Dr. Phil Gardner, Michigan State U. researcher and author of the annual “Recruiting Trends” publication states that the college labor market has hit bottom. Last year Dr. Gardner estimated a recruiting decline of 8% to 10%, but it actually ended up to have declined between 35% to 40%. This year’s report was issued at the annual Midwest ACE Recruiting Trends conference held in Chicago.
This year’s “Trends” report describes our current economic situation and says that we are not simply in a recession (or ending a recession), but that we are at the end of a lifecycle – the manufacturing age has run out of gas and the good old days are gone and are not coming back. What is new is that we are now entering the Age of Networked Intelligence. Also, it is estimated that 2/3 of all new jobs will involve on-the-job training and will require no post secondary degree.
The outlook for 2009-2010 is as follows: Total hiring will be down about 2%, Bachelor hiring will be -1%, MBA hiring will be +11%, MS/MA hiring will be -11%, and PhD hiring will be +20%. The growth will be in fast growth companies (9-100 employees) – increasing by 26% and small companies (101-500 employees) – increasing by 15%. Medium-sized companies (500-3999) will decrease hiring by 11% and large companies (>4000) will decrease total hiring by 3%. We’ll also see changes in BA hiring by region of the country: Northwest +4%, Southwest +2%, South Central +6%, Upper Plains -3%, Great Lakes -4%, Northeast -4%, Mid-Atlantic -8%, and Southeast -7%.
Recruiting on campuses will also see changes this year, corporate examples include: (1) 42% will reduce the number of schools they visit, (2) 46% will reduce the number of career fairs they attend and (3) 36% will hold fewer on-campus interviews. One possible explanation for the drop in on-campus interviewing is that many employers may be making offers to interns before they even return to campus.
The research indicates that employers are saying the following to students on college campuses. Students need to have flexibility, because more employers are seeking candidates from across all majors who can move into a variety of positions as needed. They will search for candidates with a mix of technical aptitude and essential soft skills. Employers indicate that the following majors will be at an advantage this year: e-commerce, entrepreneurialism, environmental sciences, information science, information systems, interactive computer design, statistics, nursing and social work. Students need to understand that they need to expand their breadth of experiences and not to just have more depth in a certain discipline.
Students graduating this year must learn to manage themselves and to create You, Inc. They will need to learn how to create their own job and to make a niche for themselves in this new economy. Dr. Gardner ends this year’s report by stating that, “The best academically trained candidate might not get the job! It will go to the candidate that best demonstrates how they can add value to a company, are professionally connected, and most importantly understand the importance of entrepreneurial thinking.” It looks to me like the college students of today who wants to success tomorrow needs a summer with Southwestern to develop those entrepreneurial and other soft skills.
Dave Ramsey & Ralph Brigham
I recently visited the corporate offices of Dave Ramsey at Financial Peace Plaza in Nashville, Tennessee. For those of you not familiar with Dave Ramsey, he hosts a nationally syndicated 3-hour daily radio talk show that is heard by 4.5 million listeners each week on more than 450 radio stations throughout the United States. Dave is also the author of several best-selling books on finance and getting out of debt, including The Total Money Makeover, Financial Peace, and Financial Peace for the Next Generation (high school curriculum).
You’re probably wondering why I got involved with Dave Ramsey. Each summer we have about 2,500 students who partner with our company selling educational products to families. The average student makes over $2,500 per month during his or her summer break from college. What we know is that most college students are not good managers of their money no matter how much they have and many of them want or actually have to pay for their own college education. As I travel to company training meetings around the country, a consistent theme often taught to students and managers is how to be wise stewards of their money.
Recently, I was at a training meeting for over 100 students and managers and Nick Henderson, Southwestern District
Nick Henderson
Sales Manager, spent time training these folks in the wise use and saving of their summer profits. One of the methods Nick touted is the use of the monthly envelope system. He says that as he drives between campuses in Missouri and Iowa he listens to the Dave Ramsey show and while Dave Ramsey didn’t invent the envelope system, he promotes it as a good practice. Nick practices what he preaches and works with all of his managers and students in being smart with their money.
Unfortunately, not all college students will have a person who cares as much as Nick about them and their personal finances. That’s where Dave Ramsey comes in. His folks in Nashville are developing a new finance curriculum for college students called “Foundations for Life and Money.” I never had a finance class in high school or any finance courses in college and I certainly wish I’d had access to a program like this when I attended college. My job at Safeway paid my way through college, but I know I wasn’t very smart with my money.
Employers like the Southwestern Company and the colleges and universities from where we recruit students want those students to be successful. That means successful in their studies, their extracurricular activities, their vocational opportunities and certainly with their finances.
Southwestern will do its part in providing opportunities for personal growth and financial gain. We will also try and educate students about how to be smart with the money that they earn. Now we have another entity providing assistance to those college students who want to learn about money management before it manages them.
If you want more information about this program or want to comment on the need for such a program, let me hear from you.
So, it’s now (almost) officially summer. Students are not in class and so we can’t really go to campus to recruit next year’s class. Right? Do we just take the summer off? I hardly think so.I just returned from the annual conference of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). It was a great time to catch up with university colleagues and chat about how the recruiting year went and what we, as employers, should be thinking about for this next year.
It was also a fine opportunity to brainstorm about things that we, as employers, could be doing NOW to prepare for the upcoming year. Here are some ideas:
1.Send a list of students recruited (both interns and graduates) back to campus from this past year. For interns, it’s nice to include their major and year in school. Career centers complete annual reports that show their contacts with students, employers, etc. and they value this summary to include in their reports because it’s one way in which the centers are judged by their superiors.
2.Talk with career centers about potential sponsorships. Many career centers are in dire need of funding just to maintain their present level of activity for students. This was certainly evident last week as some universities were not even present at the annual meeting due to budget constraints.
3.Review the career center web site for career fair dates, staff changes, sponsorship categories (career center and student organizations), other opportunities for employers to engage the campus, etc.
4.Update campus presentations to include the most recent data from your company, including any major changes in services, products, staffing, and recruiting processes.
5.Visiting campus and meeting personally with career center staff can build some great relationships. Some career centers have “employer roundtables” or other get-together events during the summer. Again, these can be very useful in building bridges not only with the career center, but with faculty.
6.Volunteer for career center events. The campus values employer perspective and expertise. This includes the career center as well as student organizations. Get connected.
Now is the time to really examine how last year went and ask for feedback from each campus so that next year’s recruiting activities can run more smoothly and get a greater return on your corporate investment.
Last week I spent several days on a prestigious campus in the South. The intent of my visit was to connect with career services to find out how well our recruiting efforts were going from their perspective on this campus. The report was positive and that was a good thing.But, what was learned in the career center was that we are not able to participate in the campus career fairs because we were viewed only as a summer job and not an internship. Companies with summer jobs are not allowed to participate in their career fairs. Well, it’s good to find out this kind of information.
Through connections made through professional associations, I had other contacts on the campus and I used those. I had a very positive meeting with career professionals in the business college, which led me to the internship coordinator for the college. I explained to her all of the training that students go through for this summer position. But, she’d heard that students must buy their “sales kit.” I was able to assure her that while it was true in past years that students had to buy their sales kit, it is now provided to them at no charge. She also heard that students were dropped off in their new community and had to find a place to live. I let her know that students do live with host families and that almost all students already have accommodations lined up before they go to their new community for the summer. These are usually with prior host families, parents of students selling or who have sold, and alumni who’ve sold books in the past.
She was also curious about the training that students receive and she was happy to hear about all of the training students prior to leaving campus, in Nashville at Sales School and then throughout the summer from their managers. I told her that once students are selected for the summer, they typically have weekly group training sessions as well as hour-long individual training meetings with their mentor. They then go through a week-long very intensive sales training school in Nashville. I shared with this internship coordinator the “Selling 101″ manual that students complete during Sales School.
Well, needless to say, Southwestern is now a bona fide, legitimate, credit-bearing internship on this campus. Southwestern will participate in the next career fair and, already about a half dozen students have made appointments to see this internship coordinator to register for 3 internship credits for this summer.
Here we have a win-win-win for the student, for the internship program and the university and for Southwestern as well. Actually visiting the campus, meeting with the right people and asking the most salient questions resulted in a positive outcome on this campus.
Ralph Brigham is presenting Kathy Sims, Director of the UCLA Career Center with a plaque recognizing the UCLA students placing #8 in the world in student profit.
Another example of a partnership came from the Career Center at UCLA. This past year UCLA was the #8 campus in the world in terms of the profit that students made and returned to their campus with at the end of the summer. UCLA was #8 out of over 300 campuses in the world. When we presented the UCLA Career Center with their plaque, there were several UCLA students who talked about what they learned from this experience and how much they had grown. As an outgrowth, we have now been asked back to share more information about Southwestern with all the counselors in the Career Center.
This is the first time that UCLA has been a Top 10 campus and it was through a lot of hard work by our recruiters and also extensive training and mentoring of the students to be successful throughout the summer. It is much easier to recruit students when the professionals in the campus career center understand the work and can suggest ways to leverage the experience. One of the goals of campus recruiting at Southwestern is to work with and through the career center on each campus and it’s a real pleasure to work with so many professionals at the UCLA Career Center.
I’m asked on many occasions what the students need to do in the summer to be successful. Well, there are many answers to that question. The students are told in interviews that they need to study hard (their sales talk), work hard and be coachable. If they work on these three elements, they’ll probably have a great summer. The entire week of Sales School in Nashville is dedicated to teaching them how to be successful on the book field.
As I’ve traveled to various campuses, students ask for tips on how to be more successful, on and off the book field. One word that I like to concentrate on with them is to have them learn to FOCUS. We all can learn to be successful and more productive if we can learn to FOCUS. So, just how do we do that?
On a trip to Canada I met with a young lady, let’s call her Charlotte, and she was interviewing a number of students to find those who might be interested in a summer with the Southwestern Company. She found that she sometimes lost her concentration in these interviews, one after another all day long. I think we can all identify with that situation.
I took an umbrella out of my briefcase and asked her to throw it up in the air and catch it. She did just as I’d told her. I then asked her what she was thinking when the umbrella was at its apex. Her reply was, “I didn’t want to drop it.” I told her that was a very common answer. Then I said to her that I wanted to disagree and I suggested to her that she wasn’t really thinking of anything at that moment, all she was doing was concentrating on catching the umbrella. In other words she was completely focused on an action – catching the umbrella. No thinking was required. (Thanks to Jim Fannin of Zone Coach for the idea.)
Well, Charlotte played this game throughout the rest of her recruiting season, but then took it a step further when she went to the book field that summer. Charlotte tied a tennis ball to the rear view mirror in her car. Every time she parked her car and got out to go knock on another door, she tossed that tennis ball up in the air and caught it. That gave her the focus she needed to meet her next customer with a very positive attitude.
Now, guess what? Would you believe that Charlotte had her best summer yet on the book field that year. Now, I can’t take credit for Charlotte’s success (although I’d like to) because she was the person out there meeting with the moms and dads of school age kids selling the Southwestern Company books and CD’s. Well, Charlotte had a great summer and I just received word last week that she had her best week of her entire Southwestern career. Charlotte learned to FOCUS and has practiced that element in many facets of her life and I’m so happy for her.
How do you focus? How do you continue to concentrate hour after hour in your job? You may not have an umbrella or a tennis ball handy, but I’ve often used the pen I have in my hand and toss it up in the air and catch it to grab my attention and get me focused again. What tips can you share that I could pass along to our (your) students to make them more successful?
Do you remember, those of you old enough to remember, that there were a number of corporations that had offices and professionals who had something called “college relations” or “university relations” in their title? Yes, that seems like eons and several recessions ago. Then there was a period of downsizing and that title seemed to go away and it was replaced by “staffing,” “sourcing,” “recruiting,” and other such titles. Yes, that may have saved some paltry dollars, but I believe that by losing that title has had lasting and detrimental effects on our profession. It was only about putting butts in seats.
When I was given the opportunity to create the Campus Relations program at the Southwestern Company, I wanted to make sure that the word “relations” was included in both the title and function of the position, because IT’S ALL ABOUT RELATIONS! It’s all about creating relationships within the company so that we know who is doing what and what’s coming down the river for the future. It’s obviously all about creating relationships with the students that the Southwestern Company recruiters are interviewing, training, mentoring and motivating. But, it’s also all about nurturing the relationships with those in the career centers on the campuses where we are recruiting. I have stressed over and over and over that our recruiters need to establish, nurture and continue to enhance the relationships with our stakeholders on all of our campuses. And, if it’s been too long (your definition, not mine) since you’ve heard from your Southwestern rep, please let me know.
Here’s one of my most memorable introductions to campus relations. One fall when I was still the Career Services Director at Montana State University I was visited by a company rep. I didn’t know the young man when he walked into my office, but he sat down (without an invitation) in his cut-off jeans, and announced that he was my Southwestern rep for the year. And no, it wasn’t Mr. Schlepp! That visit obviously made a lasting impression on me and it’s one that I don’t want inflicted in any career center on any campus in the world. That’s why I’ve used that example in countless sessions with our recruiters as the wrong way to create a positive impression.
Our recruiting method is unique in the hiring world in that none of the campus recruiters actually report to me (although one Southwestern manager when asked who he reports to in the company tells them that he reports to Dr. Brigham because even though he doesn’t officially report to me, he takes his cues regarding campus relations from me) . I am there to influence them in how they should interact with various campus officials and show them best practices in developing and maintaining those relationships. I, in turn, try and communicate with all of our campuses to find out how things are going and what we might be doing better.
I had one recruiter in the Midwest tell me years ago that he was afraid of career services directors. He’d been told that career services folks didn’t like us (Southwestern recruiters) and so his goal was to stay away from their offices and recruit “under the radar.” Well, “under the radar” never works because it’s a very small world and campuses, even large ones, are very well connected and recruiters don’t get away with that for long. After he learned to positively interact with his career services directors and meet up with them at regional and/or state ACE conferences he said to me one day, “Those career directors aren’t such bad people and they can even be fun.” Well, duh!! So after he learned to develop those relationships and even become friends with some, his relationships obviously improved on his campuses. Not only did that happen, but he had greater successes on his campus in terms of the number of students recruited.
Sharing those relationship best practices is important. Please share with me one or two of the best practices that you’ve witnessed or done yourself in creating and sustaining those campus relationships. I’ll then report those in a future blog. On the other hand, if you think this message on the importance of relationships is outdated and we should be doing something else let me hear your opinions, too.
As the Global Campus Relations Director for the Southwestern Company, I am lucky enough to be able to honestly say that no two days are the same and about 92.8% can be considered exciting. Today, it’s even more exciting as I get to celebrate 59 years of life. It’s not the Big 4-0 or the Big 5-0, but it’s getting pretty close to the Big 6-0. It forces me to think back ten years when my wife, Lori, threw a big party for me before I even started up the Campus Relations program here at the Southwestern Company and we still lived in Bozeman, Montana where I was the Career Services Director at Montana State University. The invitations to all our friends read, “Please join us in celebrating Ralph’s 49th birthday because next year he’ll probably be too old to celebrate The Big 5-0.”
Okay, back to work. So, what’s the purpose of this blog. First of all, it’s primarily geared to professionals in the career services’ world, but it may be interesting for others on the campus like those in student employment, internship/cooperative education offices, and faculty. I’d like to share some current issues, trends, and practices in the campus relations world and my personal experiences with campuses and students that I work with and coach as the Director of Campus Relations for the Southwestern Company. I’ll throw out some challenges to think about and I want to forward some trends that’ll be affecting our work. I will update you on my travels to campuses and association meetings (including photos). And, I want to share some of the topics, issues, and teachings that I reveal with your (and our) students as they learn how to grow, develop and move into their career roles with the lessons learned as participants in our summer sales and marketing program.
Guess what, not only did I survive that 49th year, but the past 10 years have been a whirlwind, or maybe a tornado, of activity, learning, travel and excitement. So, let’s look at these past 10 years. First of all, I left one of the most beautiful spots on the earth (Bozeman, Montana) and moved to Nashville (Southwestern Company’s world headquarters) to work in the corporate sector, of which I had no experience. I had the privilege of setting up and managing a campus relations program for a very entrepreneurial company that has over 2,500 college students a year participate in its summer sales program. The Southwestern Company has been around for over 150 years and its president, Dan Moore (who himself participated in the summer program in the 70’s while attending Harvard) was and still is VERY supportive of the efforts to proactively reach out to college and university officials.
Invariably, wherever there exists a population center, you can find schools of higher learning close by. I’ve traveled to campuses and association meetings in 37 states in the time since I began the job at the Southwestern Company. I’ve met not only with campus officials, but also alumni groups, student organizations, and all varieties of college and university officials. Globally, I’ve made a couple dozen trips abroad and have visited universities and met with colleagues and friends in Europe, Africa, and Australia. Best of all, I’ve also connected with and enjoy working and sharing with some of the most outstanding college students in the world. Now we live in Albuquerque, New Mexico where I have an office in our house and all I really need is an airport, or Sunport as it’s called here, and my Smartphone.
So, here I am at 59 reflecting and figuring out how to B – L – O – G. I’ve certainly read a number of blogs over the past few years. My son, Bob, makes a living in the political consulting and blogging world. But, now it’s time for me to begin a blog. This summer our company decided to update our web site and utilize more social media, hence the blog, in connecting with our many audiences – students, parents, campus officials, customers, etc. Since one of our most important stakeholders is officials on college and university campuses globally, we thought it would be important to communicate more directly with YOU.
Back to my birthday reflections… I’m trying to decide whether the reflections are really important or if I’m just procrastinating in writing this piece. Then there’s the iTunes 60’s playlist playing in the background with the likes of CS&N; Beatles; Beach Boys (saw in Billings, MT), Byrds (saw in the Rose Bowl), Cat Stevens, Cream, Doors, Eagles, Grass Roots (saw in Havre, MT), Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix (saw in Spokane), Stones (saw in Munich), Hollies, Janis Joplin (saw in Calgary), Jefferson Airplane, Judy Collins, and many others. Each tune has its own memory and so many bring a smile as I recall some of my favorite people and places over the years.
My plan is to update the blog on a weekly basis, more often if the need/opportunity arises. And, most importantly I want to hear from you. What are your questions? What are your issues? What do we, in this profession, need to be thinking about and addressing?
We all have fears, even at 59, and writing a blog that’s available to the whole world was one of mine. Fear is also something we talk with students out selling books in the summer about – fear of the unknown, fear of hard work, fear of failing, fear of succeeding, fear of confronting fear. I’ll talk more about fear in future blogs, but for now let’s just say that I’m going enjoy the birthday celebration that my wife has planned for tonight (oops, I’m not supposed to know about it). I hope you all use your birthday as a day of reflection, enjoyment and that your day is filled with happiness and that it begins a year that is overflowing with joy for you and for those whom you care about.
