I was at the ginormous RIM Info Session this afternoon at Fed Hall today and I must say I was impressed by the scale of the recruitment event. They had small booth set ups around all of the first and second floors. Students can go and talk to each individual “team” and find out more about the job. Although the RIM event followed a full afternoon of recruitment at Clubs’ Day with 30% of my voice gone, I still really enjoyed talking to the team managers who have co-op positions open on their team.

It is never impressive when students ask “what kind of work will I be working on?” during the interview, and the HR recruiter simply answers “I don’t know.” Ofcourse they can talk about what the department does, but they still have not answered the question, “What will I do?” HR recruiters can go ahead and spill the standard speech about the company’s benefits and how some co-ops keep on coming back, but they can’t really tell you for sure why the job is so great, and how *I* would enjoy it. Maybe students enjoyed the job because they spent a lot of time surfing, or maybe they enjoyed the job for the independent and challenging work that their manager allows them to take on.

For example, would you go and buy an iPod because “everyone has one” and your friend tells you its totally awesome? Or do you go out to shop for a MP3 player with a list of features that you want from a MP3 player (e.g. battery life) and eliminate the ones outside of your budget set. Same thing with recruitment, if a HR recruiter (total stranger), tells you during the interview that they don’t know the details of the position they are interviewing for, how likely will you accept the job offer?

Being able to talk to the team manager also lets you have a very good idea of your work environment. I have had some pretty awesome work term evaluation in the past terms, but that’s really largely contributed by the fantastic people that I’ve worked with. Without having great co-workers and team managers, I would have never received those kind of work term evaluations. Having a comfortable work environment boosts work productivity and general work morale. An HR recruiter has no way of translating the culture or management style of the team through words during the interview. Spending 4 months next to a manager that you don’t enjoy speaking with could end with a very unpleasant term and no productive work done.

I think that sums up the general ideas that I wanted to write about. My wireless keyboard just ran out of battery, so I am typing on a very awkward angle on my docked thinkpad right now. This’ll have to do for now.

Excuse me for the typos and grammar mistakes; it’s late.