GenDigital

Entrepreneurship Highlighted Among A Select Few

In case you are interested in that one half of one percent of the audience...Today's NY Times profiles a very, very small percentage of the recent college graduate audience who have bypassed entry level jobs for becoming their own boss by purchasing a franchise. Although, like pretty much everything else appearing in the NY Times, the piece is well written and concise, you have to take it with a huge grain, call a crater of salt. This is not mainstream by any stretch of the imagination. That is, there are not thousands of recent grads approaching banks (or their parents) for six-figure loans to buy and operate a franchise. Realistically, how many banks do you think would be willing to write a $200,000 or $300,000 loan to a 23 year old "kid" who has no real world business experience? Not many. Truth be told, the parents will have to step in and secure the loan. If the parents of the recent grad are well off enough to do so, then I say congratulations and go for it and follow your dreams and passions. But for the vast majority, and I really mean vast, the alternative is entering the work force just like 1.2 million of your peers are doing this summer. We keep getting all sorts of inquiries from our clients and potential clients about Gen Y and their work plans/habits. Many seem to think that this generation of young people are not as motivated to hit the business world or professional world and climb up the ladder. Perhaps there is some truth to this, but we do not believe it is as dramatic as many of them think it is. Unfortunately, when stories like this appear in widely read media, it makes our job a little harder, even though again, we're talking about one half of one percent of the audience.

College Internships Move To Online World

The prized summer internship for college students can be considered their first taste of the "real world" and a jump on possible future employment after graduation. Competition for coveted internships at top investment banks, media companies and brand marketers continues to be healthy. However, with that said, if you take a look at this nation's workforce and some of the massive changes that have occured over the past ten years with the advent of technology and communications, the trend of telecommuting and working remotely has started to spill over to the world of college internships as well. I just read a story about a 24 year old student who completed an internship last summer for a small financial services company in the comfort of his own residence. Of course, there are pros and cons for students participating in virtual internships. I am one of those people who beleive the cons far outweigh the pros. For one thing, the next generation of this nation's workforce needs to witness firsthand what it's like to be in an office environment. They need to understand how to communicate effectively in-person, in addition to communicating over email or the phone. Say all you want about how Gen Y is so adept when it comes to communications via technology, but to simply swap one for the other doesn't seem kosher at the end of the day. There is clear value to know that you have to wake up and be at a certain location five days a week for a certain period of time. There is value to learn and witness firsthand how certain office environments work and discover what a company's culture means. I have to think a lot of these characteristics are difficult to comprehend if you are working remotely. I hope this trend ends up turning out to be more of a fad than a long lasting event, because quite frankly, it just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Job Site MonsterTRAK Expects Healthy Hiring Season For '07 Grads

Based on a recently released survey by career site MonsterTRAK, it's all systems go for this year's crop of new graduates when it comes to job opportunities. The robust results are even slightly higher from last year's positive outlook. There are couple of items in the release that are really quite interesting, some of which parallels our own results from our fall wave. First off, we said numerous times before, this generation is brimming with confidence against a wide range of activities, be it an academic endeavor or confidence related to landing the big job after graduation, which the MonsterTRAK survey validates. According to MonsterTRAK's survey, just over half of students surveyed said they were confident about the job market after they graduate. Our report has an even more aggressive number with nearly 65% saying they will land a job before the summer ends. On the other hand, you really have to consider what employers are doing first...right? You could have all the confidence in the world, but if the market is not hiring recent grads, well then we have a problem. However, that's not the case. The MonsterTRAK survey said that 76% of employers surveyed said they will be hiring recent grads this year and 38% said they will be hiring even more than last year, perhaps an even stronger data point than the former. All of this bodes well for this year's job hunting crop of young people...now if we can just get them to show up for their job interviews without wearing flip flops and t-shirts...more to come on that tomorrow hopefully, I need to get permission from someone first before I can recap that story...

Now Even Morgan Stanley Goes For UGC

For the ten percent of college students aiming for a career in finance, scoring a summer internship at Morgan Stanley will put them in the front of the pack. Most of the time, to land one of these coveted internships, the students would need to have stellar academic credentials or personal/family connections just to get to the interview process. Now, with the rising tide of user generated video, Morgan Stanley appears to be on the same wavelength as Gen Y. One could even be so bold as to call it groundbreaking for the stodgy investment bank. Sure, you can understand if this was a technology company like Cisco or Microsoft, but this is Morgan Stanley we're talking about after all. Through a deal with the Sony produced film, "The Pursuit of Happyness," students can submit their own videos to the Sony-owned Grouper web site. The premise of the video is for students to reference a popular saying or motto and how they live their lives based on that motto. Morgan will choose two candidates for an internship based on how many votes each applicant’s homemade video receives. The interesting thing is, there is a precedent for this based on the promotion. As it turns out, the movie, staring former Top Ten celeb Lister Will Smith is based on a true story of a guy turning his life around after landing an internship with Dean Witter, which Morgan Stanley owns. So, you could almost call this "real world-promotional-driven-user generated content.

Recent Grads Should Think Florida

According to results of a study released yesterday, 5 of the 10 fastest growing job markets are located in the sunny state of Florida. Cape Coral/Fort Myers, located in southwest Florida, holds the top spot while Sarasota/Bradenton, Orlando, Lakeland, and Miami/Fort Lauderdale also rank among the top 10. The workforce in the Cape Coral/Fort Myers market alone, has grown by some 33% over the past five years. Granted, many of the new jobs created in the Florida markets are directly or indirectly related to the tourism industry, but another recent report out from the state government of Florida shows a strong increase in the number of technology companies who call Florida home. The increase in corporations basing their operations in the state can be attributed the state's welcoming tax laws compared to New York and California. Recent grads take heed, why go north to Boston or New York for four or five months of cold weather when you can head south for potentially greater opportunities to land a job.

What's The Most Promising Job Fields For Recent College Grads

Many college students struggle when it comes time to declare a major. There are many college students and recent graduates on our panel who have majored in political science or English and end up with an entry level job at an ad agency. According to a recent report, college students in need of some career direction should listen up. The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the economy will generate upwards of 200,000 new job opportunities in the engineering field by the year 2014. The report goes on to mention that the most promising field within engineering right now is chemical engineering where several large employers have already been on campuses aggressively recruiting soon to be grads with promises of sign on bonuses and many other perks. Two other majors to note include physical therapy (someone has to take care of the aging baby boomer population) and accounting (you're familiar with Sarbanes/Oxley, right?).

What Does Success Mean To College Students? You May Be Surprised

There are times when Gen Y throws me a surprise shot, and this is one of those times. According to our latest research, when it comes to defining success, college students, especially the recent grads, aren't defining success in life by money and materialistic items alone. The ultra casual Gen Yers deem a "satisfying career" more successful than "a well paying job." At some level, I believe this to be the case, but once reality sets in, like car payments, rents, mortgages and insurance, a good portion of the audience will probably re-consider that statement. Beyond money, it is worth noting that 23% consider "good friends" a successful measure of life and another 19% consider completing a graduate degree another illustration of success. Only 11% of college students said "lots of money" was an indicator of a successful life. It would be interesting for us to go back to these students 10 years from now and see what's changed.

Duh: Graduating During Plum Economic Times Offer Many Benefits

It does not take a genius to figure out this year's crop of graduating college seniors and students wrapping up their master degrees stand a much better chance of landing a higher paying job than students that graduated five years ago when the Internet bubble burst. The New York Times goes one step further today referencing work published by two prominent economists who tracked pay and career advancement of recent grads over the past twenty years. Interestingly enough, among students that do graduate during recession years, the burden of lower pay and slower career advancement appears to be more than just temporary. A team of economists at Columbia published a report stating the setback in earnings for college students who graduate in a recession stays with them for 10 years. May be that is why the younger segment of Gen X is so bitter?

Company Recruiters Hitting The High Schools

We keep hearing there is a dearth of talent for professional service occupations like accounting and auditing. Big firms like Deloitte and Touche have raised the bar in campus recruiting by bypassing the traditional college recruitment route and hitting the high schools instead. Deloitte participates in a program called Virtual Enterprise whereby they set up shop in various high schools for a few hours a week in front of potential business talent and its future employee base. Deloitte is not alone, defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin also participates in the program on the look out for a stable of future engineers. The innovative program offers high school students paid internships before they even enter college and a promise of further opportunity down the road.

Should Be a Good Summer for Interning

On the heels of Monster's release about the robust hiring market for recent college grads, the NY Times cites a similar scenario this summer for college interns at investment banks, consulting firms and hedge funds. In fact, the article points out that there is even some competition out there for the best and brightest at schools like Stanford and Harvard among the hedge funds and investment banks. Interns on Wall Street are typically paid the weekly salary of a first-year analyst who make between $50,000 and $60,000 a year. In addition to salary, interms are likely to receive a living stipend as well as some transportation services. Not unlike the dot com days of the late 90s when the brightest college students were in great demand by leading the Internet companies, some of the intern-related perks will probably be heightened now that several hedge funds have jumped in the summer intern game as well. The competition among the banks, consulting firms and hedge funds means one thing for college students seeking an internship: more opportunity to actually land one, which should be welcome news.