This piece is the sixth in a series of “Ask an Alum” columns that will be periodically published online through a partnership between Elon University’s Young Alumni Council and The Pendulum.
Many of you reading this may have graduated during the heart of the recession. Job prospects were limited, salaries were low and, like many, my anxiety was at an all-time high in 2009. Rather than move to a small town and work in journalism where the cost of living would be low and the salary even lower, I did the more responsible thing and moved to Paris. My cost of living was high and I didn’t have a salary, but I finished graduate school fast enough and savored every moment of my recession-driven decision to stay in school. While I have no regrets, in retrospect, I wonder, had the Student Professional Development Center existed my senior year, would my path have been altered?
In 2011, Associate Provost Connie Book helped bring in Tom Brinkley as the executive director of the SPDC. Tom brought with him more than 30 years of experience in human resources, management consulting and higher education. As Tom likes to say, “We turned career services on its head.” We had to be both proactive and more externally-facing if we were going to help position our students to get the best internships and land the best jobs.
The Corporate and Employer Relations office strategically targets, develops and strengthens new and existing relationships with companies and organizations that provide quality internship and full-time opportunities for undergraduate students. How we do that is what keeps things both challenging and interesting.
Over the past two years, we have built a team that is busy cultivating important relationships with top employers across discipline and industry. Our strategy to do this is multifaceted, but includes the commitment to build genuine relationships through face-to-face meetings and provide customized on-campus and virtual recruitment opportunities for employers both big and small.
This semester alone we have hosted on-campus interviews with organizations such as Credit Suisse, Greenspring Associates, KPMG, Boeing, McGladrey, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SAP and Teach for America. During the Fall 2013 Job and Internship Expo, employers such as Google, The U.S. State Department, The Huffington Post and Lenovo helped attract almost 1,000 students to the event. Many of these successes have been in large part to alumni giving back, not monetarily, but through their dedication to help support the next generation of Elon talent.
Of course, we’re always striving to get better. We want to become more results and data driven. While we have increased our ability to carefully track student engagement, we are working towards gaining a better sense of the quality, depth and success of employer engagement.
We also want to continue to build respect and trust in the minds of our students. It’s my impression that students probably don’t think we’re that cool, but a job at Google or Goldman…that’s cool. I’m not sure if students really get it or not, but whether they’re interested in interning or working for a small non-profit, a Fortune 500 company or attending a top graduate program, our office is here to help. We are continually trying to better market, better time and better explain the value of the programs and recruitment opportunities we offer throughout the year.
In many ways, our office follows the geographic footprint of our students, both in terms of where they come from and where they want to go. We spend a lot of time cultivating relationships throughout the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions, as well as other major metropolitan areas where students want to begin their careers. Of course, while our preference is always to have employers come to campus in-person, we are lucky that many are willing to engage with our students virtually. These virtual events have allowed us to put our students in front of recruiters from companies such as The New England Patriots and Volkswagen.
The challenge is to continue to not only grow and strengthen our relationships with employers, but to communicate these valuable opportunities to students, faculty and staff. We have an interesting balance to strike. Without our students, our employers won’t be happy. And without the right employers, our students won’t be interested. We’re committed to making 2014 an even more successful year for Elon graduates.
Lauren (Limerick) Duffy '09 is the associate director of Corporate and Employer Relations for the College of Arts and Sciences. Lauren joined Elon in August 2012 after working for Hearst Television; first as an associate producer and then as a reporter. Lauren has a BA in communications from Elon and a MA in global communications from The American University of Paris. Lauren lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with her husband and their two labs.