Meet the Coop - finished product

Here is the finished product for the Meet The Coop series. It went live on Thursday afternoon. I am already working on the 2nd video in this series, which should be out in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

Tools of the trade

I just wanted to mention that the pictures and photo editing for the grounded series were all done with the iPhone4. I use the camera for the pictures (obviously) and the Photoshop app for modifications.

This just goes to show how powerful these devices are. Just wait until all the medical apps start appearing!

Grounded - Extension cord

This shows how the concept can be taken beyond just people and products.

Grounded - the Intro

Here is the slide that will introduce the "Grounded" series.

Grounded

Check out our new marketing idea for our coop students. What do ya think?

Doing more

I just wanted to share three instances of doing more as a coop/intern

1. One small step for man - taking chances. We are having an open house and an opportunity presented itself in the form of a 9 foot man in a space suit costume. We asked for student volunteers to help out, and a few stepped forward to help out. They will get some basic training in the suit and be performing this weekend at the open house. Just think of the unique resume builder this experience is. As a recruiter and frequent resume reviewer, seeing something like this will get my attention and I will be intrigued to speak with you.

2. Learning to fly. A student of mine took the time to get to know a coworker who owns an old open cockpit, radial piston engined airplane. He got to fly with him today. How cool is that. If he wanted to work on the plane with him, I am sure he could, all he has to do is ask. So by taking a chance and getting out of the cube and interacting with his coworkers, my student got to experience something a lot of people never will. So get out there and see whats going on.

3. Seek and you shall find. Another student has been very proactive at finding work. He has been able to work for us continually since his first work session and has landed a spot in our operations training rotation program for new hires. Congrats to him! That work and extra effort has paid off and he will probably have multiple job offers waiting for him when he graduates.

So there are 3 good examples of doing more. What did you do today?

PS - I will be participating in an employer round table event at UW Madison this weekend, so stop by if you can, or check in later for an update on how it went.

Pi Tau Sigma / Are you the Chef or the Cook?

Last night I had the opportunity to speak at a monthly Pi Tau Sigma meeting on the UW Campus. Pi Tau Sigma is the mechanical engineering honor society, and they seem to be an active organization on campus. They talked about their tutoring activities at local schools and participation in other fraternity activities.

My presentation covered the current state of business and how it relates to engineering students and their future job prospects. I included some background on how it has gotten to be this way, and what I think the future engineers need to do to succeed in this new environment. I will try to summarize the topics briefly:

• Factories - Do you view your local McDonalds as a factory? I do.
• Indoctrination - How did it get to be this way? Is the school system actually training us to be factory workers? What do we do when we don't need factory workers anymore?
• Business - Cheaper, faster, better, cheaper. In the new throw away world, what makes you (as an employee) impossible to throw away?
• Do what you do - this is hard to quantify in words, but I will use the Chef/Cook example. Are you the Chef, someone who creates something new using the same ingredients that have always been available to everyone? Or are you the Cook that uses the cookbook to create what is asked of them? Which one is more valuable?
• Leverage social media - There are numerous tools out there that you can use to build an online resume. Starting blogging about your activities. Start taking videos or pictures and posting them. Share what you do with the world, you never know who is paying attention out there. Paper resumes are going to be a thing of the past and your internet content is going to become the new resume.

There were lots of great questions at the end, and the discussions the ensued were fun and engaging. I want to thank Pi Tau Sigma for the opportunity and hope that I can speak again at a meeting in the spring.

Interview Review

So last Thursday I conducted my seven interviews with potential coop students. Overall, I was pleased with the results. I had some non typical responses this time around, which was refreshing. After one recruits at the same location for a period of time, you start to see trends in responses to questions. These trends are a result of the classes the students take and the projects that they work on. I am not sure if it is a fault of the classes or professors, but from year to year the projects do not seem to change. Is this a good thing? I guess it depends on your point of view. Personally, I would rather see something new each year, or at least a rotation through different projects. This would give the students something new to work on, and allow me to hear some different responses.

The info session helped to eliminate a lot of standard questions that I would get in an interview situation, so it was nice to have some new questions to respond to. Some of the good ones included: do I like my job?, can I get a patent for a new technology that I develop?, tell me about the management style?, and what is the social life like? All good questions that made for good discussion with the students. If you are a student doing an interview make sure to ask 2 or 3 questions. It shows that you are interested in the company, and it will spark further conversation. I always feel like an interview can come to an abrupt halt when students do not have questions, so be prepared!

After I came back I sat down with HR and we reviewed my paperwork and I made my recommendations. There will be some offers going out, which is always exciting. I cannot wait to go back next year, as the students continue to impress me.