Marketing Your Total College Experience to Today’s Employers

1. Marketing Your Total College Experience to Today’s Employers University of Tennessee Professional Development Series Host: Russ Coughenour Speaker: Donald Asher

2. Missing from the C.V. • Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International • “I was just a volunteer” • Also: We don’t do a lot of candy around here…

3. Our Main Point • A 4.0 in the right major is not enough to get a job

4. Our Main Point Important skills are indicated by more than your GPA and your major! • Even casual experiences can prove skills • Students need to get all the credit they deserve for skills, wherever and however they obtained them We’re going to show you… • How to show skills in writing and in structured and unstructured verbal settings

5. We Want to Influence Your Approach Content for… • Resumes • Broadcast emails • Networking interactions • Interviews of all types How do you sell your total college experience in terms employers can embrace??

6. We Also Want… • Consider picking up some key skills, or gaining some experiences that will prove you have these skills • It’s never too late to tweak your approach to getting all you can out of college…

7. Starting Point • What do employers want, and what do they say about new hires?

8. What Employers Value Most (NACE) • Work in a team structure (4.60 out of 5, 5 = “extremely important”) • Communicate verbally with persons inside and outside the organization (4.59) • Make decisions and solve problems (4.49) • Obtain and process information (4.46) • Plan, organize, and prioritize work (4.45) • Analyze quantitative data (4.23) • Possess job-specific technical knowledge (4.23) • Software proficiency (4.04) • Create and edit written reports (3.65) • Sell, persuade, influence others (3.51) NACE Job Outlook 2012

9. What (Some) Recruiters Say “Hire for attitude, train for skills”

10. But What They Really Want Is… Both

11. What Employers Want in College New Hires (AACU, Hart Associates, LEAP) Association of American Colleges and Universities Liberal Education and America's Promise

12. More from the LEAP Study Employers say they want from students… 84% 81% 60% 58% Complete a significant project before graduation Complete an internship or community-based field project Learn about cultural and ethnic diversity in the United States Learn about cultures in other parts of the world besides Western Europe and North America

13. Doing good job Some improvement needed Significant improvement needed Employers not impressed with education’s product (LEAP) Two-year colleges and universities 60% Four-year colleges and universities 68%

14. From a Major SHRM Study Two largest deficiencies of college graduates: • Writing • Leadership What they mean by leadership: the ability to make decisions and get things done, i.e., agency

15. A Sad Truth • Many college graduates don’t write good • Bad writing, by some surveys, is the number one complaint about new hires

16. What This Means • Your degree, by itself, does not convey to employers that you have the skills they seek

17. Examples Your major doesn’t convey skillsets employers say they want: • Chemistry, they don’t assume you can work on a team, or manage your own project • English, they don’t even assume you can write • My brother hires engineers based almost entirely on soft skills Can this engineer talk to a client?

18. Your Best Feature May Be Unpaid • “Organized SummerFest, an event drawing 5,000 students to participate in 17 alcohol-free activities, total budget of $23,600, all-volunteer staff of 35. SummerFest was the largest alcohol awareness event ever produced on our campus”

19. The Seven Skills Employers Seek in a college graduate: • Writing • Quantitative Reasoning • Work on a Team • Communication & Presentation Skills • Organizational Abilities (projects and self) • Leadership (agency) • Global Perspective

20. Skills Evidence You Can Feature from Your Total College Experience • Major and Minor and Electives • Activities • Internships • Shadowing • Field Work and Labs • Volunteering & Community Service • Jobs • Sports • Study & Travel Abroad • Hobbies & Avocations

21. Dig Deep! • Even your letter to the editor is something that you can feature with an employer

22. Soft Skills Matter Student activities, extracurricular and co-curricular activities often best ways to prove: • Sales skills • Organizational skills • Leadership experience • Drive and initiative • Charisma • Creativity

23. First, Survey Your Total Experience • What did you do? • What did you learn from it?

24. Build a Databank of Accomplishment From any experience, from church to weekend pickup basketball…every experience counts • What did you do? • What did you learn from it?

25. Telling Stories in a Business Setting Use your list of accomplishments as a source for stories, interview content, resume items… • Learn to tell a business story • Good stories have a point, they are rich conductors of information

26. Behavioral Interviewing Questions • Beg for story • “Tell me about a time when…” • Be ready with a selection: • Problem on a team • Dispute with a professor • Financial or time constraints

27. Hero Stories Hero stories • You are the central actor in the story You are the agent of action • Beginning – middle – end • Introduce the characters and/or setting • Lay out the problem • Tell how you addressed the issue successfully • Has to have a happy outcome or you shouldn’t tell that story

28. One Good Formula P.A.A.R.L.A. Problem Analysis Action Result What I Learned from this is… How I Applied this in other contexts…

29. Identify Hard Skills and Soft Skills Examples of Hard Skills: • Business-level proficiency in speaking and writing Spanish • Chem Lab bench skills with a spectrophotometer • Statistical analysis using SPSS, including regression analysis • Can design and modify web pages using RE-TULE v.8

30. Examples of Soft Skills Can interact successfully with clients, for example: • Professional phone etiquette • Can make a presentation or pitch using PowerPoint • Can be charming at a business dinner sitting next to the decision-maker’s spouse

31. Examples of Soft Skills All those intangibles… • Professional dress and demeanor • Punctual • Honest and forthcoming but… • Know what not to say in a meeting or to a client • Can manage my work without constantly seeking approval

32. Experiences vs. Accomplishments Everybody showed up, but what did you contribute? • Routine duties don’t sell • Accomplishments sell In every experience, identify your contributions and accomplishments, however grand or small (we’ll devise a method to sort and prioritize them in a moment)

33. Quantification • On the raw listing of every experience, quantify everything • Quantification conveys verifiabilty “I taught 16 students, 12 and 13 years old, the four swimming strokes used in the Olympics” “I delivered papers to 162 homes in the neighborhood, seven days a week” “Out of the 32 campers in my cabin, 100% signed up for camp for the following summer”

34. Secret Twist to Quantities Advanced technique: Always consider the context for a number. Do you present it as a % or as a raw number? Do you present it in comparison to someone else’s performance, a goal, or a prior mark?

35. Ex.: All the Same Root Datum • I sold 157 wombats • I sold more wombats than anyone else in the company • I sold 123% of my assigned goal for wombats • I sold more wombats than the prior rep for my territory • I won a sales award for sales of wombats • I was fired because I didn’t sell enough trilobites, and wombats were really a sideline

36. Which Brings Us to: Discretion • Every single thing in your resume and every single thing you say in an interview has to be true… But you don’t have to reveal damaging information, or even just less impressive information Present the best side of the truth

37. Here’s the Covenant • You have to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but you don’t have to blurt out the whole truth

38. Example • Why an employer will ask you: “What’s the worst mistake you ever made?”

39. Back to Your Database of Accomplishments • Consider the financial or other ramifications of your contributions • In the university development office, my telemarketing team brought in over a million dollars to the annual fund, helping to reduce the need to raise tuition

40. Ramifications • My letter to the editor got the weekend parking regulations changed for everybody, students, faculty, and staff • I got the manager to reduce the portion sizes for desserts by half, reducing costs by approximately $13,000 per year, and eliminating over a million unneeded calories

41. A Joke, but a Fun Example • On my last job I was assigned to sweep up the dock. I requisitioned a 12” broom to replace the old 10” broom… thereby creating a 20% increase in efficiency

42. Search for the Superlative! • first • most • only • youngest • highest • top • best • fastest

43. Search for the Superlative! • Selected to go to Washington, DC for training vs. • Only intern selected to go to Washington, DC for training

44. Search for the Superlative! • Named team leader vs. • Youngest employee in the history of the company to be named a team leader

45. I Know You’ve Heard This… • Internships matter • 80+% of employers want you to have had one • May trump major, grades, and intentions • Summer, fall, winter, spring, full-time, part-time, paid, unpaid, volunteer, even just a couple of hours a week… What’s new: • Postbaccalaureate Internships • Virtual Internships

46. Convert Language to Employer’s Students use college language, and don’t know industry jargon Skill claim of student: “I am good at writing and editing” What the employer wants to hear or read: “Skilled copywriter, editor, and proofreader. Detailed knowledge of all major style guides, including AP, Chicago, APA, and others”

47. To Jargon or Not to Jargon Jargon identifies you as an insider! • Want to work in a hotel? Put F&B in your resume… • Want to work for a car dealer? Put F&I in your resume… • Want to work on Wall Street? Know the difference between buy side and sell side • Want to work in student services? Know not to call them “dorms”

48. Want to work in HR? Put HRIS in your resume • Want to work in the movie industry? Know the difference between a ‘best boy’ and a ‘grip’ • Want to work in venture capital? Mention mezzanine funding in your interviews RESUMES & INTERVIEWS should be full of job-specific language

49. How Do You Learn Industry Lingo? • Get out there and talk to some employers! • Aiden gets a job…

50. Accessing the Right Employers You need to learn the right lingo! You need to learn the secret handshake! • Shadowing & Field Visits • Informational Interviewing • Internships