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EETF Proposal: Enriching LCB Students’ Experience Outside of the Classroom

Wolves of 13th Street Ryan Menacho, Colleen Stott, Monica Petchakan, Ronnie Grenier, Sean Cardenas

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I. Opening We are the Wolves of 13th Street, a group of junior class business students striving to improve the involvement of current, and future, Lundquist College of Business (LCB) students in regards to professional experience outside of the classroom. Current LCB students are struggling to find employment after graduation, due in large part to a lack of work experience during college. We would like to increase the number of LCB students receiving full-time employment after graduation. To aid us in achieving this goal, we will team with the LCB Career Service Center. They have many programs in place to help students prepare for their careers after college, and with our proposed solution we will further expand upon those programs to give LCB students the tools they need to succeed as graduates.

II. Situation Analysis According to Jessica Best of the Career Service Center, 95% of employers would prefer to hire someone with work experience, and 74% of those employers would like that to be experience relevant to the position. This statistic supports the notion LCB students need a way to gain professional experience outside of the classroom, because professional experience is one of the top indicators of employability. We identify professional experience as applying the skills attained through the LCB to real life scenarios1. Middle of the Road Based on the research from Bloomberg Businessweek, 64% of Lundquist College of Business graduates receive full-time employment offers within three months after graduation. The average starting salary for those 64% is $40,4482. We chose to compare ourselves to other public schools in the PAC-12 due to geographical relevance, with 93% of students who are enrolled in the LCB originating from the west coast3. Amongst those schools, Oregon ranks in the middle for graduate job offers and the lowest for starting salary. Oregon can do better than that. With employment and work experience being so highly correlated, more experience generally means higher chances of employment. Students who gain employment earlier in the collegiate careers can begin to build the experience necessary to compete in the job market as graduates. Core Issue We conducted a survey of 37 pre-business freshman students4 to find how confident they felt about applying to jobs given their current experience. We found that 90% said they felt unconfident and unprepared to apply for jobs due to:

Feeling overwhelmed by the job search process

Lacking confidence in their resume

Needing interview experience

1 Appendix C: Employability and Work Experience

2 Refer to Appendix A for additional employment statistics

3 Refer to Appendix A: Percentage of LCB students by state

4 Refer to Appendix B for interview questions

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Feeling Overwhelmed by the Job Search Process Younger students within the LCB have trouble finding where to begin looking for jobs. When asked about job postings, 31 of the 37 students said they either didn’t receive many emails about job postings or they felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of random jobs available. One student said that when he opened an email, he received offers ranging from landscaping to an accounting clerk position. Many of the jobs didn’t apply to him and he didn’t know where to start. Looking through our interviews, there was also a strong link between the students who felt overwhelmed by these postings, and those who lacked confidence in applying for any of the positions offered. Finding a job is the first step in becoming involved in work experience outside of the classroom, making it highly beneficial for students to know how to effectively search for jobs related to their skill set and interests. Lacking Confidence in their Resume In our survey of pre-business freshman, we specifically asked how confident they felt with their current resume. Over half of the students responded saying they didn’t have a resume completed or didn’t know where to start given their lack of experience and education. While this number may not come as a surprise given the students only being in their freshman year, there is still a large room for improvement. These students may not have enough experience to completely fill their resume, but, as Jessica Best explained during a resume workshop, “it is critical for students to know how to construct and build on a resume as they progress through college.” A resume is often the first impression a student makes when applying for a job or internship, and having the skills to craft a strong resume can drastically increase the chances of being hired. Needing Interview Experience The final step in securing a job or internship is being interviewed for the position. About one fourth of the students we interviewed had yet to experience a formal interview. The ones that had been through interviews still felt unprepared because they anticipated higher expectations now that they were no longer high school students. They felt that answers given in their past interviews may no longer be sufficient for an employer interviewing a college student. According to University of Oregon’s Career Services, “success begins with preparation, and knowing what to expect will lead to successful future interviews”. Simply explaining to a student how to do well in an interview is insufficient in adequately preparing them. Students need to have hands on practice with interviews in order to find their strengths and weaknesses and become more comfortable and confident in a real interview setting. An interview is the last, and arguably most important, impression a student is able to make on an employer, which is why it is beneficial for students to begin practicing interview skills as early as possible. Through our surveys, we found that for many students the root of each of these issues is connected to an overall lack of urgency. Students we interviewed feel unconfident and unprepared, yet still are not doing anything proactive to enhance their skills in these three areas during their freshman year. These students fall into the first two levels of a widely used learning model referred to at the Conscious Competence Ladder.

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Stages of Learning The Conscious Competence Ladder5 was developed in the 1970’s by Noel Burch, an employee of Gordon Training International. The model focuses on developing people’s awareness and competence in different skills. As a person develops and becomes more proficient in a given skill, they move up the ladder through the different levels. The four levels are as follows: 1. Unconsciously unskilled: Having a complete lack of knowledge and skills in a specific area and being unaware of it. 2. Consciously unskilled: Being unknowledgeable or unskilled in an area, but being consciously aware of it. 3. Consciously skilled: Possessing knowledge and skill in an area and knowing it, but performing activities in this area still requires great concentration and practice. This level also promotes more confidence as new skills are used. 4. Unconsciously skilled: Using new skills and knowledge effortlessly and performing tasks without conscious effort. Allocation of Levels For the three areas discussed in our core issue, we would like to allocate as much of level one and level two of the Conscious Competence Ladder as possible to LCB students’ freshman and sophomore years. In a recent article published by Fox Business6, researchers found that, “lacking confidence will hinder students search efforts and can keep them from getting hired.” While this may not seem like “groundbreaking” evidence, it reinforces the importance of helping students to work through levels one and two of the Conscious Competence Ladder as early as possible in their college careers. Students who work through levels one and two during this time will feel more confident in their ability to find a job by using their new learned skills in the three areas discussed in our core issue. Unless a student has personally sought out education to enhance the aforementioned skills, they’ll be stuck in level one and won’t learn the proper skills until the upper division business courses have been taken. Students who learn these skills during their freshman and sophomore years can begin seeking employment early and start earning the experience needed to begin their career within three months of graduation. Furthermore, they can use their time in the business school to continue to refine their skills and work through level three by the time they graduate. Additional Findings Seniors as Teachers In our interviews we asked freshman how they would feel about attending workshops taught by LCB seniors. 85% of them said they would prefer to attend workshops taught by LCB seniors so long as these seniors could teach effectively. The reasoning was that freshman felt they could connect with seniors better than faculty in small group workshop settings. One such freshman said she liked the idea of being taught by someone who had very recently been in the same position as her. These findings suggest that pre-business freshman could get more out of workshops if they are hosted by LCB seniors. In this way, a group of freshman students would

5 Appendix C: Gordon Training International

6 Appendix C: How Confidence Affects Employment

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be given the opportunity to collaborate and learn in a setting they feel more comfortable. It would be worth it to try out this idea and set up workshops, hosted by seniors, for each of the three areas discussed in our core issue.

III. Objectives Improve the percentage of graduates that are offered employment

Increase the attendance rate of students at workshops and programs offered by the LCB Career Services

Increase the number and variety of companies that participate in career events

Increase senior attendance participation with the Career Services

IV. Solution Our solution consists of four phases, all of which are unique, yet tie together to complement and build on each other. Our first three phases focus on students in their freshman through junior year, and they serve to teach students the basic skills required for employment while also increasing their confidence in applying for work experience throughout college. Not all of the programs covered by these phases are new, but the way in which they are taught is unique and innovative and will engage students more effectively. Phase four functions as a final program to check-in on seniors and evaluate the usefulness of the first three phases. The evaluation is based on the senior’s confidence and success in entering the job market. Phase 1 The first phase of our solution is based around the idea of helping pre-business underclassmen work through the first two levels of the Conscious Competence Ladder in each of the three areas of our core issue. This will be done by incorporating four different workshops to be taken as a requirement to enter the business school. Workshops would include: 1. Resume Building 2. Cover Letter Building 3. Interview Practice 4. Job Search Practice Workshop Process The workshops would be offered during winter and spring terms during pre-business students’ freshman and sophomore years. Resume building would be offered during winter term of freshman year, and cover letter building in the spring. Interview practice would be offered during winter term of sophomore year with job search workshops offered in the spring of that year. We would work with career services to have these workshops run three times during the term they are offered, and each workshop would be hosted by LCB seniors. For more information on this senior teaching program refer to second phase of our solutions.

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Implementation We have talked to the Dean of Students, Dr. Shang, about the process of making this phase a requirement within the LCB. To do so we need to pass this phase through the Curriculum Committee for approval. Dr. Shang noted that the more rigorous a requirement is, the more challenging it will be to have it approved. Because the workshops would only occur once a term for pre-business students, and three days a term for seniors, this phase should not be considered ‘too rigorous’ and we don’t believe it will have a problem getting passed. For the first year of this program, only the resume and cover letter workshops would be offered for the freshman class. This would be done for two reasons:

1. Pre-business sophomores would have already missed the freshman workshops 2. We would use this first year as a pilot to test the effectiveness of this program on a

smaller scale After the first year, the program would double in size to include both a freshman and sophomore class. Environment Our goal is to provide a setting in which students can be comfortable while still maintaining a professional atmosphere. We would do this by holding each workshop in dorms, such as Global Scholars Hall, Barnhart, and Living and Learning Center, and having them hosted by LCB seniors. Students will be able to learn in a more comfortable place, and be taught by people they can connect with, all while remaining on campus. Fifteen sessions will be held, spread throughout three Saturdays at the beginning of each term. Each dorm building will have five sessions per day lasting for one hour each. Resume and Cover Letter Workshops The ability to write an effective resume and cover letter, as we have learned by taking BA 352, constitutes two crucial skills that need to be mastered. Resumes and cover letters ultimately provide a “snapshot” of who someone is and what they have to offer in a single page. These workshops will provide students with the skills needed to stand out in an application process and differentiate themselves from others. Job Search Workshop During a job search workshop, students will learn about the LCB Career Service’s resources and discover where and how to search for a job or internship. This workshop will aim to expose students to the website UO Joblink and show them how to navigate emails sent from Career Services. Interview Practice Workshop Interview practice must be started early on so that students can begin to get comfortable with interviews as they transition into the job world. This workshop will be designed to address proper attire, talking points, frequently asked questions, and professional speaking. Because there will be so many students to one senior in this workshop, students will participate in a

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group interview. Seniors will ask interview questions to the group and each student will be encouraged to answer at least once. In this way, every student will be able to hear feedback on the answer provided to each question, even if it wasn’t their own. Impact and Benefits By implementing this program, pre-business students will gain a solid foundation of the basic skills needed for employment before they enter the business school. As shown by the Conscious Competence Ladder, possessing these skills leads to students feeling more confident in seeking out jobs and applying for them. These workshops will provide students with the tools needed to secure jobs and start gaining experience earlier in their collegiate career. Phase 2 Initial Implementation In conjunction with the workshops offered in phase one, we would implement a selection process for LCB seniors to hire them as leaders of each workshop. The initial step for this leadership program would be the application process of LCB students the summer going into their senior year. The Career Service Center would interview the applicants fall term and hire fifteen of them for winter and spring. We need fifteen seniors because we estimate 1,200 pre-business freshman would be entered into the program7. With three workshops a term, this puts class sizes at roughly 27 students which is small enough to allow sufficient discussion during the workshops. For the first year of this program, seniors would be responsible for hosting either a resume workshop or cover letter workshop three times a term. They would host one set of workshops during winter term and another set in the spring. Full Force The following year the same application process would occur, but instead of fifteen seniors the career service center would hire 30. The reason being the number of seniors becoming leaders will double with the inclusion of a sophomore class to this program. The freshman from the previous year would have to attend two more workshops during the winter and spring terms of their sophomore year for a total of four. These two workshops would be pertaining to job search and interview skills. After the second year a constant cycle of interviewing and hiring would occur to provide freshman and sophomores with 30 seniors each term. Hiring Requirements We will be conducting a holistic approach to hiring of the applicants. Seniors would not be hired solely on GPA, but also based on professional experiences they’ve had and their success in the course BA 352. Demonstration of professional experience shows they understand the basics, and the level of success they had in BA 352 demonstrates that the applicant performs at an even higher level. They’ll also be judged on their emotional intelligence. The leaders will have

7 Appendix C: About the Lundquist College of Business

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to engage with incoming freshman who truly lack the knowledge of the basics. Therefore, these seniors would need to understand how to level the field and connect with underclassmen. Impact and Benefits This program would give LCB seniors the opportunity to learn how to:

Develop a system to teach freshman and sophomores the basic skills needed to gain employment

Create an empathetic approach to connect with an unknowledgeable group of students

Design an evaluation process to provide beneficial feedback This program would also benefit the seniors by allowing them to gain hands on experience and improve upon their transferable business skills such as leadership and communication. Transferable business skills, as explained by Jessica Best of Career Services, are skills that can be transferred from one job to another and are extremely important for students to develop. Seniors would be paid $100 per workshop taught, for a total of $300 each term. This combined with the resume experience would provide a strong incentive for seniors to participate in this program. Phase 3 This phase of our solution is directed towards students about to enter the business major program. We will call this phase a Boot Camp and it will focus on two categories: how to market oneself to an employer or recruiter in a memorable way, and an opportunity to apply classroom knowledge to a real life scenario. How the Boot Camp will be conducted LCB Career Services staff members will conduct the Boot Camp. Volunteer companies will conduct the prompt exercise. The Boot Camp will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and held in the Lillis complex. It will occur the weekend before fall term of the school year. There will also be a maximum of 150 students who can attend and it will be based on a first come, first serve basis. Market Yourself Workshop To begin the day, LCB Career Services faculty will conduct a "Market Yourself" seminar. After the faculty concludes their lecture of how to be memorable to an employer or recruiter, the students in attendance will have the opportunity to market themselves to each other. Students will sit in two lines of chairs facing each other and have 60 seconds to introduce themselves to the person sitting across from them. After each person completes the exercise, they will move over one chair to their right. This will go on for a total of five times. Prompt Exercise Next, the companies in attendance will set up individual stations for students to go to. At these stations will be written prompts for the students to analyze and conduct a solution. A prompt will have two parts; one situation will be a basic task that a student applying for the company should be able to solve, and the other situation will be a problem that only a small percentage

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of students may be able to critically solve. They will have until the end of the camp to finalize their solutions and hand them in for feedback. Representatives from those companies will give the students their feedback at a later date of their convenience. We do not feel there will be a problem with this because of the number of students who will be in attendance and because there is not a deadline for these company representatives to give their feedback. Student Attendance The Boot Camp will be proposed as highly suggestive and highly beneficial to both students and their parents. By informing the parents in advance of the event, we are giving them the opportunity to arrange travel plans so that their sons/daughters can be at the event. To increase interest of the students we will host a wide variety of industries to appease all students’ interests. This Boot Camp also provides an experience that students can bring up in future interviews. Impact and Benefits Student Benefits According to David Woodward, a Career Services counselor at the University of California Berkeley, teaching students how to market themselves will help them to stand out at career fairs and in interviews. First impressions are critical in being a “memorable applicant”. In the same phone interview with Woodward, he expanded on the idea of why prompt exercises are so beneficial for his students. By providing these prompts, students can learn how to apply their classroom knowledge to outside the classroom job experiences. This is a form of the relevant work experience that employers are looking for in their applicants. The prompts also give students an opportunity to showcase their skills and impress employers. Woodward explained that employers are impressed when his students share their experiences from the Boot Camp that is run at Cal. Employers see the experience as a “jump start” in the employee learning process. Company Benefits There will be a registration for students that the companies will have access to. The registration information will include how many students are participating and how many are interested in their respective industries. We will pitch the event as an opportunity to recruit students in a more in-depth style. The event will also be on a weekend so that the companies’ representatives may avoid scheduling work and the camp on the same day. Phase 4 While many of our solutions have been focused on the younger members of the LCB, it is equally important to make sure the senior students are also catered to. The first three phases should help to improve upon the statistic of only 64% of LCB seniors being offered full-time employment within three months of graduation; the last phase will serve as a final “check-up” to reinforce and evaluate the effectiveness of our overall solution. With all the work being put

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in to help students become more confident and prepared for the job market during their first three years in the LCB, it would be impractical to not see the final results. Event Content We propose for the LCB to offer a new program within the LCB Career Services to help put seniors in the best position possible to land a quality job. Students would be required to meet with a Career Services representative during their senior year, allowing students to review their goals with a professional and receive advice on how best to find a job if they are struggling. Students would also be required to bring in their resume and a list of jobs they have applied for, or plan on applying for. During this time the Career Services representative can look over the student’s documents and recommend changes or possibly even opportunities the student doesn’t know about. Event Setting This program could be done in a one on one setting, or even in small groups of up to five students. Allowing a group of students to work together would encourage them to interact and help one another out with advice about methods they have found to be successful during their personal job hunt. Limiting the group to five seniors would also ensure students are getting sufficient help from the Career Services member running the meeting. Impact and Evaluating Results Implementing this program would serve as the final step in increasing the effectiveness of our solution as a whole. It would help seniors to feel more confident in the final resume they are submitting to employers and their overall career search. It would also give the LCB an opportunity to evaluate the success of our first three phases by observing the confidence and preparedness of seniors during the meetings. By receiving feedback on a yearly basis, it would allow the program to continue to evolve and adapt to students’ needs. Evaluating results could be achieved by:

Tracking the percentage of students who received job offers within three months of graduation and comparing it to previous years.

Having students fill out a brief survey before they graduate regarding the overall helpfulness of the program.

Receiving feedback from Career Services about the number of students they were able to help and their feelings on the effectiveness of the program.

V. Technical Plan Tasks Timeline Phase 1: Winter Term 2015 Resume Workshop Schedule Dorm Common Area Jan. 5 Open Online Sign-up Date Jan. 6

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First Workshops Day Jan. 10 Second Workshop Day Jan. 17 Third Workshop Day Jan. 24 Spring Term 2015 Cover Letter Workshop Schedule Dorm Common Area March 30 Open Online Sign-up Date March 31 First Workshop Day April 4 Second Workshop Day April 11 Third Workshop Day April 18 Winter Term 2016 Online Sign-up Date Jan. 3 Interview Practice First Workshop Day Jan. 9 Second Workshop Day Jan. 16 Third Workshop Day Jan 23 Resume Workshop Online Sign-up Date Jan. 3 First Workshop Day Feb. 6 Second Workshop Day Feb. 13 Third Workshop Day Feb. 20 Spring Term 2016 Online Sign-up Date March 27 Job Search Workshop First Workshop Day April 2 Second Workshop Day April 9 Third Workshop Day April 16 Cover Letter Workshop First Workshop Day May 7 Second Workshop Day May 13 Third Workshop Day May 20 Phase 2 Spring 2014 Book dorm common areas/classrooms April 30 Awareness about pilot program to incoming seniors May 5-9 (BB blasts/emails/class to class) Open up applications (summer going into senior year) June 30 Close/Review applications Aug. 30 Interview/selection process Sept. 29 – Oct. 3 Notify students of selection Oct. 4 Training session Oct. 11, 25, Nov. 15

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Phase 3: Contact Businesses May 2014 LCB Acceptance Letters Go Out May 2014 Boot Camp 10:00 am - 3:00 pm Sept. 27 Phase 4: Book dates with Career Services Sept. – April Post sign-up sheets outside Career Services Sept. 29

VI. Costs 15 seniors Career Service Employee Training Cost

($50 per hour x 3)…………………………….…….……$150 Seniors Running Workshops

Year 1($300 x 15)………………………………………….$4,500 Year 2 ($300 x 30)…………………………………………$9,000 Total…………………………………………………………………………….……..$13,650

VII. Conclusion These programs are designed to engage LCB students early in their collegiate careers, and to expose them to professional experience outside the classroom. They are created around the theme of our core issues and meant to pull LCB student through the first three stages of learning. We feel confident that each phase of this program will strengthen the LCB as a whole and produce stronger, more confident graduates. We thank the Educational Enrichment Task Force for taking our proposal into consideration, and would hope you counsel our team for further questions about our programs. This institution is capable of producing more successful graduates. Our solution is not a stagnant one, but one we would like to see evolve and adapt through the coming years for the betterment of this university.

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VIII. Appendix Appendix A: Employment statistics for Oregon and the six schools it’s being compared to

90% 91% 77%

84% 79% 74% 76% 90%

75% 71% 65% 60% 53% 48%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Colorado Cal Arizona Oregon Washington ASU Utah

Graduates seeking employment compared to employment offers

Seeking Full-Time Job Job offers within 3 months after graduation

$62,719

$51,000 $50,098 $48,878 $47,554 $46,660 $40,448

$- $10,000 $20,000 $30,000 $40,000 $50,000 $60,000 $70,000

Average salaries of graduates from 7 Pac-12 schools

Percentage of LCB students by state

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Appendix B: Primary Research Freshman interview questions How confident or unconfident do you feel about applying for jobs as of now? What are you confident/unconfident about?

If you were looking for a job or internship, would you know how to go about searching for one? What do you think of the emails you receive from career services about jobs/internships? Tell me about the last time you experienced a formal interview. Have you heard of any resume/cover letter workshops introduced by the business school?

Have you ever gone out of your way to look for a workshop? If not, why? What would motivate you to attend one? How would you feel about attending workshops taught by a senior in the business school? How do you think you could from benefit from this? Would you actually listen to their advice? Why or why not? How would you feel about being involved in a mentorship program with an older student in the business school? (Think of the big sis/bro little sis/bro idea. Some one that could help guides you in the business school process). How do you think you could from benefit from a mentorship program?

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Appendix C: Secondary Sources

"About the Lundquist College of Business." UOregon Business. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Feb. 2014. “Employability and Work Experience.” The Voice of Business. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2014. "How Confidence Affects Employment and the Job Hunt." Fox Business. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb.

2014. "Undergraduate Business Schools." Bloomberg Business Week. Bloomberg, n.d. Web. 6 Feb.

2014 "UO Career Center." Practice Interview Program. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2014.