As I was doing some reconnaissance work today and stopped by SimplyHired.com I noticed a poll on why students want a part-time job or internship.  I find the results surprising. They show:

Students don’t need much money. Or more likely, they are children of parents clearly not pushing for emancipation.

About 40% think it’s important to ‘gain some experience’. That means about 60%  have not been educated on the importance of experiential learning, resume building, professional networking,

A very small percentage recognize that being in the field, sleeves rolled up side by side with professionals is indispensable.

An even smaller percentage take the opportunity to intern or take a part-time job to aid in career exploration.

It appears almost 40% of respondents are looking at their internship or part-time job as a foot in the door. That’s interesting but it leaves quite an area of opportunity to view an internship or part-time job as experiential learning in a work lab.

The other humongous area of opportunity that jumps out at me here is for the case management of students through the institutions of higher education they attend and support financially. If I ruled the world, students would have an internship per semester. Professional development wouldn’t be one class it would be an ongoing process paralleling the academic experience of a degree, holding no less importance than theory.

What are your views on the poll results and how would interning work if you ruled the world?

OK… I’m back! There were about 40 students in the class. All but three were from out of the area. Most were business students with a sprinkling of nursing majors. I asked them a lot of questions so I knew where I stood.

How Many have a Facebook? 38

Twitter? 3

LinkedIn? 39 — Seriously? The professor chimed in… it was a class project.

How many of you use your LinkedIn profile? 2

Who has a personal website or blog? 1

How do you think social media can advance your career goals? Nada.…..

It might be shocking to learn that most college students think that companies just use social media to see if you posted “bad” photos of yourself and to read your online resume. That’s why I love to speak to students.. to let them know they can be in the driver’s seat of their careers by following and friending their future colleagues, gleaning expert advice from industry professionals, meeting mentors, questioning companies about career paths.. all while they are viewed as non-threatening knowledge seekers.

When I entered the room I put a stack of business cards on the desk and invited students to network with me. Though they didn’t ask many questions they did ask important ones. On the way out several took me up on my offer to connect. I also suggested that perhaps Career Services might consider creating an online community for each graduating class and recruit mentors to interact with students.

Students who take advantage of online professional networking early in their college career will grow an army of soldiers that will be their best resources when it comes the second half of senior year and the job search begins.

What advice do you have for students?

I decided to put a spin on the event to provide added value.

You see, we have local chapters of some great professional associations that many of us belong to, but the truth is that HR, Recruiters (corporate and 3rd party), Workforce Development Pros, Employment Specialists and College Career Services, we never get together across disciplines to meet one another and network. It seems it’s always for a meeting, seminar or conference and it’s difficult in those environments to find time to establish rapport, build relationships and learn how we can help one another.

And, we can improve how we work together and share best practices and resources… we can have fun doing it too.

So, won’t you join me and the other enthusiastic employment professionals who have already jumped on this incredible opportunity for networking and a cash bar? You are welcome and encouraged to forward this invitation to your network – to your co-workers, peers, colleagues, bosses, reports, wherever they may be – if they can crawl, walk, drive, fly or row in they will be most welcome!

Join us Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at River Grille in Plains on the deck overlooking the river.

Please RSVP and if there is something you would like to add to the event, don’t hesitate to let me know!

There are many flaws in the way current internship programs work.

There are several national internship websites that act as information portals and “job boards”. Many employers are not familiar with these websites and when career services offices tell them they need to create employer accounts and jump through hoops they quickly get frustrated and don’t follow through.  Because these websites are national, companies don’t necessarily attract local students. At the same time, most students manage classes and internships during the same semester so they need to stay local. It’s important to manage internship programs locally to allow for supervision of and assistance with the intern and employer experience. Introducing students to opportunities with local employers also helps aid in the retention of regional talent and prevention of “brain drain”.

Students and employers scramble to find each other. Employers willing to provide an opportunity to a student shouldn’t have to work hard to find one or have to reach out to multiple college career services offices to advertise. Student’s should understand employer expectations and how to conduct an internship or job search.

Another challenge is the concept many employers have of what an internship is. While there are companies that look to recruit entry level college grads and recognize that “try before you buy” is an excellent way to do it while assisting in the student’s education, many times what companies are looking for is cheap labor. Errand boys, envelope stuffers and filing clerks do not require college educations and internships shouldn’t be framed around these functions.

The goal is to enlist companies with a mission of community partnership and good corporate citizenship as extensions of higher education. That means that through this program they’ll pledge to do their part and take on a certain number of interns per year under specially crafted intern work plans based on job descriptions and goals that will be approved and provide meaningful experiential learning for students.

Students won’t just walk into an internship either. They’ll apply, interview and go through a selection process just like if it were a regular position they were going after.To help them prepare, they’ll attend program administered career preparation workshops to assist them with resumes and interview skills. They’ll learn the difference between non-exempt and exempt employees, go through mock orientation and non-harassment training and review and discuss example employee policies and handbooks.

Employers will provide an orientation, an intern mentor and regular coaching and feedback that is documented. Mid and end of semester formal performance evaluations will be conducted and delivered.

Students need to have tools and experience to set them up for career success. The program will provide a one semester real world career experience and the tools to be successful. Employers will have a more productive and functioning junior careerist on board, the opportunity to experience a potential addition to their team and a huge hand in the development of community talent in exchange for their commitment to act as “career labs”.

The logistics of the program require centralization to a regional common career services center shared by all area institutions of higher education and employers. This means students from all participating colleges will seek their internships from one source. They won’t have to be concerned that not all companies willing to provide internship opportunities haven’t reached out to recruit at their particular school. Conversely, employers will no longer have to reach out to many career services offices to announce internship opportunities. They’ll also have one contact, one source, to manage their talent search. College career services offices will serve as on campus liaisons for the program and have more time to focus on working with students to identify their career goals and provide resume preparation and interview skills assistance.

As a nonprofit organization at the helm, we’ll be happy to share our model with other like minded organizations everywhere who want to improve the ways talent meets opportunity. I’m asking you to reflect and comment here on the positive and negative aspects of your college internship and also about internships at the company you work for.  If you have great ideas about what would work better or what not to do I want to hear them. Your comments will help to create the greatest internship program on earth!

Career paths can be amazing journeys and I wanted to know how a law school graduate ends up with the dream of having the the premier information source for college students, grads and recent graduates who are seeking employment, continuing education and business opportunities. He graciously agreed to an interview..

SR: I was a law clerk for a year with a trial court and had been hired for an appellate court clerkship the second year but I decided to accelerate my plans by going into business a lot sooner than five to seven years after graduation. I had figured that I’d practice law for the experience and then either start my own business or join someone else’s but I didn’t like what the practice of law was doing to some of my friends and I was a lot more excited about the world of business than the world of law so I let the appellate court judge know that I wasn’t going to show up, he hired a replacement, and I started my business part-time while I was completing my trial court clerkship.

I wondered what type of internship experience he had in college and what he thought of it looking back.

SR: I had a number of career-related positions but virtually no one had “internships.” It just wasn’t a term that was used that much back in the 1980’s. One of the best jobs that I had was after my sophomore year when I spent four months working as a highly paid temp in London. It was my job to help a national retailer that had virtually no computers figure out how to computerize its management compensation review system. They wanted to formalize the process to make it more fair and figured that it was the logical time to computerize that portion of their business so I created a Lotus 1–2-3 database with loads of easy-to-use macros so their secretaries could keep it up-to-date and I trained them on how to do that.

Working so closely with institutions of higher education that are concerned about placement for their students, I asked Steven his thoughts on how the average career services office on campus meets the needs of students seeking meaningful internships.

SR: Unfortunately, the average career services office does not come close to meeting the needs of the vast majority of its students because the vast majority of students never give the office a chance. Nationwide, only about 15 percent of students even step foot into their career service office and I’ve heard estimates that fewer than five percent actually find internships or jobs upon graduation through their career service office. The problem is much more with the students than the offices as the offices tend to be staffed with dedicated, well trained, and professional people but they’re fighting a losing battle in trying to lead that horse to water and make it drink.

Living and breathing the transition from college to career, I wanted Steven’s opinion of what they could do better.

SR: I would like to see career service offices return to becoming placement offices. If they don’t, I suspect that within a decade many colleges will outsource that function to outplacement agencies like Lee Hecht Harrison. It will be cheaper and I think that the students will be more likely to use a service like that in part because their parents will recognize the value better.

From law school to career development and transition, there had to be a path that led Steven to collegerecruiter.com. It turns out that his entrepreneurial spirit developed early on, as a student.

SR: I created a small business in college that published a map for my school. I generated the revenues through the sale of advertising around the borders. I then resurrected that business after graduating from law school. To diversify revenues, I added an employment magazine in four major markets across the country in 1995 and then the Internet came along so we added a web site in 1996. That gradually took over the business so by 2000 we had stopped publishing the maps and magazines.

After 14 years in the business, 9 of them exclusively internet based, I was curious to know the impact CollegeRecruiter.com has on college students and recent graduates from Steven’s perspective.

SR: CollegeRecruiter.com is one of the valuable tools available to college students searching for internships and recent graduates searching for entry-level jobs and other career opportunities. We help hundreds of thousands of students and grads each month better prepare themselves for the job hunting process and their careers as well as help match them up with leading employers.

Finally, I really wanted to know the vision for the future of the company and its product. Could the leading job board for college students hunting for internships and recent graduates looking for entry level jobs and other career opportunities continue to innovate and evolve?

SR: I would like to see CollegeRecruiter.com be widely recognized by those in college recruiting as the dominant college job board and I believe that we will get there within a few years because we focus on the needs and wants of our candidate and employer users AND we’re continually adding and improving the tools we make available to both groups. Most job boards are stuck in this rut of selling job postings and resume searching and very little else. We sell job postings but it is far from our biggest product by revenue and we stopped selling resume searching 1.5 years ago to protect the candidates using our site from identity theft and other such issues.

Just for fun I wanted to see how Steven would craft his career into a Twitter resume… just for the heck of it.

SR: Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com, the leading job board for college students and recent grads.

Many thanks to Steven for sharing his interesting career path and vision for the future.