Students are an Excellent Resource

By Roger E. Herman, CSP, CMC, FIMC

We’re all wonderfully busy, with ever more to do. Hiring full-time or part-time help is a challenge: good people are increasingly difficult to attract and payroll expense eats profit. Yet, the work is there to be done. If we take our time to do detail work, routine research, or fulfillment, we sacrifice time for self and family. 

Solution: hire high school and college students. They’re eager to learn, will work for relatively low wages, and appreciate the flexible working hours. This is a great labor market for folks like us. We can offer so much more than those kids will gain from flipping burgers, working in the library, or shelving stock in a grocery store. 

Colleges and universities are fertile ground for recruiting. Our experience suggests following two routes to the students. First, seek students looking for internships. Some will even work for nothing, earning college credit for experience. Others work for pay. Many schools have internship coordinators who identify prospects and gather resumes for your consideration. In other cases, and sometimes when internship coordinators are in place, it’s most effective to contact department heads. For example, if you need help in marketing, call the head of the marketing department. 

High school students can do much more than you might expect, especially the brighter juniors and seniors. One of the best employees I ever had was a high school junior when I hired her. She was trained in office procedures and was quite proficient at shorthand—important back then (remember those days?) She worked part-time during the school year, full-time in the summer, then part-time during her senior year. She stayed with us until mid-way through her freshman year in college.
 
Ask your high school counselors about students from DECA (Distributive Education Clubs of America). Distributive education is designed as a co-op opportunity for business-oriented students to get office experience--great preparation for the kids, but they need productive co-op employment opportunities.

I can attest to the value of the program: our former vice president of operations, Kim Bauer, went through the program when she was in high school and the benefits of what she learned a decade earlier were helpful when she worked with us a couple of years ago.

Currently, we have three university interns working with us. Shweta, an international student from India, just completed her masters in information technology. She’s learning first-hand what e-commerce is all about. Stephenie is a senior majoring in marketing. She’s managing the launch of my next book. Kristin, also a senior in marketing, is learning a lot more about public relations by working with journalists to gain publicity for the firm.

Read Only © Copyright 2002 Used with permission of author. Roger Herman is CEO of The Herman Group, a consulting firm he founded in 1980. To learn more about the firm, visit www.hermangroup.com/ Roger is also Co-author of "How to Become an Employer of Choice" (Runner-Up for Best Business Book of the Year) and author of forthcoming book, "Impending Crisis"

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