviewing for. Hello? Google is your friend. In my day, we would get a copy of the prospectus to find out about products, services, branch offices, revenue. Today, the web has replaced that — and you don’t have to wait weeks for the mail to arrive.

When you are job-hunting you are marketing yourself to potential clients. You need a marketing plan.

1. Who are you targeting?
2. What is the message?
3. Where are they located?
4. How do you get in front of them?

I met an aspiring architect. I asked if she ever went to the AIA events. Her reply was a cross between “No, why would I” and “I’m not a member.” I said how about getting to the event early to greet the folks, volunteer, join as a student, call the Association for advice, or crash the event.

Now delivery of the resume has to be outstanding too. In the case of the architect, why not have it printed on blueprint paper?  Send a candy-o-gram or one shoe (Just trying to get my foot in the door!).

Final points:

• Are you on LinkedIn.com?
• Do you have a website?
• Do you have an online resume?
• You should have a business card to give out with a URL to either your LinkedIn profile or your online resume.
• And your email address shouldn’t be cutebunny@hotmail.com either. Get a your.name@gmail.

(VistaPrints.com has an option for just about free biz cards. LinkedIn has a free option. A domain is less than $20 per year and hosting is less than $100 per year for yourname.com).

meebo is a web page based IM widget. meebo “Co-founder and engineering chief, Sandy Jen, spoke with Found|READ, to offer tips on how to overcome what she calls the internal scaling challenge: hiring.” One point she does make is that you should look for people passionate about your Industry and people who will fit into your culture. Good tips.

Today must be HR day for blogs. Tom Peters company asks, “Is your company adequately prepared to meet your company goals and objectives this year?” One point it makes is that while Hiring the Right people is important, retaining and motivating that talent is just as important.

There is a large cost to acquire an employee. Some say as much as 1/3 the salary. So hiring is an expensive proposition. And many companies fail at on-boarding. What is that? That is the process of bring the new employee into your company – everything from training, to first day schedule, to meeting the department, to being ready for the new hire with PC, desk, phone, passwords. Some employees do not get past the bad taste of a mishandled on-boarding. It is the first impression that you give the new hire about how you treat employees.

“Time, money, and effort can be spent hiring the right person, but if the same amount of energy is not put into creating and sustain the right culture, it is like playing a slot machine-you waste a lot of money trying to get a few wins.” [tom peters]

“What if you started acting like the VP of Talent? Understanding that talent is hard to find and not obvious to manage. The VP of Talent would have to reorganize the department and do things differently all day long (small example: talent shouldn’t have to fill out reams of forms and argue with the insurance company… talent is too busy for that… talent has people to help with that.)” [seth godin]

When you treat your employees like clients, your employees will treat your clients like employees. And everyone wins.