In a previous post, I laid out five tips on how to use your college experience to prepare yourself for a career in the “real world”.  Hopefully, those suggestions were so helpful that you’ve come back looking for more – well, you’re in luck, below are five new tips! 5. Join a student organization. Scratch that – don’t just “join” a student organization, but take on a leadership or project management role.  Often times, students will join every group they can to beef up the activities section of their resume; but remember, its quality not quantity.  It will be much more beneficial if you are a contributing member of one organization versus just a dues paying member of ten organizations. 4. Enroll in a public speaking class. – I have often heard hiring managers say, “He may have a 4.0 GPA, but if I can’t put him... Read more

Originally published on RecruiterGuy. As SXSW Interactive week came to a close, I took a look at what our recruiting team had accomplished in Austin, TX. What I found most interesting was the realization that I was looking at measuring the success of our participation from a “recruiting” standpoint much differently than recruiters or recruiting management might expect. In fact, in speaking to anyone else in the staffing or employment space that attended the event – it’s very likely that we took an incredibly different approach to our attendance at this 5 day digital parade than anyone else. I’ll explain… Good recruiters are ALWAYS recruiting. So it’s not unusual to ask a recruiter what they’re doing at any event and receive from them a response that they’re looking for, or recruiting, top talent. Being 100% honest – it’s just in our... Read more

If you ask most students why they decided to go to college, they will likely respond with “to get a job”.  However, many of these same students probably aren’t doing everything they can to prepare themselves for the “real world”.  Although college is very different from a professional career in many ways (i.e. no naps, no pajamas during daylight hours, no fake ID’s), you can learn very valuable transferable skills.  Below is a list of simple actions you can take in college to make the transition from student to professional a bit smoother – because even though they say college is the “best four years of your life”, I can honestly say “it gets even better with a paycheck”: 10.  Upgrade your writing. – Stop communicating in abbreviated language (your boss probably won’t know what you mean when you email to say “I’m running to lunch,... Read more

In anticipation of World Water Day today, it’s been very busy around the halls of PepsiCo.  In case you’re not up to date on the world’s latest water stats, here are the two big ones to wrap your brain around: nearly one billion people are currently without access to clean drinking water, according to a recent United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report. Another approximately 2.6 billion people don’t have access to decent sanitation services or sanitary facilities. In Latin America and the Caribbean the need for universal access to water and sanitation is particularly great – these two regions are often overshadowed by water scarcity issues in other parts of the globe, like Africa.  As Latin America and the Caribbean have experienced significant population growth over the past two decades, the growth has outpaced service and infrastructure delivery, leaving hundreds of thousands of households completely... Read more

As we continue with the multicultural marketing theme, I decided to attend an in-depth discussion that touched on how a company’s ignorance to these groups will create huge profits for others. The aptly named “Your Ignoring Multicultural Markets Will Make Me Rich” was led by Sheila Marmon, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of UrbanAdserve, a digital media company reaching multicultural consumers. When we talk about multicultural marketing, a lot of attention goes to Hispanics. But multiculturalism represents all people of color, so African-Americans and Asians need to be included in the conversation. In the U.S. this cultural trifecta has grown 24% in the last decade. I have touched on the growth and digital usage of Hispanics, so let’s talk about the other groups. African-Americans represent 25% of all Twitter users and access the web mostly through mobile devices. And Asian-American buying power is forecasted to... Read more

South by Southwest is bringing us tons of content on green technology and the message is loud and clear:  Green is the world we live in today and imperative to our future as a world.  The Green movement has been everything from grass roots campaigns, to Al Gore documentaries, to Barack Obama making it a huge talking point in his State of the Union address. I’m covering a few panels this week learning about the businesses, technology and ideas behind the future of growing smarter solutions and how the interactive community is a major player in change.  Tuesday I hit up Cleantech: The Interactive Community & the Next Great Industry panel to begin to uncover what it all means and I’ll tell you from the outside looking in it’s tough to grasp.  Gathering data on energy consumption is a mystery but thanks to a number of... Read more

More and more, young, creative, and digitally savvy talent are working in roles that didn’t exist 5 years ago, some of which were invented for them. How can new creative talent carve our careers in this ever-shifting landscape? What are the skillsets you need? How do you prepare for roles that no one has thought of yet? How do you ignite organizational change within large corporation to keep pace with cultural and technological developments? And on the flip side, how can we educate, identify, recruit, and grow the next generation of young digital and creative talent? Speakers: Jennifer Openshaw (Founder, SuperFutures), Scott Belsky (Founder, Behance), Alexis Ohanian (Co-Founder, Reddit), Chris Hoyt (Talent Engagement & Marketing Leader, PepsiCo) Moderated by Anya Kamenetz (Fast Company) Time: 10:30 – 11:30 a.m. CST Read more

As I boarded my plane in New York en route to Austin for SXSW, I caught a fellow passenger out of the corner of my eye – Morgan Spurlock. He was also headed to SXSW Film for a screening of his latest movie, “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.” Whether or not you agree with Morgan’s philosophies, he is undoubtedly a respected figure in his field. And here he was going to SXSW, on my plane! Seeing such a well-known figure made me realize how SXSW really embraces both the big and little people. The conference is open to the general public (provided you are willing to shell out the registration fee), and attendees are free to roam events with the likes of global heads of communications and celebrity actors. There are start-up companies, megabrands like Pepsi MAX and individual entrepreneurs. It’s a great place to learn. PepsiCo and... Read more

I checked out an inspiring panel on Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Fearless Women Entrepreneurs Monday at SXSWi. There are only 13 women CEO’s in the USA’s 500 most publicly traded companies. Starting a business is taking a big step and the women in the room were eager to discuss how to overcome barriers and share tactics that have helped transform them from entrepreneurs to business leaders.  So, what are these barriers? The number one unanimous obstacle was fear.  Despite the panel name, these women were definitely not fearless.  Fear can shut down your ambitions and close you off to possibility or you can take another approach to it.  One woman indicated that her “aha” moment came when she accepted that she can and will be afraid but that it isn’t going to stop her.  As Emerson famously quotes “Do the thing we fear, and death of... Read more

The purchasing power of ethnic groups is north of $2.3 billion – hence the reason multicultural marketing is currently trending in marketing department meetings. Some companies are even hiring cultural experts (a trend likely to increase in the next five years) and developing niche marketing groups to target each segment properly. But while there’s talk about its importance, companies are not taking any new or “real” action (i.e. spending money) to attract the ethnic dollar, especially Hispanics. According to a 2010 Orci survey sent to 9300 senior marketers for Fortune 500 companies, the majority of respondents recognize the impact of the Latino market, yet “82% have no plans to begin or increase existing efforts aimed at Hispanics in the next 12 months”. This is pretty disturbing news. I’m not a marketing expert, but shouldn’t we be paying special attention to a group that is currently 1/6... Read more