New job recruitment platform designed to complement college career fairs

BY LISA GIBSON

The current career fair model of a brief conversation and a resumé submission between employers and students doesn’t yield enough helpful information for the employer and lacks a software component, says Brian Butterfield, a founder of Pixel Pines LLC. To fill that hole, the company has designed KnewRecruit, a platform that allows students to showcase themselves to employers, and allows employers to gain more information on certain students before a career fair.

KnewRecruit is in the beta phase now, but the idea is for students to create a more detailed profile and upload their resumes so employers can search potential hires. Searches can be filtered by graduation date, department or program, and other factors, Butterfield says. It means students who don’t have the experience to build themselves a website can still showcase their talents in a similar way. “I wanted to build a platform that gives the student...the ease in ability to do that,” Butterfield says.

KnewRecruit has partnered with the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in Rapid City and Black Hills State University in Spearfish, S.D, with more than 175 students registered so far. “KnewRecruit is like LinkedIn for college students exclusively,” says Melissa Haught, retention and recruitment specialist for BHSU’s College of Business & Natural Sciences. “It allows recruiters and students to connect and encourages that connection to start at an early stage in their academic career. Students are able to share their work through KnewRecruit and connect with recruiters at career fairs.

“This platform is so critical because finding a career upon graduation can be daunting and this allows students to start early and cleans the process up by allowing only college students to connect with recruiters,” Haught says. “Our students have loved it.”

Plenty of university career centers offer online platforms for students, but they’re usually limited to a resume and other basic information, Butterfield says. And platforms such as Monster and Indeed are open to all experience levels. KnewRecruit sits right in the middle of those competing platforms’ services, he says.

Butterfield has experience recruiting students for work at Pixel Pines, as well as before he founded the company and was teaching computer classes at the School of Mines. His experience lies in recruiting interns he says, adding that the KnewRecruit platform was built entirely by Pixel Pines interns. “Not only are we in the recruiting business for interns, but we recruit interns.”

Butterfield has no timeline for when KnewRecruit might be up and running. The company is looking for investors to further develop the software and help facilitate partnerships with more universities.

PB

Lisa Gibson Editor, Prairie Business 701.787.6753 lgibson@prairiebusinessmagazine.com