Every senior knows the stress of searching for a job post-graduation. It can often feel more stressful than all your college work combined. Luckily, Jack Sutherland, Brett Gilbert, and Kenny Papke are here to help. They developed a program called NuGrad to aid seniors in finding a great job right out of school. We sat down with them to find out a little bit more about them and the program.
Jack SutherlandFounder/FacilitatorEntrepreneurship MajorGraduating in December 2015jack@nugrad.io
Brett GilbertHead of Campus RelationsEntrepreneurship and Human Resources Double MajorGraduating in May 2017brett@nugrad.io
Kenny PapkeHead of Student DevelopmentFinance and Insurance Double MajorGraduating in May 2017kenny@nugrad.io
Her Campus ISU: What inspired you to start the program?Jack Sutherland: We started noticing a problem with the way that the recruitment process goes for seniors. Recruiters tend to have the power and students have none. Everyone deserves a good job that fits their personality. There’s a lot of room to innovate on the recruitment process so we jumped on the problem.Brett Gilbert: Through our friends, we’ve seen first-hand how stressed out they can get and that shouldn’t happen; you should definitely be able to find a job you really want.Kenny Papke: I had a professor talk about what to do during the internship fair for the first time the other day; we rarely see teacher interaction in the job finding process.
HC ISU: You all met through the business fraternity on campus, Alpha Kappa Psi. How has that affected NuGrad?Jack: It’s becoming a theme at AKPsi to create your own job as opposed to finding a job. Our alumni brothers from ISU started Packback books. They created jobs for others and it’s an inspiration to start something, create an organization, and go down the entrepreneurial route at the university.Brett: Having the alum who start businesses is really nice to be able to reach out to them for advice or connections or just to get your foot in the door. It’s perfect to have older members to go to for questions.Kenny: We’re always using the fraternity as a test before going to the larger market.
HC ISU: How does the program work?Kenny: We created an open-ended survey and after it’s submitted we can gage your personality. Then we schedule a meeting with the student to reaffirm what we thought about you. We use a “16Personalities” test, too. The big thing we really care about is your personality. If you have a good personality, you’re going to do really well in the workplace.Jack: Students are much more than a GPA or words on a resume. People can’t portray their personality through that. We want to understand their personality, where they would fit in the job market, where they would like to be and why they would like to be there so we can find them jobs that really fit their personality.Kenny: It’s an intensive job acceptation. We can tell the people who care about their future are the people who really take the time to finish it. There’s some students with long paragraphs and more detail who you can see doing really well. Others are barely filled out and they take a lot less time. This is not a quick fix; it’s not an overnight process. We take the time out of our schedule and your schedule to make the best educated decision that we can.Brett: We go to Coffeehound a lot; we have a lot of interviews there. The clients get coffee and we like to have fun and say we’re their agents.Jack: You know Ari Gold from Entourage? We are Ari Gold, representing students.Kenny: You gotta have fun in life, otherwise, what are you doing?Jack: Our interviews are about 80% work, 10% Kenny talking, and 10% telling Kenny to stop talking.
HC ISU: How do you plan to expand?Jack: We started the process by talking to recruiters to see if it’s a problem on their end. We connected with 5 companies in Chicago and have about 25 or 30 companies connected to students for advice, mentorship, or recruitment. The companies coming to the career fair in October will be a big test. We’ll be showcasing NuGrad students to every company coming and it’s an opportunity to jump on and explore students. We’re organically expanding. We’ve reached six different schools in two weeks. The program is really appealing to students as it’s a very big problem that no one is addressing. Our goal is to reach 25 schools by the end of the semester. The more students we can help, the better.Brett: If we introduce a student to a company and the company is satisfied with the student, it helps to build up a relationship so companies can go straight to NuGrad rather than a career fair or similar. Companies will start seeing that they can get good talent from us so they’ll come more often. They’ll start telling other recruiters about it; it’s a big networking process of the word spreading around.Jack: Students will never have to pay anything, either. We have revenue coming in from the recruiters’ side as they’re getting a lot of good talent a lot cheaper than they would from other places. High turnover is no longer a problem for them.
HC ISU: What kind of community are you building?
Kenny: We have a Facebook page with discussions. We’ll post questions like “how stressed are you” or discuss how the education system is changing. It’s good to see everyone interacting. People who are hired from NuGrad will be more than willing to reach out to someone in the company to help other people in NuGrad. People will want to help out if it is more successful.Jack: We have people from so many locations talking closely and they can bond over the struggle of finding a job. They’re no longer alone so they feel comfortable being themselves talking about why it’s problem. If we open up to them they open up to us.Brett: All students are welcome; there isn’t any specific major. Even if you’re not a senior, we can help to figure out an internship. Everyone can reach out to email us and talk to us or ask for advice. We want to help through the process to give them opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have.Jack: Seniors or not, the biggest way to grow is to spread the word, through word of mouth, and referrals. If you know any senior looking for a job, come talk to us. We want ISU to be the strongest network of users. We’d love to be as known and popular as possible, especially with ISU students. It’s kind of a failure on our part if people are stressed about finding a job when they don’t need to be.
We look forward to seeing all the great work that’ll come out of this program! Check it out at student.nugrad.io.