10%, Big 3, Up In The Air

What a day. I talked with 61 students in about 3.5 hours time. The breakdown was 28 ME students, 15 CSE students, 10 EE students, 7 Tech students, and 1 ChemE. Tomorrow I will interview 6 of the 61. A mere 10%, of which only a few will recieve offers. I wish I could hire all of these students, because a lot of them are really good. I know the good ones will get good jobs and go on to succeed, but sometimes I feel bad for having to pass them up.

There were a lot of great students I talked with today, but one man's situation was different. He was a former Big 3 factory worker who, after losing his job, went back to school. It was great to see him there, and he was excited to be there. That bad side is that you could tell that he the odds were stacked against him. In what way you might ask? While this man does have a lot of manufacturing experience and he would probably be able to contribute greatly to our cause, he is not what we are looking for at this time. Sad but true.

I was able to watch "Up In The Air" last night. Its a movie about a man who travels around the world firing people. I could almost imagine the former Big 3 guy having to experience this first hand. Scary. There was one good quote in the film, and that was "how much did they pay you to give up your dream". That resonates with me in so many ways, and I hope that the students I spoke with today understand what it means. It all comes down to doing what you do and giving it away for free. If you can do that, you will succeed.

UT Info Session and Resume Review

So at UT (that's the University of Toledo) for an info session, career fair, and interviews over the next few days. Last night I did an info session, which turned into an impromptu resume review session. The info session itself went pretty good. For the first part, I focused on what a coop session is and how it can help you succeed. I had contacted some previous students and gotten their feedback on their coop session and how it had helped them in their career. I shared this feedback with the students and they seemed to appreciate it. One coop was in the audience so I asked him to speak on his experience. I find its best to let the students do the talking, because that's what students will listen too. The 2nd part of the info session focused on our company and what we do. Most students have no idea how many products we create, so its always fun to share that information.

During Q&A at the end one student asked the "What are you looking for?" at a career fair question. I responded by asking the students if anyone would like to put their resume up in front of everyone for me to review. One volunteer stepped, which was great for him, and away we went. I reviewed the resume from top to bottom and it generated a lot of great discussion and questions for the group. I focused on what was being communicated, and if it was being done correctly. I was able to put the students on the spot and really make them think about what their resume was saying. Personally, I think resumes are outdated and make to easy to accept or reject a person. We need to develop a new Internet based system where each student can post their achievements in a visual manner, and create something that gives more insight into the student and their abilities. I felt this resume review session was actually the best part of the entire session, for both me and the students. Next I might just skip the info session and only do resume review sessions.

Career fair is today, so look for feedback on that either later today or tomorrow sometime.

Panel me this?

Besides mock interviews I was also part of an employer panel. The panel, which consisted of 5 recruiters from various industries, answered questions from 50 or 60 students. The students ranged from freshman to PhD students, so the questions were all over the place.

Most students feel nervous about career fairs and want to gather as much information up front so they can as prepared as possible for their 2 minutes with a recruiter. We encouraged the students to be prepared, act professional, come knowing what you want, and to be excited. If a student does some homework on the companies they are most interested in, it really helps. It allows the recruiter to focus on the student rather then giving a speech on what the company does. It also shows the recruiter that the student is genuinely interested in the company and what they have to offer.

We also talked a lot about the objective statement on a resume and a student's opening remarks when they approach a recruiter. Again, tell us who you are, what you are looking for, and most importantly, what you can for us. Being able to answer the question, "Why should I hire you?" quickly and confidently will go along way.

Overall the experience was a great one. I will be doing more info sessions like these in the future so stay tuned for times, dates, and locations!

Are you mocking me?

So yesterday I was in Madison doing mock interviews with undergraduate students. The experience was a good one, for both parties. This was my first time doing mock interviews and so I really did not know what to expect. I approached it like this - I would do what I would normally do during an interview, and then stop and explain why. Then I would ask the student a question, allow them to answer, and the give them feedback on their response. It seemed to work pretty good for all 5 of the students I spoke with. They appreciated the honest feedback and I am sure they will all do fine during their real interviews. Remember practice makes perfect and the more interviews you can do, the better you will get at it.

Coop activities for this month

So I have tentative approval start a coop related blog at work. I am excited about having the opportunity to showcase our great students. It should prove to be an interesting experiment. I hope to carry the blog postings over to a Facebook page so we can the social media experiment up and running too.

I will be doing mock interviews and an industry round table event in Madison next week.

During the last week of this month I will be doing an info session, a career fair, and interviews with students on campus.

Stay tuned for highlights from each event.

Upon further examination

During today's weekly coop meeting we went over a debriefing process I introduced last week. I had learned of this process in a mentoring session and wanted to incorporate it into our coop experience. Basically, the coop and their lead take time after an assigned task has been completed to review what was learned. It seems really simple right? Well, most of the time we are too busy to stop and take a look back at what transpired. We took one coops experience and broke it down in great detail, examining each step and each interaction. In doing so we were able to quantify the technical skills that were obtained and a lot of the intangible skills that were obtained. I am hoping the other students paid attention, and will come with their own stories next week. So I would encourage everyone to take the time to examine the experience they had while completing a task, whether its at work or at home.

Stay tuned for more.

What are we selling here?

So I have been tasking with branding out cooperative education program at work. Well, I volunteered to take on this task. I have been introducing a lot of new methodology, which has been widely accepted, and wanted to take on a greater challenge. What is that challenge? Making sure my company is recognized on campus, and by recognized I mean students only have to say the name of the company or the catch phrase and they all know. And by know, I mean they KNOW.

So the coop experience is based on learning. Learning what? Learning how to do something for real. You can certainly teach someone how to do engineering problems out of text book, but the real world doesn't work out of text books. So that is my focus. The learning experience. I am not going to sell the products we make. I am selling the learning experience we offer.

Stay tuned for more.