buletin ştiin ific - Facultatea de Stiinte Economice - Universitatea din ...

Students: The Overlooked Products in Academic MarketingThose capabilities can be developed among students, inexpensively and in only twoweeks of intensive training. How? The basic approach was developed in England after WorldWar Two by Bernard Haldane 1 who discovered how to assist soldiers in converting militarytraining and combat experiences into skills needed by civilian organizations. Haldane was sosuccessful that he took his system to America and, through a fortuitous series of connections, hisapproach was further developed and presented to millions in the popular job-search manual,What Color is Your Parachute. 2The book has been updated every year since 1975, and the 2008 edition opens with astinging indictment of academic institutions. Its author, Richard Nelson Bolles, an Anglicanpriest, asserts that when you are looking back at your education, you realize that:…there are three things a good education should have given you … but in yourcase, did not. High school or college should have taught you … How to chooseand find a job …. How to choose and find a partner, or husband, or wife …. Howto think, and how to make good decisions. 3Bolles refers to these as the “three basic life skills.” Though the emphasis here is on job searchand launching a career, it may be useful to recall that in America, at least, it was not too long agothat it was usual to interview spouses as well as applicants before hiring someone for a highvisibilityrole. And as for thinking, few recent graduates seem to have encountered the conceptof second- and third-order consequences, whether they are personal, professional, technical, orfinancial. That is, having been reared in what has been essentially a bountiful and forgivingenvironment, they have never learned to calculate possible consequences of their decisions (sex,drugs, rock and roll, etc.).Of course, it has long been established that educational institutions should not stand in locoparentis, and this article does not suggest a change in that posture. However, it may be that mostinstitutions have been slow to recognize and respond to developmental gaps among theirstudents. And with modern teaching/learning technologies, such gap-closing need not competewith established academic discipline for students’ time and attention.Paralleling Bolles’ life skills, what students need is (1) to learn how to “package” themselves forsuccessful job search; (2) to develop skills in researching industries and companies with needsthat match students’ potential for contribution; and (3) to gain experience in mock interviewsituations in much the same way as attorneys acquire courtroom skills through mock trials.Students assimilate Parachute’s content best by working in groups, using peer coachingalong with instructor input to accelerate learning that has three main components:1. Identifying the success factors that recur in each student’s life; that is, innate abilitiesseen in successes as early as age five that will be found in most successes at all subsequent ages.When identified, these abilities become an individual’s success pattern. Through success-patternanalysis, it is possible to identify situations in which an individual is likely to be successful, andfrom there it is easier to identify professional roles in which individuals will succeed.2. Where are such roles found? Rather than scanning want ads and job postings, currentjob-search advice 3 directs job seekers to identify industries, then companies within them, thenone in which the individual wants to work. The next step is to research that company in detail,6