Southwestern Company Campus Relations

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.

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