Screaming for Ice Cream

There's an ice cream truck that parks itself at my favorite Cape Cod beach, and it's always a treat to get a Chipwich or a good old-fashioned Popsicle in the heat of the summer sun. Last weekend, when buying a treat for my son and one for myself, I randomly thought of one of my favorite Far Side cartoons by Gary Larson. Called "Failed Marketing Gimmicks," the strip features the driver of an asparagus truck (looking just like an ice cream truck) calling out to the neighborhood: "I cuss, you cuss, we all cuss for asparagus!"

As a marketer who spends a lot of time in Gen Y land, I'm constantly thinking of how to better engage the 18 to 30 year-old demographic who interact with Experience in one form or another. And like the driver of the ill-fated asparagus truck, there are times when trying to persuade college students to actively engage with career services feels like selling veggies to kids who just want a sundae. Know what I mean?

With the fall semester and recruiting season about to begin, the team at Experience is currently producing many back-to-school themed marketing messages for our partner schools. Our clients can then tailor these messages to market career services directly to their constituents, including everyone from incoming freshmen to seniors looking to set up interviews with employers. And as is always the case, we're walking that fine line between what we think will be both creative and effective.

Getting one's career off the ground is serious business. It can be stressful and even scary for some. So as we enjoy these dog days of summer, treat yourself to some ice cream and then take a look at what you've done to connect with college students and young grads -- whether it's marketing messages of your own, a job posting, direct emails or even advertising. Are you giving Gen Y what they want? If you're not, you might as well be driving that asparagus truck.

Photo by Roadsidepictures

Happy 50th Birthday NASA from The Launch Pad!

Today I'm recovering from a migraine and coming down with something else so I can't guarantee I'm going to make any sense. Therefore, read at your own risk :).

NASA is celebrating its 50th birthday as a government agency which merits pause for thought in my book. It's amazing to think that someone's vision to travel into space became a reality. Really. In many ways I take space exploration for granted, when it's a reminder that (as cliché as it sounds) anything is indeed possible.

If we all took the 'anything is possible' approach to our lives and our careers what would the world look like? Don't get me wrong, I recognize that 'dreams' are all relative and don't have to be as big and bold as walking on the moon. I just wonder how many dreamers get stuck because they don't know how to bring their dreams to fruition.

Moreover, what can we do to motivate each other?

I know I'm inspired by lots of people, particularly my colleagues (some of whom I'm looking at right now). There are many people here at Experience who juggle family and work while still managing to pursue other dreams like running marathons, traveling around the world, volunteering in Africa, snowboarding and more. There is also a guy who is differently-abled and relies on a walker to get around. His commute to work each day is like serial obstacle course that would send most of home for good. Yet, he's here each morning eagerly sharing his daily struggle just to show up to work, like a great adventure!

It's unlikely I will every invent something that changes the way people live or travel to space. But, I do feel like I am living my own little dream each day. Do you?

The Best Takeaway

I don't know about you, but the fact that August will be here next week just blows my mind. August's arrival means back-to-school is right at our doorstep. It also means the fall recruiting season is about to kick into high gear.

It certainly has been a busy summer, though, and before I get into the meat of this post I want to say thanks to Erin for covering for me a couple of weeks back. Thanks, E! As she mentioned, I attended the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partners Conference (WPC) in Houston along with my colleague Ray Matthews. Ray and I, representing Experience at the Microsoft Students-to-Business (S2B) booth, spent the week speaking with Microsoft partners from all over the world. Of all the folks we talked to, a good chunk of them being from overseas, nearly every single person told us the same thing: finding good, qualified and reliable talent is becoming harder and harder. And all of them seemed blown away by the value S2B brings to the table.

As an online community (a talent community as Erin alluded to) geared towards technically minded students, young grads and the employers looking to hire them, Microsoft S2B is well on its way to being the ultimate destination for IT and MIS candidates looking to put their know-how to work. And it's not just about the highly targeted job and internship postings. In addition to the opportunities, students and alumni who join the S2B community -- for free -- will have access to training materials, insightful industry content and software. As for the partners, a VP of Sales from a large Southeastern software vendor said it to us best: "this is the best takeaway from the conference!"

To me, that just about says it all.

Are You Tired Of Hearing About Interns?

Okay, so anyone who knows me is tired of my rants about the importance of internship programs to any recruiting strategy, so I decided I will instead write about the topic for now on. Despite that the economy is sluggish and gas prices appear to be soaring to $7 per gallon,
recruitment is still highly competitive. Particularly in disciplines like engineering where
the number of graduates with engineering degrees drops about 20 percent each year,
while the number of engineering positions continues to increase.

So, in order to get their attention start an internship program where you recruit freshman and sophomores in addition to upper classman. An internship program is a great way to build a talent pipeline and also drive employee retention because the program allows prospective full-time employees to test drive you as well.

One suggestion for those of you who don’t know where to being is to create a baseline job description for an intern who can work on cross-functional teams or for several people in one department. Of course you’ll need one dedicated manager so the intern doesn’t get lost but it’s a great way to introduce an internship program to your company while you determine where the immediate and long term need is for interns throughout the company. Another suggestion is not to focus on hiring the students with the best GPA from the best schools. Bring in a wide variety of candidates and hire based on fit…..I guarantee you will not regret it.

In the fall of 2006, we had an intern from Boston University named Evonne who interned for the Employer marketing team. She reported to one person but wound up working on a variety of projects for others (including me). I had enough exposure to her work and her personality to know that she was definitely somebody we needed to bring in full time if the opportunity arose. So, when a position opened this spring in our marketing department, she was the first person we thought of and as a group made a very quick decision to hire her.

Why? Because we knew she was dedicated, professional and thorough and that she has great attitude and was a great fit for a high energy culture.

Evonne has showed up and blown away some very high expectations we had for her. I think a huge reason for her success is that she interned for us so we knew what we were getting and she did too. Evonne could also have graduated at the top of her class or the bottom of it….it didn’t matter because she’d already shown she was more than equal to the task of working for Experience full time! So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Moving on to non sequiturs, I realize I was was remiss in congratulating the Celtics on their win in the NBA finals in my last post! For anyone who watched you finally got to see what how good Pierce really is and how on-point Shaq was when he named him The Truth!

Enough out of me.

Where is Mark? What is Student-to-Business?

So with Marketing Mark (we have a DBA Mark too) off to Houston, TX to Microsoft’s worldwide partner event I decided to jump on the blog and tap away in his absence. I’m sure he won’t mind. In case you’re wondering why Marketing Mark would attend it is because we have partnered with Microsoft on their Student-to-Business community initiative.

The S2B program is program is designed to connect Microsoft partners and customers with qualified students for
entry-level and internship positions. Experience is powering their job site portal which directly connects job seekers with information technology (IT) career opportunities. Through our network, Microsoft's 10,000 partner companies can post jobs or internships and find personnel entry level talent.

So very cool in my opinion! Why you ask? Because talent communities are the next generation of recruitment (again…in my opinion).

Recruitment has evolved from newspaper listings to online posts and now everyone is in agreement we need more. The way I see it, building a loyal community of prospective candidates that interact with and offer by offering them more value (in S2Bs case it’s free software and more) than just your job lists so that you build a rapport and a mutual understanding of who you are as a company and establish relationships with prospects who are the best fit for your organization. This costs more money upfront but I believe this pays for itself many times over in employee productivity and retention….