I'm in the 10:45 session about how career services can (and need) to provide services to alums...particularly "mature" alums (those over 40) who are changing careers, have been laid off, or who can't afford to retire.
The big number is that by 2010, 51% of the workforce will be 40 years or older (a 33% increase since 1980). This aging baby boomer workforce is no surprise...but there are economic and personal factors that complicate this situation. The economic factors include the current recession, offshoring, corporate mergers/restructuring, and globalization. The personal factors include increased life expectancy, need for healthcare coverage in retirement, elevated social awareness, and increased desire to 'direct' own career.
Much of the discussion was around how career services can serve alumni and included examples of best practices in connecting career services and alumni offices, what the current (and future) economic situation means for career services, stories about what alumni are looking for (even if they don't know it!) and how to best utilize these alums on campus.
It was a standing-room only crowd...lots of head-nodding as the issues were laid out...and great questions for the panelists.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Most Grads Don't Want Full-time Employment
Jennifer Kushell of YSN.com just completed her presentation at the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) annual conference in New Orleans. Her presentation was entitled, "What Students Don't Understand About You, Your Company, Your Opportunities -- and What You Can Do About It."
She had a lot of great tips and thoughts but two really stuck out for me:
She had a lot of great tips and thoughts but two really stuck out for me:
- There was a lot of discussion about how an increasing number of students are accepting offers from one employer and later rescinding their acceptance in order to accept a later, better offer. This drives employers and college career service offices nuts and burns bridges for the candidates. Yet not one person in the room acknowledged that employers have been just as guilty by rescinding offers they've made to students who are then left without an internship to go to for the summer or, worse yet, a job to go to upon graduation. We need to remember that Gen Y are largely the children of Baby Boomers and that generation has done a very good job of counseling their children that they cannot and should not rely upon the good graces of their employer because the vast majority of employers have repeatedly demonstrated that their loyalty to their employees extends only so far as their profit motives allow. At the end of the day, the employers owe a fiduciary duty to maximize the wealth of their shareholders, not to provide employment to their workers.
- Only 49 percent of college seniors who are approaching graduation are interested in working full-time for an employer. Most see themselves owning a franchise, distributorship, or other business within a handful of years of graduating. This is good news for organizations such as Valpak but bad news for many and perhaps most of the traditional employers of college students and recent graduates. They either need to find a way to make their opportunities more entrepreneurial in nature or they will find themselves competing for an increasing shrinking candidate pool.
Anticipating 2018 - The tech groups
What follows are the rough notes from 2 mini-breakouts in the NACE Future Dirtections Committee session.
Group #1
Following some introductory notes and a brief demo of Twitter conversation moved into texting and the shift from email for some populations. Broadening of techonology - openess - empowers the expanding
Use the students for credibility building, but what about good management of one's web presence?
Threat of technology being used as a career services bypass in the connection between students and employers.
How can NACE better support our own professional development on this front?
1. Continued best practices presentations/content
2. We need to twitter more
3. Intro'd wikis
4. Student focus groups
Group #2
Basic impact of rise of mobile technologies:
1. changes in etiquette
NACE can help with:
1. Information and support on virtual internships
2. Developing strategic partnerships. What are the elements? Need to be able to customize our services to our different constituents.
3. Shaping of best practices standards/outcomes.
4. Tracking and pushing next practices to get ahead of the curve
5. Global links to mine emerging practices from around the world
6. Guides and workshops to help professionals learn and adopt emerging technologies
7. Shaping of etiquette and standards of professional practices and delivery of services - not being on-call 24/7
Time and resources to implement, how to stay current when there is so much going on and coming out? Do we need to adjust our thinking about timelines for viable or sticky applications/tools?
Colleges having to rethink and subsequently advocate on campus for new measures of success.
Rise of virtual worlds and our need to adapt to new environments for work and socialization to meet needs/expectations of students.
Group #1
Following some introductory notes and a brief demo of Twitter conversation moved into texting and the shift from email for some populations. Broadening of techonology - openess - empowers the expanding
Use the students for credibility building, but what about good management of one's web presence?
Threat of technology being used as a career services bypass in the connection between students and employers.
How can NACE better support our own professional development on this front?
1. Continued best practices presentations/content
2. We need to twitter more
3. Intro'd wikis
4. Student focus groups
Group #2
Basic impact of rise of mobile technologies:
1. changes in etiquette
NACE can help with:
1. Information and support on virtual internships
2. Developing strategic partnerships. What are the elements? Need to be able to customize our services to our different constituents.
3. Shaping of best practices standards/outcomes.
4. Tracking and pushing next practices to get ahead of the curve
5. Global links to mine emerging practices from around the world
6. Guides and workshops to help professionals learn and adopt emerging technologies
7. Shaping of etiquette and standards of professional practices and delivery of services - not being on-call 24/7
Time and resources to implement, how to stay current when there is so much going on and coming out? Do we need to adjust our thinking about timelines for viable or sticky applications/tools?
Colleges having to rethink and subsequently advocate on campus for new measures of success.
Rise of virtual worlds and our need to adapt to new environments for work and socialization to meet needs/expectations of students.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Sessions Update - Day 1
Two of three breakout sessions down and sitting in the third and final one for the day.
So far this year's quest for knowledge has taken me to "On-boarding New Hires Effectively" and "Understanding Reality Bytes". The first on the components of a successful process of bring on new hires, whether interns, co-op students, or permanent employees. Robust content covering the full range of the experience for new hires. Next was a look at one school's work on recruiting and deploying student bloggers for driving up student awareness of services and career related issues. Solid introductory content in that.
And now I'm in "Strategically Assessing the College Recruiting Function". This session comes out of a NACE committee's work this year. Case studies on streamlined tools for, well, assessing college recruiting processes.
Two of my three choices have been employer-side, an unusual choice for a college-side member. Then again, if I'm here to connect with employers, what a great place to find them. Plus it gives me a better idea of their world, their concerns, and their language. This makes it easier to relate to and serve them.
While process focused, this last session has a strong strategic element in the background and integrated into the answers of the Q&A. Members looking for a peek at the tool can find it at naceweb.
Forums@4 is next up with 8-10 topics set.
So far this year's quest for knowledge has taken me to "On-boarding New Hires Effectively" and "Understanding Reality Bytes". The first on the components of a successful process of bring on new hires, whether interns, co-op students, or permanent employees. Robust content covering the full range of the experience for new hires. Next was a look at one school's work on recruiting and deploying student bloggers for driving up student awareness of services and career related issues. Solid introductory content in that.
And now I'm in "Strategically Assessing the College Recruiting Function". This session comes out of a NACE committee's work this year. Case studies on streamlined tools for, well, assessing college recruiting processes.
Two of my three choices have been employer-side, an unusual choice for a college-side member. Then again, if I'm here to connect with employers, what a great place to find them. Plus it gives me a better idea of their world, their concerns, and their language. This makes it easier to relate to and serve them.
While process focused, this last session has a strong strategic element in the background and integrated into the answers of the Q&A. Members looking for a peek at the tool can find it at naceweb.
Forums@4 is next up with 8-10 topics set.
Exhibit Hall
Walked around the exhibit hall yesterday evening to get a feeling for who is there. A great mixture of service providers, employers, and schools. I didn't count but there are probably 100 exhibitors. Unlike some exhibit halls, this one is in the center of the action and not stuck off in a corner someplace so the organizations which have invested the time and money necessary to have a booth should see a nice return.
Daniel Pink - What Talent Wants
How many political speech writers also write books on business and use Japanese Manga as a medium for career development? Yeah, Daniel Pink.
For an opening keynote Mr. Pink delivered a brisk and energetic speech. Beginning with a humorous overview of his life and career track in all its meanderings, he moved into a talk on the shifts and emerging drivers of the world of work. At the core was the intersection of economics and values.
Economic forces are so "baked in" that they are uninteresting and below the radar of recent college grads. The first of the three is the demise of corporate paternalism. Second, changing economics of production. Third,
1. Demise of corporate paternalism - culturally it was expected and assumed corporations would take care of their employees. Implication? Shift from loyalty/security transaction between employer and individual to talent/opportunity transaction. The axis goes from vertical to horizontal.
2. Changing economics of production - Marx stated revolution would come when the workers controlled the means of production. Did not work in the industrial era, but has become possible in the new tech environment. Factories are big, expensive, and difficult for one person to operate. "Talented people need organizations less than organizations need talented people." Daughter's web comic - www.squirmtheworm.com cited as example of new knowledge and production equation.
3. The emergence of the meaning gap - per capita GDP has tripled over 50 years with no recognition, simultaneously the rate of satisfaction has remained level. Prosperity has liberated us, but not elevated us. More people are now pursuing fulfillment through other channels now available via that prosperity. What does this do our understanding of the nature and inherent value of work itself?
Autonomy, authenticity, mastery, and purpose are the 4 drivers of young contemporary workers. People want autonomy over their time (results oriented work), tasks, techniques (let me do it my way as long as its right), team (do not underestimate the interest of good people to work with good people). They want authenticity, to feel they are themselves in their work. No masks. No Stepford Workers. Mastery or the drive to improve. Give me my feedback so I can get better and master my work. Millenials especially are accustomed to regular, almost continuous, feedback systems. Gaming, E-Bay, Digg It, etc. "They crave it." Finally, purpose is the drive to have transcendence, meaning. Jeff Immelt - "If you want to be a great company, you have to be a good company. The reason why people come to work for GE is that they want to be about something larger than themselves." Increasingly grads want to do work that has a positive impact. Cycles back to autonomy of tasks. "Honoring these values is essential", if companies want to recruit good talent.
The experiment in reaching college students and recent grads - "The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need", Pink's manga-styled career guide.
Tactical vs strategic information: which is what and how do we deliver it? Tactical info is gleaned online, students do not seek it from books or campus offices. It is timebound and grows stale quickly. Strategic information is where career service offices can excel by being curators, guides to the tactical information.
What is the animating question for the early 21st century worker? "WTF?!" - Daniel Pink.
For an opening keynote Mr. Pink delivered a brisk and energetic speech. Beginning with a humorous overview of his life and career track in all its meanderings, he moved into a talk on the shifts and emerging drivers of the world of work. At the core was the intersection of economics and values.
Economic forces are so "baked in" that they are uninteresting and below the radar of recent college grads. The first of the three is the demise of corporate paternalism. Second, changing economics of production. Third,
1. Demise of corporate paternalism - culturally it was expected and assumed corporations would take care of their employees. Implication? Shift from loyalty/security transaction between employer and individual to talent/opportunity transaction. The axis goes from vertical to horizontal.
2. Changing economics of production - Marx stated revolution would come when the workers controlled the means of production. Did not work in the industrial era, but has become possible in the new tech environment. Factories are big, expensive, and difficult for one person to operate. "Talented people need organizations less than organizations need talented people." Daughter's web comic - www.squirmtheworm.com cited as example of new knowledge and production equation.
3. The emergence of the meaning gap - per capita GDP has tripled over 50 years with no recognition, simultaneously the rate of satisfaction has remained level. Prosperity has liberated us, but not elevated us. More people are now pursuing fulfillment through other channels now available via that prosperity. What does this do our understanding of the nature and inherent value of work itself?
Autonomy, authenticity, mastery, and purpose are the 4 drivers of young contemporary workers. People want autonomy over their time (results oriented work), tasks, techniques (let me do it my way as long as its right), team (do not underestimate the interest of good people to work with good people). They want authenticity, to feel they are themselves in their work. No masks. No Stepford Workers. Mastery or the drive to improve. Give me my feedback so I can get better and master my work. Millenials especially are accustomed to regular, almost continuous, feedback systems. Gaming, E-Bay, Digg It, etc. "They crave it." Finally, purpose is the drive to have transcendence, meaning. Jeff Immelt - "If you want to be a great company, you have to be a good company. The reason why people come to work for GE is that they want to be about something larger than themselves." Increasingly grads want to do work that has a positive impact. Cycles back to autonomy of tasks. "Honoring these values is essential", if companies want to recruit good talent.
The experiment in reaching college students and recent grads - "The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need", Pink's manga-styled career guide.
Tactical vs strategic information: which is what and how do we deliver it? Tactical info is gleaned online, students do not seek it from books or campus offices. It is timebound and grows stale quickly. Strategic information is where career service offices can excel by being curators, guides to the tactical information.
What is the animating question for the early 21st century worker? "WTF?!" - Daniel Pink.
early activity
...lots of buzzing about the band last night. And the food was excellent! I hope everyone got a chance to try the gumbo- almost as good as mine!
Plenty of choices today....I'll be the whirling deverish going by....
Plenty of choices today....I'll be the whirling deverish going by....
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