Higher Education

From Classroom to Career: Helping Students Land and Thrive with Essential Skills

A panel discussion featuring thought leader and communications instructor, JD Schramm, joined by career development and recruiting experts

Want to give your students the inside track on landing their dream job? Then watch this panel discussion on the critical role of competencies in job readiness. Expert panelists reveal the skills that today’s employers are looking for, and actionable tips on building those skills into your curriculum.

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Karenna Glover:

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s presentation. We are so glad you’ve been able to take some time for this important discussion all about preparing students for career success. My name is Karenna Glover and I’m with the GoReact team and we are hosting today’s presentation. For those of you who may not be familiar with GoReact, we are one of the leading video assessment and feedback solutions used primarily across higher ed in the US and the UK. And I know that all of you are eager to hear from our three panelists today as am I, and we really appreciate all the insights that they are going to share today. I have just a few reminders before we kick things off.

The first one is we really want today’s presentation to be super interactive. So please use the chat function to introduce yourselves, tell us what schools you’re with, share any resources about career readiness with other attendees. And please think about questions that you might have for these three experts and drop those questions in the Q&A panel within Zoom. You can drop them in anytime during the presentation, and we have carved out some time at the end to answer your questions live. Finally, we are recording today’s full session. So if you need to hop off early or you want to share this presentation with a colleague, we will be posting it to the GoReact website and sharing it by email later today.

So without any further ado, we’ll go ahead and kick things off with a couple of poll questions. We want to learn a little bit more about you and your experience in education. So on your screen we will pop up the first question, what area of education are you associated with? We’ll give everybody a little bit of time to respond.

JD Schramm:

I’m not able to tip the scales in my favor. It won’t let panelists or hosts vote.

Karenna Glover:

We’ll have to figure out which one you would vote for JD. Once we get introductions underway-

JD Schramm:

I was going to choose nursing education just to do a shout-out since we’re almost in National Nurses Month.

Karenna Glover:

That’s right. All right, so here are the results. Teacher ed leading the way. Followed closely by communication, and then some healthcare folks, some sign language folks and some others. Thank you for responding. The next question is, how many years have you been in education?

JD Schramm:

As you say that I think of how many years I’ve been a student in education, but yes, we’re talking about teaching on this one. Wow, look at that.

Karenna Glover:

Wow. Some very experienced educators here today. That’s amazing. Thank you for what you do. All right, well that closes our polls for today. And with that I’m going to hand it over to JD to run introductions and get our discussion started. Thank you so much.

JD Schramm:

Thank you so much Karenna, and welcome everybody. Whether you are watching this on video after the fact or you’re with us live here on Tuesday morning on the west coast, midday on the east coast, I am a huge fan and a longtime user of GoReact. I’m the pied piper of GoReact. Every time I start teaching at a new college or university, I try to bring GoReact with me. I’ve used it at Stanford for many, many years where I was the architect of the communications curriculum at the business school. Used it last year for just a one semester appointment at UC Davis. And I now teach at USC at the Annenberg School of Communication, where I’m leveraging to get us to use it in the curriculum there as well. I think it’s an awesome product. But we’re here today not to talk about the product, but to talk about as educators, how can we do a better job supporting our students in the career search and giving them the skills and tools that they need to thrive once they get on the job.

And to be able to do that, without ignoring our discipline, without dumbing down what it is that we do or becoming from a communication point of view, which is my teaching field, I don’t want my class to become resumes and cover letters and interview skills. I’ve got content I need to cover. But how can I make that content helpful? I’m joined today in this conversation by two colleagues who we wanted to have three different perspectives, so I will be voicing and articulating the classroom teacher perspective. 25 years of teaching at the university level, two years teaching at secondary level. And I invited Jennifer Kaplan, who I have known through several iterations of her career. We knew each other when we were both at NYU Stern and she has focused on recruiting and talent management and she will be offering her perspective from several years of on-campus recruiting and supporting on-campus recruiters. So the employer perspective.

And a new colleague in my circle, Zack Rigney. Zach is at the USC Annenberg Career Center. We connected just a few months ago for the first time as I was sending out job listings to my students to also share them with him so he could share them more widely. I love that we’ve got the career services perspective, the classroom perspective, and the recruiter perspective. I’d love to start off just by asking each of my partners to give us a snapshot of their career and let us know who they are and what they’re bringing forward. So Jennifer, do you want to start us off?

Jennifer Kaplan:

I would love to start off, thanks JD. I am a longtime fan and user of JD in so many ways and thrilled to be here today and echo Karenna’s thoughts to thank all of you for what you do as educators, such an impactful role in our students lives. My name is Jennifer Kaplan and I have been, as JD mentioned, in this talent landscape for most of my career. I actually started in chemical engineering and did that for a couple of years. JD has this look of shock. Yes I know.

JD Schramm:

I guess I have to go pretty far down on your LinkedIn profile [inaudible].

Jennifer Kaplan:

You have to go pretty far down, yes, into the elder years of my career. But found my way into actually into higher education. And I spent about 10 years working in undergraduate and then MBA admissions as JD mentioned at NYU Stern, and really found that my love was working with young people in trying to help them find the next step in their careers, the journey, what’s the journey for them? And became a passion of mine. And I’ve been doing this now for 20 ish plus years as so many of you have from seeing on the poll. So after higher ed I moved on and expanded my career into the corporate environment. I went to an investment bank and spent 10 years leading their campus recruiting efforts, really focused on the diversity space, so all of those underrepresented communities, be it gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, military status, socioeconomic status.

And then for the past few four years I’ve worked at a hedge fund. Schonfeld is a hedge fund. We’re a global hedge fund. I’m headquartered in New York, but I’m very fortunate to spend about half the year in Florida. So I saw some Florida colleagues on the call here. And my role is really to work with university students, administrators, faculty, and help students figure out if financial services, if hedge funds, if this might be a space for them, and if not, how can I help guide them into another space and really cherish my career and look forward to sharing some of what I’ve seen in terms of best practices over the past couple of decades. Thank you for having me.

JD Schramm:

Awesome, Jennifer. I know the participants are going to get value, but just the three of us sitting here chatting and having coffee together, it’s a thrill for me.

Jennifer Kaplan:

Me too.

JD Schramm:

Zach, same question. Just give us a landscape sketch of your career and how you ended up doing what you’re doing now.

Zack Rigney:

Sure. I was one of those who went into higher education administration since undergrad myself. I was one of those kids who was a resident advisor, orientation leader and knew a little bit about every office. And one of my supervisors told me about the PASA program, which is for Postsecondary Administration and Student Affairs within USC Rossier here. And I went through the program. I worked in, actually Viterbi, the engineering school here briefly. And then now I’m in USC Annenberg, which I’ve been here for almost about five years now, working in career development. I’ve dabbled in a few different offices over my time working in higher education. I’m a pretty decent generalist about different offices, but I’m always interested in looking more.

Currently I deal with a lot of helping students find internships. As JD mentioned, he sends me a lot of job postings that I too share out to our students and alums in a weekly email as well as I actually feel like I just got off the plane, but this past week was our spring break, and I took a group of 11 students to Atlanta to go visit nine different companies across different fields to explore what possibilities there are out there and see Atlanta as a new hub for us to explore potential careers and connections. And we also connected with a number of alums out there. And I really enjoyed being that person who guides students along during their path and assist them with whatever steps they have next and reinvigorate optimism is what I like to say.

JD Schramm:

I love that. Reinvigorating optimism. That’s awesome. I just need to do a quick tech check from some of the folks from the GoReact side. We’re having a real rainstorm here in San Francisco. Is the background noise of the rain distracting? Should I put my headsets on or are you able to hear me okay?

Karenna Glover:

JD, we have no problem hearing you. You’re just fine.

JD Schramm:

Great.

Karenna Glover:

Thanks for checking.

JD Schramm:

I don’t want to mess my hair up with the headset, so I appreciate that.

Karenna Glover:

No problem.

JD Schramm:

I love the phrase invigorating optimism. I think I’d love just to open it up, any of the three of us to share best practices that you have seen professors use that may inspire the faculty who are on the call, tips, strategies, things that you have seen faculty do well.

Zack Rigney:

Okay, I could jump in on this. Recently in the last number of years because Annenberg is so focused on connecting the classroom with the professional a lot more than some of the other units I’ve worked with, we have seen a lot of great partnerships and a lot of our experiential programs. Like I said this last week when I was in Atlanta, we were actually partnered with a current faculty member who very much has some great connections within Atlanta and has been a really strong push for us to put this program together. And it went from zero to us going on the program in less than a year.

So just really having that partnership, and it doesn’t even have to be something big like a week long experiential program, but we see a lot of great success with a number of our faculty members who just see like, hey, there’s this visit that’s happening or there’s this speaker happening, and whether they join in as a host or just a participant and listening to the panel, just being there and being readily visible to our students has always been something that’s very successful and ultimately hearing their perspective as well has been helpful to connect the classroom to the professional.

JD Schramm:

Excellent. Good example, Zach. Jennifer?

Jennifer Kaplan:

I was going to jump in exactly what Zach said. I think, JD, you’re absolutely right, we wouldn’t expect professors to turn classrooms into resume workshops and interview classrooms. There are great resources for that either certainly maybe there are career services offices at some of the places you work or even online and folks. But I think just opening students eyes to different possibilities, so be it through these tracks or bringing in if you are able to, bringing in professionals into your classroom, inviting them in if you happen to have speaker formats or time formats, inviting alumni back. And I can speak specifically for my field, which is finance. A lot of students and they follow the pack. So they hear one thing and then they all think I’m going to follow the herd and we all have to be in my field, investment bankers or in technology, we all have to go be software engineers or maybe there’s a hot area in your field.

I think as faculty members, the more you can help just open students eyes to possibilities. I think that’s super helpful. And then the other thing I think is just the softer skills of life. The students that we see clearly, they’re bright, they’re curious, they’re interesting, they want to do well, but sometimes it’s the little things. And I was actually talking, JD, you’ll get a kick out of this, I was talking to my brother yesterday who’s an org psych professor and organizational behavior. He was at Stern with us for a little while, and I was talking to him about this panel and he gave me this great example. He said, you had a student who asked him for advice and he wrote this long email back of advice, and he said he was happy to do it, but the student never responded, never said thanks for the advice.

And I was talking to my brother, that’s such a great learning experience where my brother as a faculty member could have just gently said, I was so happy to provide you with this advice. It may help you to at least respond in the future. Those are the things [inaudible]. A thank you. Those are the things that as you’re looking for jobs, I’m amazed at how many times I don’t get a thank you after an interview. Or to Zach’s point, I go travel and I don’t get a note afterwards or people aren’t responsive. I think those little things where you can just give these learning nuggets of how to act in the real world, go so far in not only that job search, but just what it’s like then when you go out and you work in the world.

So some of those, I don’t know if softer skills, JD, you’ll have to correct me, that might not be the right term anymore, but just those little things, how to say thank you, how to accept feedback, how to acknowledge people. I think those are some things faculty can really play a big role in, because students clearly admire you and look up to you, and not all students have that in their personal lives. They may not have that in their family lives. I think those are things I would bring up.

JD Schramm:

Softer skills captures it. I would agree that we often, as the adult in the room, I’m not always the best teacher in the room, sometimes there are students that are better educators on certain topics, but I’m at least the adult in the room and we can remind people how to interact. Right now the class I’m teaching at USC, the students have a group project where they had to source a company that they would write a strategic corporate communication plan for, and they work with this company over a three-month period of time and at the end deliver this final product. Well, I’m used to hanging out with MBA students who many have been in investment banking or private equity or management consulting, they know what a client is, they know how to interact with a client.

And I realized many of my master’s students at Annenberg hadn’t had those professional experiences. And so I just took a few minutes in class and said, here’s some things to think about when you interact with the client. And I had older students in class thank me because they had seen that and younger students in class go, I hadn’t realized that that was valuable to do. I want to riff on a couple of pieces that the two of you mentioned just to give tips, which is our whole goal today, is give tips to faculty. Sourcing guest speakers, you do not have to do this alone. Reach out to your career center or to your alumni center and ask them to help you. And at many times, ask them to do it for you. I need a speaker on this particular topic or I need a panel, could you help me doing this?

I had a great example at Stanford where I taught a class in reputation management, and one year, first Friday in May, the campus was noisy because there were so many alumni back for reunion weekend and there was so much stuff going on. I’m like, this is completely frustrating. I can’t teach. And then I realized, wait a minute, use it. And so the next year I reached out to the alumni office and I said, I would like to have a panel that has somebody from the five-year class, the 10-year class, the 15-year class, and the 20-year class willing to talk about individual reputation. And they gave me great speakers that allowed the alumni who were there for the reunion anyway to play a role in the classroom. And so I worked with what was going on campus rather than fighting against what was going on.

And so even if you’re looking at all the schools that people are representing, even at some of the smaller schools, you at least have probably one individual that you could reach out to on staff either in career or in alumni, and they love finding ways to bring recruiters into the classroom or great ambassadors into the classroom. And that may help you beef up your curriculum and you can define what the topic is. You can moderate the conversation, but they can help bring the talent for you. I had one other thought, and I haven’t thought about this in years, but when I was at NYU Stern I taught both undergrads and MBA students, and I realized that my undergrads were all trying to get jobs in the companies that my MBA students had just left. And I was like, wait a minute, there’s something we can do here.

And I remember setting up an event, now this was outside of class, but it really served my students, setting up an event where my MBA students conducted mock interviews for my undergrad students and the undergrads who wanted to work at McKinsey or at Bain or at J.P. Morgan or at Goldman, were thrilled that they were actually able to practice an interview with somebody who had worked there. And the MBA students puffed up a little bit and they were able to, yeah, I’m bringing A game, I’m helping the little kids get into job. And it built a nice bridge between the two student bodies who usually had very little interaction with each other. And even if it’s just being able to use your TA effectively, I created an extra little event. But even just being able to use your TA to hold some office hours and be available to your undergrad students, that’s another way to support them in their career search.

Zach, you mentioned internships, and I’d love to spend a little bit of time there in terms of what faculty can do effectively to guide students to internships, support students around internships, anything that you wish you could see faculty like myself doing more of.

Zack Rigney:

Sure. I would say the thing that I see the most with students is that they have a hard time connecting the projects they’re doing in class with things like their resume, their LinkedIn or whatever. Because the biggest thing that students deal with, at least that I’m seeing in my appointments are that they think I don’t have the skills to do X, Y, Z internship. And I have to constantly tell them, hey, it’s a learning experience. You’re not supposed to have this kind of experience. But if you want to showcase your abilities currently put in, hey, this academic project you had or you’re final from this thing or this paper you had from a class a semester ago. Because even though ultimately you are getting a degree and what you eventually want to do, showcase that in academic projects more than listing out the courses.

Because I meet with a lot of recruiters and a lot of them always tell me similar things that as much as the list of courses is great, they have no idea what students are learning in class. So an academic project would be clearer in terms of like, hey, I did a mock marketing deck for Coke and so I did this and this, is something I always tell students. So connecting that. But also feel free to on the other end if faculty members, because you’re seeing students far more often than we are in our office, we only see them when they make appointments. Let us know what you’re seeing within your own space meeting with students. Because there have been actually a number of times where students have been brought to my attention because of a faculty member who I have a connection with, like JD here, who’s brought a few students to me that I’ve actually been able to work with that I wouldn’t have known prior.

JD Schramm:

And as you were saying that, again, it’s not that you need to change your syllabus, it’s not that you need to change what you’re doing in the classroom, but just giving voice to this final project is important because this could also be used in a job interview. This could be a part of your portfolio showing a potential internship or potential employer the level of work that you do. And I have found both with written projects, particularly the one that my USC students are doing right now, but also I’ve encouraged students to use video clips of the presentations they do in class. So if you want to demonstrate to the New York Mets that you’re able to do social media, send them that seven minute talk you did about the value of social media and how to create your Twitter account. And they’re like, I’d never thought about doing that,

Again, my teaching field is communication, but many of my student projects, I give them the chance at the end of the semester if they want to put it up on the Stanford YouTube channel or the USC YouTube channel, that I’m willing to do that so that they’ve got a public showcase of their work. And students have both appreciated that and they’ve done better work because now it’s not just a class project for Professor Schramm, it’s something that could be discovered, could be used to their benefit, and so they do better work because of that. Jennifer, anything you’ve seen around people and internships, either being ready or not being ready and ways that we could help prepare them better?

Jennifer Kaplan:

To Zach’s point, I think there are great opportunities. Students always say, I can’t find an internship as a first year student. I can’t find an internship as a second year student. I think if you can think about ways that maybe you can get some work off of your plate by having them do some research or do some project work, hopefully it helps you, but it also does help them in terms of giving them some real work experience and some help on building their resumes, which is again, helps them stand out from the thousands and thousands and thousands of candidates who are applying. Applying for internships is so easy now as we know, you just hit a button and you apply to 50 internships, which means the number of applications we’re getting is insane. And so when we see students who do have this experience, either research experience or they’ve done project work, it’s so telling for us.

And then if they can, actually explain it even better. I think in terms of preparing for the summer then, a lot of what we see, again, it’s not that the students can’t handle the work, they go through pretty rigorous interview processes and they can handle most of the work. It’s really the going above and beyond. I saw somebody mention on the chat, hopefully these are skills that young people are learning at an even younger age, but I don’t know, sometimes you’d be surprised and it never hurts to reiterate the little things about when students don’t show up to class on time, probably not going to show up to work on time. So all of these things about how important it is to meet deadlines, those are the things that get the students at the end of the summer. It’s not that they can’t do the work and that they’re not smart enough and they don’t have enough potential.

It’s that they’re not ready for the life experience sometimes of you can’t show up late, you have to go above and beyond. A deadline is a deadline. If you’re not going to meet the deadline, how are you going to approach not meeting the deadline? The same thing you would do in school. If you have a paper that’s due and you’re not going to meet the deadline, how does the student approach not meeting the deadline? What’s the guidance you might be giving? I think that’s where we see the students over the summer that are less successful, is they just haven’t figured out how to navigate the workplace. Now that’s partially why we’re here, right? We’re here to help them navigate that. But I think there are probably things in the classroom that equate fairly equally. If a student needs to miss a deadline, how are you handling that? How are they handling that?

If a student’s consistently late for class, I think there are probably a lot of things that translate to how they’re going to operate in a workforce. And so maybe those are some things that professors can be helpful around.

JD Schramm:

One of my professors going all the way back to my undergrad years at Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas, go Hornets. One of my professors said, how you do one thing is how you do everything. And he was talking to us about punctuality and about prep for class. I think it was an acting class when we were doing monologues and we showed up, none of us had our monologues memorized. And he’s like, yeah, how you do one thing is how you going to do everything. And it just really stuck with me, now many years later that I can hold on to that lesson.

Zack Rigney:

Actually along with that, JD, I have a similar quote I was told when I was younger by a teacher. That practice makes permanent, because how we are doing everything, we get that repetition down no matter what it is, whether it be something easy or something hard, the way we practice is ultimately how we are going to perform when we need to. So to really take care-

Jennifer Kaplan:

That’s a good one. I like that. I’m using that.

JD Schramm:

I’m going to quote that.

Jennifer Kaplan:

Me too. Me too. Zack special.

JD Schramm:

I don’t know where to insert this, and I’m just going to reinforce, if you’ve got questions, drop them in the Q&A at the bottom and we will start taking Q&A questions in a little bit here. We’ve got so many different disciplines that are on the call here, but I want to acknowledge something that has been a real challenge for me and how I have made it easier. And that is recommendation letters. Oh my gosh, when I volunteered, because I love undergrads, when I volunteered to teach undergrads at Stanford, they said, are you sure? I’m like, yeah, I love undergrads. I did at NYU. I want to go back to it. And I did not realize that each undergrad comes with about 20 recommendation letters that they’re going to ask you for over the next, I was going to say five years, but I’m still getting requests now.

I got one the other day from a student on LinkedIn and he’s going through an FBI clearance check and I’m like, had your in class seven years ago, but okay, I’ll do it. And I take reference letters seriously. If I’m going to write one, I want it to be high quality. It takes me maybe 30 or 45 minutes and I don’t want it to just be boiler plate. So if they ask and I say, yes, I’m going to do my best with it. But I found a couple of things that make it easier. One, I will often tell students within a semester, if you think you are going to need this, feel free to ask me now, because it’s much easier for me to write a recommendation letter at the end of the semester than it is three years later trying to remember what you brought forward.

I don’t know that I announce that widely in class, but I have certainly counseled students to do that. And I’ve counseled my advisees, ask your professors right now, and then you can always ask them to update it in two years. But it’s much easier to ask in the moment. As a recommendation writer I have also found, I get the recommendation letter done and I’m submitting it to the fellowship or the scholarship or the employer, and then I will go back, in that moment I will pull one paragraph or a couple of sentences out and I’ll go to the student’s LinkedIn profile and I will add it as a recommendation there for them. I just checked a minute ago, I’ve got over 40 recommendations that I have made in the last few years and it takes me almost nothing, but it is huge to the students.

I do the same thing with performance reviews. If I’m doing performance reviews on a staff member, I’ll pull it and put an excerpt there. And it just allows me to be a better advocate for them. And if somebody does a LinkedIn search, they’re like, wow, JD not only wrote a letter for Jennifer, but he also put it on LinkedIn. It takes me very little time, but it has a huge impact for the students in their career search.

Jennifer Kaplan:

I love that, JD. I love that. And I wouldn’t have thought about that adding it to LinkedIn, but I think that’s so powerful. And I will say as recruiters, we use a lot of LinkedIn and so that’s a nice differentiator

Zack Rigney:

Meeting with students, I always like to say, hey, make sure to fill out your LinkedIn because the last thing you want is a recruiter or someone from a potential job or your dream company to review your account and there’d be like nothing there. There’s not much that can glean from that. So being able to do that as well. And to actually go to JD’s point about students asking professors, my rule of thumb is I usually tell students like, hey, if the due date for this application is here or you want to apply by this, if you can give the faculty members or whoever about two weeks, tell them two weeks ahead of time. If you see something’s about to apply or even if you’re about to apply to internships, and hey, I’m about to apply, could I have you as a recommendation?

Just even throwing out that question without any clear date keeps it in the mind of the faculty member. So then you can check in again later or be clear with the timeline and making sure it’s up-to-date and not leaving it to last minute.

JD Schramm:

Although the professor will leave it to last minute. Let’s be clear about this. The professor will leave it to last minute. The addendum I would make to that, Zach, is send them an email thanking them for the recommendation the day before it is due. Thanks so much for getting that recommendation done for the Rhode Scholar program. I’m putting my application in tomorrow. It’s like, oh yes, I will get that done.

Jennifer Kaplan:

Guilt them into it.

JD Schramm:

We’re going to go to audience questions in just a moment, but I’m going to put my colleagues on the spot here. We’ve talked about best practices, without naming any names or even identifying what school they might have been at, any worst practices, anything you have seen that you’re like, why did that faculty member do that, that the rest of us can avoid?

Jennifer Kaplan:

Maybe one. There was one faculty member I know who really just shared very specific opinions about firms in a classroom and not necessarily because they had worked at that firm and had firsthand knowledge or legitimate. I think if you have legitimate firsthand knowledge and you have experience, you’ve worked someplace and these are your personal stories, but I think again, and I can only speak to this to my field, but badmouthing is something we always tell our students never to do. If you’re an intern here, please don’t badmouth another firm. That’s just not what we do. And so I think just bad-mouthing other firms, unless again, you’ve got really, one, I don’t know if it’s ever appropriate.

But if you don’t have firsthand experience and you’re not sharing actual stories, we definitely had somebody who did that and there happened to be somebody in the classroom who worked for a firm and came back and told people about it and it just left a bitter taste. And so I think that’s probably what I would share.

JD Schramm:

Zach, anything on your side?

Zack Rigney:

It’s funny, I’m going through a few things, but I would say, in terms of it, I would say worst practices would be not partnering with your career development or your alumni partners, whether it be at your university or otherwise. Because I always tell students who, especially faculty members who have a career development component, a part of a class or a week or something like that where they do have, hey, update your resume, turn it in, that’s their assignment or whatever, that a lot of times I love our faculty members, but they haven’t hired entry level roles for quite some time, that they don’t know what the entry level requirements are or what a recruiter hiring for entry level roles are really looking for.

So partnering with the career development office can help connect the two to see like, okay, yes, what you’re saying has merit, but I would shift it a little bit this way because this is what the entry level recruiters are looking for, because of how much we interact with them and it makes your job easier and also makes the students job easier, just knowing like, okay, here’s what’s in class, here I’m connecting it with the career development people and now it’s making a lot more sense.

JD Schramm:

I posed the question, but I didn’t have a story ready for it. I do know that I have had colleagues who have really resented the amount of time and energy that our students spend looking for jobs. Now, admittedly our students at all the schools I’ve taught can also take advantage of, I can’t be in class today, I have a second round interview, or I’m doing a flyback. And it’s like, you’ve done four fly backs, I think you need to show up for class. There is some push there. But I think being resentful about the need for students to be job hunting or to be egregious in your attendance policy, I think we have to give some flexibility to our students. I teach in a number of programs right now, the program I teach at USC, it’s working professionals, and so they have both demands of the job that they’re in and the job that they want to get.

And they still need to do this stuff for my class, but if they’re in communication with me, I want to be their partner rather than their obstacle. And at times I’ve seen colleagues who’ve been more of an obstacle or students who will outright lie to another professor because they know that they’ll be excused for certain things, but if they say it’s job related, they’re not excused. It’s like, no, let’s be adults. Let’s have adult conversations about it. I’m going to come back to both of you for a final thought, but first I want to go to some questions, and Karenna, you’ve got some queued up already. What questions can we answer for the group?

Karenna Glover:

Yes, thank you. And just a reminder to our attendees, please add any questions to the Q&A as we go through these. We have two that will go ahead and get started with. So the first one, how can faculty keep up with the evolving career opportunities and needs to prepare students for the jobs that may not exist today?

JD Schramm:

Appreciate you starting with the softball one. My quick answer would be don’t try to keep up. Point the students in the direction of experts who are keeping up. And so as Zach said, partner with the career center or bringing guest speakers who can speak to that of your former students or of alumni, so that you don’t feel you have to be on point with that as well as the evolving content that you teach. That’s my first thought. Anything from the other two of you?

Zack Rigney:

To add to that, I always recommend too to students, across any professional area there’s going to be some professional org that either releases best practices or there are conferences, things like that. I always recommend students of all types, hey, if you’re interested in what the futures entail, look at some of the publications that they’re putting out on these pages. Look at some of the conferences and check them out. Here’s hearing from other professionals who are currently in the field. We’ll also help you understand what’s going to be coming down the road as well as, we brought up a little bit earlier, but networking that side as well. Being able to network, whether it be with alums or professionals in certain fields.

You can get a clearer pulse on what’s happening to where it could be going in the future. And ultimately nothing is future-proof, things are going to change, but just being able to be fine with that change and instilling that in your students that like, hey, things are going to change. It’s not a problem. It’s just another thing we have to deal with. And just being understood that, hey, things change and we just have to go along with it.

Jennifer Kaplan:

I guess I would just add empowering students to also take control of the careers, and we always say just know what’s going on in the world just by, I’m old-fashioned, so I read a newspaper, but I know there are these things-

JD Schramm:

I’m sorry, what was that word you used?

Jennifer Kaplan:

It’s an actual newspaper. It’s made of paper, and so it’s big and it’s cold. I don’t know, but I’ve heard of these things called blogs and other things. But making sure that students are up-to-date and just know what’s going on in the world. And so to Zach’s point, be it conferences or just following the blogs and the world around them, and same thing for faculty, but just know what’s going on in the world, just read the headlines every day, wherever you get your news.

JD Schramm:

Good point. Thanks, Karenna. Another one.

Karenna Glover:

And that’s an excellent segue to our next question, which is, how do you encourage students to ask for help? That’s a skill that they’ll need forever. And how do you encourage them to seek out help from the career center, other professors or anything that they might need to prepare for their careers?

JD Schramm:

Zach, you want to take a shot at that one first?

Zack Rigney:

Yeah, and I’m actually going to call you out as you’re an excellent person for this, because JD and I email, what? Probably every other day at least, that whether it be him sending me a job or a student. But I’ve noticed the biggest thing to help students not only seek help but also start searching for help on their own is connecting it with a specific person. JD knows that, hey, X, Y, Z student has a question about something that he can’t really answer, but he knows Zack Rigney and career development can do that. And it’s a lot easier to be friend of a friend connection versus, hey, just go to the career development center, because that could seem daunting, because they don’t know what to expect because as much as we say it’s career development, it’s here to support you, they may feel anxious because maybe my resume isn’t very good, or maybe my cover letter strategy isn’t very good, or maybe I’m really behind.

Because that’s always the, I’d say the biggest concern students have meeting with me is the uncertainty and they feel like they are behind. But ultimately those two problems are non-existent because either way we have to meet them where they are, and things are constantly changing over time, and jobs are constantly posting nowadays compared to decades ago.

JD Schramm:

I like that. I hadn’t even thought really, Zach, that having our connection lets me guide people to a person. And even if you’re not the right person, you can find the right person in career services easier than I could and much easier than the student could. I think that’s helpful. Jennifer, any thoughts on how you get people to seek out help?

Jennifer Kaplan:

I think we’re often saying we’re here to help, and it’s just students actually following up. But I think we’re all learning, we all need help. I think it’s just almost being vulnerable and saying, I’m stuck, depending on what the topic is, but just being vulnerable and putting yourself out there. I don’t know where to start, I don’t know who to go to. Do you have any ideas? And just that vulnerability of saying, I need help. And when people are offering to help, take them up on that help.

JD Schramm:

I guess the last point I could think of with this for faculty is, you also demonstrate by the stories you tell in class that you’re accessible. And so by being able to say, this is really interesting, I had a student in office hours yesterday who was struggling with this, and so I thought maybe other people would appreciate the insight or appreciate this resource. And people go, I can see them in office hours about things other than the exam. That’s good to know. So if that’s something you’re open to, you’re self selective, you put yourself into this conversation, letting people know that that other people you’ve helped can allow them to see that as an option. There’s another topic that hadn’t come up yet, and I didn’t prep my colleagues for this, but how is ChatGPT going to impact what our students face on the job market and on the jobs?

Jennifer Kaplan:

To be determined. I don’t think we know the answer yet.

JD Schramm:

Well, we’ll just ask ChatGPT, it’ll tell us the answer.

Jennifer Kaplan:

Boy, it’s fascinating to watch and grow. We definitely know it’s being used. We’ve practiced it ourselves, write a thank you letter for interviews and it’s amazing. I don’t know the answer. I’ll be vulnerable enough to say I’m not sure we know yet.

Zack Rigney:

I think actually touching on something Jennifer just brought up with thank you notes and all that stuff, I feel like we should be a little wary of it because it could make things easier. Like I don’t have the time to write a thank you note or a cover letter or update my resume, so I’ll just put these little parameters in here and X, Y, Z comes out. It’s going to take away from the professional if students were rely on it too much. I would say it’s a good thing to explore with something say like interview questions, because if you are able to put in a job description and say like, hey, random questions, give me 10 of those, what may come out of this and see what the results will be.

And this will be helpful for students to think outside the box of potential questions, share some of the things, maybe jumble and not even full questions, but it’s a good way to see the perspective of what could possibly be asked based on this coverage or this topic or professional area.

JD Schramm:

I think both of those are really good points. Jennifer, I think you’re right. We don’t know. And for Karenna and Sarah, my colleagues from GoReact, talk about a seminar I would sign up for. I would love to do a webinar on how is this going to impact our lives as educators. I have been in so many conversations with educators that it has been a conversation about fear of plagiarism more than how are we going to use this? And I was on a webinar a couple of weeks ago, I can’t remember right now who organized it. ABC, the Association of Business Communicators or Business Communication organized it, and it was the first time I was with a group of educators talking about how we’re going to use it effectively, how you can integrate it into assignments. And you need to have an honor code and you need to have rules around plagiarism.

But I was excited by the fact that there’s a huge opportunity out there that I hadn’t even realized. And to begin to look at, and the analogy I gave on the call, I said, I can imagine in the 1970s there was some gathering or convening of math teachers who were like, oh my God, calculators are coming. What will we do? And we figured it out, slide rules are gone and we now have calculators, and it’s a tool in the classroom, but you still have to think. And I see the same thing with ChatGPT, is that it’s a tool, they’re going to use it at work, they’re going to use it at school, whether you endorse it or not, figure out ways to integrate it. And Karenna, Sarah, let me know when that seminar is scheduled. I will sign up to be a participant, not a teacher.

Karenna Glover:

Love it. Thank you for the suggestion. Sounds like a great topic.

JD Schramm:

Is there one more question before we close?

Karenna Glover:

Yes, there was just one more follow up. I think when Zach was answering the previous question about how to get students comfortable with asking for help, the question came in about, how do you get them comfortable with getting help before their grade drops? I don’t know if you guys have any tips for that.

JD Schramm:

The one tip I can think of is just, I don’t like the answer that’s about to come out of my mouth, know the academic deadlines on the calendar and be able to interact with students before a drop ad deadline or before we have one coming up March 31st that I have a handful of students that I need to share with, hey, you need to either get this outdated work in and take the penalty, but get the stuff in. It’s better to get a 70% than a zero, or you need to think about should you take this class again in another semester when you’re going to be able to thrive. I don’t think that’s a great answer, but I use those outside levers.

I guess the other piece I would offer is leverage, if you’ve got a TA or a co-teacher, many times students may be afraid to go to the professor when they’re struggling, but if there’s another RES or maybe we can get them to go to a learning center or a writing center on campus, a tutoring center on campus, make those resources available. Have those in your syllabus, have those on your canvas or blackboard, whatever your learning management system is. And encourage students, if you’re not comfortable coming to me, go to someone because you need to get on the other side of this.

Zack Rigney:

To go along with that, I’ve seen a number of different tools from different faculty members. One in particular that I tend to enjoy is that I had a faculty member in the past who after the third week, no matter what, barely got some assignments and whatever, he would send out an individual email to all students in his class. How are you? Just simple as that. He would de script like, it isn’t meant to pry, I just want to see how everybody’s doing. Are there any concerns? Do you have any questions? And go from there. And it’s a good way to let the faculty member be the first one to ask the question, how are you doing? And just see what the results are.

Well, also I’ve seen other faculty members who have also in the beginning parts of the course, in some of the classes have five, 10 minutes where you have a guest speaker from some of these offices who can just describe, hey, I’m Zack from career development, I do X, Y, Z. I am Zack from International Student Services, I do X, Y, Z, whatever it may be. Just so then once again, going back to my point earlier, having a face to a name and seeing like, okay, this person does this, and I can ask them for these kinds of questions and follow up with them down the road if you need to.

JD Schramm:

Great. So Jennifer, your parting thoughts for our audience of, I’m really impressed, there’s been 30 or 40 people that have joined us in this conversation. Not all have asked questions, but final thoughts for them on how to help students secure and then thrive in their jobs after the class is over.

Jennifer Kaplan:

Final thoughts, well, again, thank you for all you are doing. I think just being inspiring to the students, letting them know that there are plenty of careers and plenty of internships and plenty of opportunities out there, and they’ll find the right one. And then just understanding that, I think JD, you said it, but you’re not in this alone. There’s so many resources. So just knowing where the resources are or who to go to, be it other faculty members or TA or career services or finding those alumni or finding the graduate students and finding your employer contacts. I think it’s not all on you, but sometimes it’s just finding the resources to help the students. I think that’s my takeaway, is there’s so much you can do, but it doesn’t all fall upon you, maybe it’s just knowing who those resources are.

JD Schramm:

Thank you. Zach?

Zack Rigney:

For me, it’s actually something that we haven’t actually touched on directly, but have whoever you are, whether you be a staff member, a faculty member, whatever, when you’re meeting with students, especially in the beginning portions of class or whatever, tell them your full story, because students want to hear your full story and that’ll be better for them to connect with you. I’ve seen a number of faculty member give the whole thing, like, hey, I was a student X, Y, Z here. I applied to this many jobs. My goal was CNN. I kept knocking on that door. It didn’t pan out. Because they love to see the human authentic side. And a bunch of research that I’m seeing is that the new generation of students coming in want that authenticity and are connected to it a lot more.

And if you want them to be more open about asking questions, more open about interacting in their professional journey, they want to hear it from those in power and those in leadership roles. So don’t be afraid to tell your whole story about how you got from A to B, especially during say, syllabus week or something. Whereas of course you’re going to say, these are my rules on late, this is my rules on this and that. But also tell them a little bit about yourself because that way it’s easier for them to connect with you.

JD Schramm:

Very good. Well, I will add to both of those, you are not in this alone. I am happy to be available to folks. I just dropped my email in the chat. It’s also under my photo here. I have one particular resource I’m glad to send to anybody who asks for it. It used to be the memo on memos. Now it’s the report on well-written reports, but it is just an example of a business report document in business style that guides students how to write a business memo or a business report. And so I’m glad to send that to anybody who wants to look at it. It’s one way in which I guide students to do assignments in a real world way. And I do a regular newsletter, not every week, I call it occasional, but of communication tips and strategies.

Would love to share that with anybody who would like it. It’s not something I charge for or I spam people with or I sell the list, but if you’d like to be on the subscription list, I’d love to have you add that. So just drop me an email. I can give you information about both of those. And with that, we are nearly out of time. Karenna, I’m going to turn back to you to close this out.

Karenna Glover:

Yes, thank you so much. And I will back JD’s newsletter, sign up for it. It’s terrific. You’ll gain so many good tips that you can apply everywhere. And with that, I just want to say thank you to JD, Jennifer and Zach for a terrific presentation. It was great to have each of you bring such a variety of perspectives and such great insights on preparing students. So thank you for your time. And to our attendees, thank you for what you do every day, but also for joining us today and learning a little bit more. I do want to encourage you to consider joining us for an upcoming skill development conference. It’s virtual, it is called ReAction Virtual, and it is April 12th and 13th. And we have a link in the chat. Please sign up. That’s coming up in just a few weeks and we hope to see you there. Thank you again and have a great week.