Hiring a co-op? Some things to think about…
It is that time of year again and a number of students have been asking for advice on which job offer they should rank. Their motivations for accepting a job (or ranking it in UW terms) are diverse but there are two general things I think employers might not think of. It could cost them hiring the student that they think will fit the best in the role they have available.
- Students aren’t totally motivated by money but don’t offer pay below the average wage for their program. With the number of programs out there to help you pay for a student, what does 1 or 2K more for a term really cost you? If you really can’t pay any more then focus on the next point…
- Sell the value they are bringing to your organization. For coders the allure of their code being used by their peers is huge. For others it is similar—they want to do things that other people will find valuable in the time they are working for you.
I haven’t spoken to one student that took a job simply because of the pay but I have spoken to many that have not ranked a job because they felt they would not bring value to a group or project or learn something from the person they would report to. I am certain they appreciate each and every employer that comes to interview them and offer them an opportunity but at the same time they faced with pressure from family, friends, and mid-terms… and I wouldn’t call it a gen Y thing because the same motivators existed 10 years ago that exist today… It is simply a confident, intelligent, and capable student thing. I think anyway.
Btw, this is no way official advice from my employer. It is simply advice based on my experience. It might not work for everyone.
Thoughts on the HighEdWeb 2009 experience
On the way home yesterday I wrote this post in my head about dozen times. Lots buzzing around after some great discussions and some late nights in Milwaukee. HighEdWeb is by far the best conference focused on web technology, strategy, and networking in higher education. It isn’t because of the speakers (although some were simply amazing), it is because it brings together people from the most diverse collection of schools from across North America all with similar problems but different solutions.
Messages I kept hearing:
- Web teams in some schools are already starting to evolve as they grow while other schools still have layers of committees (Web Task Force – WTF – is my favorite) duplicating work and removing accountability. Not many teams of one left out there.
- Usability testing is required, it is not an option. I would slide towards more of ‘usability monitoring’ along with iterative improvements is the way to go. Not many schools are there yet but enough are going there to see a trend starting.
- Engaging your audience using Web 2.0 tools with Web 1.0 thinking doesn’t work. You probably don’t know you are doing it.
- CMS deployments solve one problem, create many others that aren’t as bad as the original problem. No surprise here.
- Problems or challenges: budgets are being slashed, recruitment is getting scary, web initiatives are underfunded even though they could have a big ROI.
There were some extremely entertaining moments around the keynote from the second day. The presenter was well out of touch with the audience, slides were poorly designed and outdated, and his content was poorly delivered. He got mobbed on twitter (and isn’t on twitter himself even though his topic was on using the web to engage your audience) with the outside audience reacting in a funny way. The backchannel was rough on him but honestly if I did that I would expect the same reaction.
As for my presentation, I think it went ok, people seemed to appreciate it. I got totally nervous given how packed the room was though. I am sure they noticed but nothing nasty on twitter 
In retrospect, I tried to cover too much in a 45 min slot. I could have easily broken it in half and I think people would have got just as much out of it. Project Management is a workshop, a lighter overview is a presentation. Maybe they will let me do that next time. Really looking forward to HighEdWeb2010 or 101010. My slides are here:
Introducing my side project: TribeHR
Last night at DemoCampGuelph Joseph, Stephen, and I demo’d our little side project… an app for taking the simple HR functions out of a spreadsheet and dropping them into a web app. Our big goal is to change the way people think about HR, for now we just want to make it easy for people to give feedback to each other, state their goals, and manage a few simple things like vacation. We call it TribeHR and at the moment we are really close to opening up a beta for a few folks.
Our site is missing some details but those will be filled in over the coming weeks. I am really excited about this little project as it seems to resonate with a lot of small businesses and startups that want to do something but they just don’t have an affordable tool.
Over the next few weeks I will probably talk lots about it. Hard to get feedback until people can try it out I know