Tag Archives: employment

by | Monday, August 27, 2018 · 7:06 am

Grandkids On-Demand

Even though it’s a fact of life, aging can be lonely. Friends and family members may have passed on, moved away, or moved into care facilities. And, caregiving for someone who is older can be hard when the caregivers also have other responsibilities such as families and full-time jobs. This was the need behind a new service called ‘Papa’ which helps provide senior citizens with a little extra attention through what it calls ‘Grandkids On-Demand’.

Papa has a simple premise – to provide college students to help senior citizens. It connects students with the seniors for tasks such as driving, shopping, reading, laundry, pet help, technology help, or even just companionship. It emphasizes a fun was for two generations to connect and frees senior citizens from being confined or left on the margins of life.

Members (the senior citizens) pay a monthly fee of $15 to $30 to belong, plus $15 per hour for visits from the Papa Pals (the college students). The Pals must be enrolled in college or working on a masters degree, social work degree, or nursing or medical degree. Pals must also have a four-door car and pass a background check. Pals are given the company’s personality test which look for people with empathy, patience, and the ability to draw people into conversation. The biggest focus is on curing loneliness; being with a younger person stimulates the seniors – relationships form to help both parties understand the world.

Become a Pal and help Papa.

Group Activities and Discussion Questions:

  1. Poll students: Do they have family members or friends that fall into this category? How do these people get assistance?
  2. Review Papa: https://www.joinpapa.com/
  3. Make sure to show some of the videos available on the Web site to illustrate how the service works: https://www.joinpapa.com/video-gallery/
  4. Discuss the components of a situation analysis: company, general industry, trends, key competitors, technology, legal, etc.
  5. Divide students into teams. Have each team use laptops to do general research to analyze the market for Papa. (Ex: overview of industry, size, growth, new technologies, environmental impact, etc.)
  6. Debrief the exercise by compiling information on the white board.

Source: Bahrampour, T. (20 June 2018). These college kids moonlight as ‘grandkids’ for hire. Washington Post.

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by | Wednesday, May 23, 2018 · 6:31 am

Where Do YOU Want to Work?

Many students get confused when they are searching for jobs. They’re not confused about getting a job – they know this part. But, they get confused about selecting which company they would most like to work for. Some of their questions include:

  • Should I select based on the job offer?
  • Or, should I select based on the company?
  • Should it be a company I admire?
  • Or, is it ok to work for a company I don’t admire, but they will pay me the most?
  • What is the growth potential of the company?
  • How can I research about a company’s attributes?

These topics can stymie even long-time marketing professionals. It can be hard to evaluate a company when not much is known about it. Thus, this is where the network comes into play. Instead of basing decisions only on one’s own limited knowledge, use the power of the network to help research and evaluate choices.

Providing what could valuable information in the evaluation of companies is the power of the LinkedIn network. Based on data from its more than 546 million professionals (146+ million who are in the U.S.), LinkedIn has compiled a list of the companies where professionals would most like to work. The list is based on billions of actions taken by LinkedIn members in regards to four main pillars of engagement: (1) interest in the company, (2) engagement with the company’s employees, (3) job demand, and (4) employee retention.

Here are the top 10 finalists for the 50 companies most want to work at in the U.S.:

  1. Amazon
  2. Alphabet
  3. Facebook
  4. Salesforce
  5. Tesla
  6. Apple
  7. Comcast NBC Universal
  8. The Walt Disney Company
  9. Oracle
  10. Netflix

Where do you want to work?

Group Activities and Discussion Questions:

  1. Suggestion: For this discussion, invite someone from the campus career services center to attend class and moderate the discussion.
  2. Discuss what attributes students look for in an employer.
  3. What do they want most? What do they want least?
  4. Divide students into teams. Based on the attributes the team wants most, have each team list 10 different companies where they would like to work.
  5. Compare the results between teams.
  6. Show the LinkedIn article and list of top companies to work for in the U.S. : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/linkedin-top-companies-2018-where-us-wants-work-now-daniel-roth/
  7. How many of these companies are on (or not on) the students’ lists?

Source: Roth, D. (21 March, 2018). LinkedIn top companies 2018: Where the U.S. wants to work now. LinkedIn.com.

 

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