Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

College Career Centers Are Challenged in Preparing Students for Work

The skills gap is getting wider.

According to the Job Preparedness Indicator research conducted by the Career Advisory Board in late 2011, only 14 percent of hiring managers felt that job candidates had the requisite skills to fill open positions.

At the Career Advisory Board, which is presented by DeVry University, our mission is to help job seekers and careerists advance, so we decided to go to the front lines and assess what career counselors thought about this.  This summer, we worked with the National Association of Colleges and Employers, an organization that connects career services professionals with HR professionals, to conduct a series of phone interviews and a formal survey with college career center directors.

In this research initiative, we explored some of the challenges directors face in their mission to help students land and succeed in jobs.  These obstacles include working with administrations that don’t understand the value of the career center, being understaffed, and assisting diverse students. 

As a result of their current circumstances, career centers have had difficulty ensuring that graduating students are “marketplace ready.”  Indeed, less than 25 percent of directors felt that most of their students had the tools and skills necessary to find a job.

Here, we delve deeper into the directors’ most pressing concerns and share topline thoughts on how we can collaborate to narrow the skills gap.

College Administrations Underestimate the Career Center’s Value

Overall, college career centers have a perception problem.  Many administrations view them purely as immediate “placement centers” and marginalize their role in shaping America’s future talent pool.  Unfortunately, this attitude negatively impacts student perception, and they may not use the career center as expeditiously as a result.

In our conversations, many of the directors claimed that although administrators are generally supportive of their efforts, this support is overshadowed by bureaucratic processes, budget cuts, and a lack of appreciation for the full range of available student services (assessment, employer matching, resume help, interview coaching, job fairs and educational programming – to name a few!).  Our formal survey especially echoed directors’ financial concerns: nearly thirty-two percent felt that their administrations were not particularly helpful with respect to funding support for the career center.

Unfortunately, without strong and well-funded career centers, schools’ hard-won and well-educated students will become percentages in the growing nationwide problem of youth unemployment. 

Directors must develop a value proposition of “total career preparation” and proactively market the breadth of center activities to school administrators.  They should aim to get a seat at the table in discussions around school mission and overall leadership strategy. 

Using benchmarking data from the schools who are most successful in transitioning students from college to career, directors must advocate best practices and lobby for an earlier and more forceful introduction to students (for example, implementing a mandatory career services module for freshman orientation and/or making 1-3 career center visits a graduation requirement).  Only this type of integration will ensure a solid understand of the essential steps to launch a meaningful career, and sufficiently motivate students to undertake them.

Career Services Centers Are Understaffed

When asked about their greatest need with respect to helping students, 42 percent of the directors said more staff.  Several had experienced budget cuts that made it difficult to support existing programs – let alone launch new ones.  Extra personnel in the career center would make it possible to provide more one-on-one student counseling and follow-up, expand educational programming, and enhance marketing efforts. 

Hopefully, greater visibility within the administration will result in the strengthening of career center ranks.  Career centers can also work with third-parties to offer free online and on-campus career readiness bootcamps and mentoring initiatives, and connect with local industry via meet-and-greets with students.

Private sector organizations can use their recruiting dollars to sponsor relevant software licenses for assessments, mock interviews, and other tools.   And finally, if career centers must do more with less, they should develop scripts for typical conversations like the initial student consultation and handouts for frequently requested information such as occupational research resources.

Meeting the Career Needs of Diverse Students Is Difficult

An incredible 85 percent of directors feel that they are not as effective in helping diverse populations such as adult students, international students, disabled students, minority students, and veteran students land jobs and prepare for successful careers.

One idea for directors to facilitate the advising and hiring of diverse students is to form programs that pair current students with similar alumni who are currently employed.  Such mentorships would provide insights that are unique and expressly relevant to a particular student group.

In order to better customize the approach for each student group, career centers need to create systems that will efficiently track students’ progress through the career center, and the services that are being used.  This will provide critical data with respect to what is working – and not working – for each group. 

The skills gap is a complex issue, and certainly career center directors and their staff can’t solve it by themselves, or overnight.  Nevertheless, they are a critical piece of the puzzle, and with some targeted effort, improving student career readiness is absolutely within reach.

Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go

I am very fortunate to count Beverly Kaye among my smartest and savviest mentors.  For those of you who might not know her, Bev is a pioneer in the field of talent management and career development and continues to innovate at the helm of a large HR consultancy and with her new book, Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go.

Besides the title, I also love that the book debunks myths (Blind Spots, anyone)?  Here are a few Bev offers with respect to career development inside large organizations:

Myth 1 – There is simply not enough time.

No one will argue that time is among the scarcest resources available to managers today. But let’s get real. You’re having conversations already — probably all day long. What if you could redirect some of that time and some of those conversations to focus on careers?

Myth 2 – If I don’t talk about it, they may not think about it and the status quo will be safe.

Why invite problems? Developing people could lead them to leave and upset the balance of your well-running department, right? Wrong. Employees have growth on their minds — whether you address it or not. Withholding these conversations is a greater danger to the status quo than engaging in them.

Myth 3 – Since employees need to own their careers, it’s not my job.

No one will argue that managers don’t own the development of their employees’ careers. Employees do. But that doesn’t mean that managers are completely off the hook. You have an essential role in helping and supporting others to take responsibility. And that role plays out in large part through conversation.

Myth 4 – Everyone wants more, bigger, or better: promotions, raises, prestige, power.

If you believe this one, then your employees all look like baby birds, their mouths always wide open, wanting to be fed. This image probably loses its appeal quickly even for doting bird parents — much less busy managers. But based upon our research, this image is patently inaccurate. When asked about what they want to get out of a career conversation with their managers, the number-one response from employees is “ways to use my talents creatively.”

Myth 5 – Development efforts are best concentrated on high potentials, many of whom already have plans in place.

This one’s a cop-out. You can indeed see a significant return on the development you invest in your high potentials. But they make up only about 10 percent of your population. You probably have another 10 percent of marginal performers who are on a very different kind of plan. But what about the 80 percent in between — the massive middle responsible for doing the bulk of the work? Imagine what even a small investment in their development might yield.

Growing your business means growing your people.  And with the pending demographic shifts and corresponding talent shortage, never has this been more important.  Fortunately for us, Bev’s the perfect authority on the subject!

5 Types of Power

I used to think that a leader was powerful if she had a lot of financial responsibility, or if he was directly responsible for a team of hundreds of people.  But there are different types of power, and some may be easier for you to obtain than others.

To briefly recap, in 1959, social psychologists John French and Bertram Raven identified five bases of power, legitimate, referent, reward, expert, and coercive.  In my post on Fast Track, learn more about these and how you can use them to your advantage.

What Martin Luther King Can Teach You About Being a Protege

In 1940, the Christian minister and civil rights champion Benjamin Mays became the president of Morehouse College, the first university for African American men located in Atlanta, GA.  Shortly after his tenure there began, Mays met the 15-year-old Martin Luther King, who had skipped both the nine and 12th grades to enroll as a freshman at Morehouse.  King developed a close relationship with Mays and was an eager student.

Mays influenced King by his own example, guiding him toward the ministry and the preaching of a social gospel.  The two men were so important in each other’s lives that they eventually made a promise – he who outlived the other would deliver the eulogy at his friend’s funeral.   Sadly, on April 9, 1968, Mays saw King’s mahogany coffin delivered to Morehouse on a wobbly farm wagon pulled by mules.

Benjamin Mays and Martin Luther King are just one of many famous mentor/protégé pairs – there’s Socrates and Plato, Aristotle and Alexander the Great, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, and Camille Pissarro and Paul Gauguin.  Due in part to the prestige of their mentors, all of these protégés went on to be extremely successful themselves.  It’s a strategy that has worked time and time again: if you’re truly terrific at your work and put yourself in a position to be noticed and admired by your boss and other senior level executives, you are much more likely to land on the fast track.

The best place to start is with your immediate manager. Even though you may think she’s aware of everything you’re contributing, this is most likely not the case, especially if you work in a large organization with thousands of people, or a small organization, where every employee wears a variety of hats. 

If you want to be the person your manager considers her right hand, please take my advice over at the Fast Track blog.

 

Do I Need "Reverse Mentoring?"

I first started talking about reverse mentoring in 2007, when I did a presentation to Campbell Soup global leadership about the Millennial generation.  The company went on to develop a so-termed “bridge network” to connect promising young professionals with entrenched Baby Boomer executives.

Reverse mentoring is loosely defined as the process of a less experienced employee offering guidance to a more experienced one.  It often includes a relationship that works both ways: seasoned employees can offer advice on how to build a successful career, while newbies can provide a fresh perspective on organizational processes and innovation – especially where it involves evolving technology.

Although currently gaining steam, this is not a new concept.  According to the Wall Street Journal, it was initially championed by Jack Welch in the late 90s when he was CEO of General Electric.  He ordered 500 top-level executives to reach out to people below them to learn how to use the Internet. In return, the younger professionals achieved greater visibility in the company.

If reverse mentoring sounds intriguing to you but there isn’t an established program in your company, check out my post on the Fast Track blog for advice on how to implement it.

 

A Manager's Guide to Mentoring

I swear by mentoring as one of the best ways to teach your team members what they need to know to be productive and send the message that you think they’re important and care about their growth. Obviously, an official mentoring program is great to have, but what if your company hasn’t gone down this road before? 

The Mentoring Group says that before implementing a formal initiative, you should consider how much support mentoring has from executives and employees, the time and resources people have to spend, and the overall health of the organization.

For other preparation and execution musts, check out my post on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

See Yourself as Others See You

Over at the Harvard Business Review blogs, Linda Hill and Kent Lineback have a terrific post on the importance of knowing how your words and actions are perceived by those who report to you.  As Linda and Kent rightfully point out, though, getting a truthful answer is easier said than done.  Here are some of their top recommendations for getting honest feedback about how others see you:

Establish ongoing human connections

Is there an easy give-and-take between you and your reports? Are you able to carry on a real conversation about a variety of topics, business and personal? Can you disagree and respectfully discuss your differences? Without such connections, which require time to establish, little else you do is likely to uncover others' thoughts and feelings, especially about you as a boss.

React calmly and constructively to negative feedback

You needn't accept everything you hear. But when you disagree, do you seek clarification, pose thoughtful questions, and ask for examples? Or do you respond angrily and deny defensively what you're hearing? Only as people test your tolerance will you slowly build a reputation for a willingness to hear and accept candid comments.

Seek out perspectives in the context of a specific task

Asking broad, general questions can feel threatening to those you're asking, particularly if they work for you. So, develop a practice of checking in with people at the beginning and end of a piece of work.  Use the specific piece of work as a setting for a candid discussion of what worked and what didn't, where you might have done less or more, and what you should do differently next time.

Build an internal development network

Communicate regularly with a group of trusted advisers who are willing to provide their honest reactions to how you’re operating within the organization.  Members of your development network are most likely to be peers and colleagues and may include a more senior mentor.

Tap your boss

A good manager is willing to pass on what she hears about you from others.  She also has access to organizational information and commentary not available to you and so can offer a broader perspective on how you're perceived.

As Linda and Kent point out, being able to accurately understand how you are perceived requires putting in time and effort to establish strong internal relationships, which, as a manager, helps you in many other ways as well.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

What Does Being a Mentor Mean?

I received this e-mail from a reader, and it’s not the first time I’ve gotten this question:

Dear Alexandra:  A college graduate asked me to be her mentor.  What does this mean?  I have two kids in high school and I’m a little worried that I don’t have time for such a thing.

Attached at the Hip?

It’s a valid concern.  You want to help out a young professional, but you also have a day job and a family.  You don’t want to spend several hours every week helping her navigate through every minute aspect of her job search, college-to-career transition, or problem at work.

Lay out the Relationship Clearly

Fortunately, a good mentor relationship doesn’t necessarily entail that you become your mentee’s third parent.  The key is to concretely establish the parameters at the beginning of the relationship so that you and your mentee are on the same page.  What are her expectations, and will you be able to meet them?  What is she looking for help with specifically? How often will you meet, and how/when will she contact you outside of those meeting times?  How long will the engagement last?

It’s Easier Than it Sounds

You don’t have to turn a mentoring engagement into your next giant project.  In fact, you may well find that you have the ability to help your mentee meet her goals and pursue her path with confidence simply by occasionally sharing your own experiences and what you learned from them.  This can often be done over one or two lunch meetings.  Most of my mentoring relationships have been relatively short-lived, and it’s a pleasure to see that the few hours I invest on the front end often significantly influence my mentee’s future.   You can make a difference without having to replace the time and care you spend nurturing the important individuals in your life.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

Reduce Your Team's Dependence on You

Brett Snyder, who’s Founder and President of Cranky Concierge air travel, writes over at Intuit’s Small Business blog.  Brett has some terrific thoughts for leaders who need to reduce the organization’s dependence on them:

I’ve been on two trips in the past week, and I’m tired.  Every time I travel, it reminds me how important it is to get the business to a point where it can run without me.  When you start a business yourself, too much of the knowledge automatically resides with you.  Finding someone else with similar skills just provides a backup and doesn’t add much benefit, so the key is finding someone with other areas of expertise who still has enough overlapping skills to be able to fill in.

Although Brett’s advice is geared to small businesses, it has value for leaders in large companies as well. If you are involved in every aspect of your team’s operations, you risk burning out, or allowing the business to become incapacitated if you should have to temporarily remove yourself due to a personal or professional issue.

In addition to hiring team members who complement your strengths and fill in your areas of weakness, it’s critical that right-hand men and women are people who you trust implicitly and who know almost as much about the organization and team as you do.

Decision Making Authority

You should regularly bring these individuals up to speed on everything you have your hands in, and allow them to independently manage important initiatives without your constant input.  Encourage them to make decisions on their own so that if a day comes when you aren’t there to act as a sounding board, they will be able to handle things seamlessly.

Supervision of Team Members

Instead of having to personally manage the work of the entire team, assign your right-hand men and women to supervise both the daily responsibilities and the long-term career growth of junior members. This approach will prevent you from becoming too indispensible as a manager and mentor, and will also help to ensure tight integration.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

 

8 Tips for Managing Summer Interns

It's that time of year again! College students and recent grads are starting their summer internships and their managers are wondering how in the world they're going to keep them occupied while providing a valuable experience. Over at the Intuit Small Business blog, Liz Magill has some excellent suggestions for leaders implementing an internship program this summer.  Among them:

Offer a real learning opportunity

Making coffee and copies won’t do. Bright, energetic interns want a chance to do something meaningful. Although you can start with basics, gradually increase the complexity and scope of the job so your eager talent feels a sense of accomplishment.

Set challenging, but attainable goals

Don’t expect a writing intern to win a Pulitzer, a science intern to develop the next great patent, a sales intern to land your company’s biggest client, or a tech-savvy intern to build the next Facebook. Setting goals outside the capabilities of your intern may lead to frustration, while goals that are too easy will bring on boredom.

Don’t babysit

Interns should be mentored, not watched like a hawk.  You can put them on a leash, but make it a long leash. Interns come with a huge bucket of enthusiasm; don’t stifle it.

Enforce deadlines

It may be summer, but it’s not summer camp. Let your interns know that their work is very important to the success of your business, and that you expect deadlines to be met — and work quality to be high.

Abide by labor laws

In order for internships in “for profit” companies to qualify as unpaid, they must meet six federal legal criteria  as outlined in this United States Department of Labor fact sheet. If these six criteria are not satisfied, then an “employment” relationship exists, which means the intern must be paid.

Additionally, I believe open communication with interns is essential.  Get your interns started on the right foot by encouraging them to:

Look around and listen

Interns should pay attention to the comings-and-goings of more experienced colleagues, and routinely ask for feedback on their performance.

Be social

While they have the opportunity, interns should network with as many colleagues as they can, going out with the group for Happy Hour and attending the summer party.

Show appreciation

When dealing with other team members, interns should come across as gracious  and can-do.  They should constantly look for ways to share their expertise and add value to the team’s operations.

With the right preparation and guidance, your interns will contribute substantially to your team, both workwise and interpersonally.  You know you’ve managed them the right way when, at the end of the summer, your team members ask if an intern can stay on as a full timer.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.