Greg de Lima

After reading a post in the NY Times, it’s about time I told you about my job hunt this past summer, and why it’s not that 20-somethings don’t want to grow up, but why it’s damn-near impossible for us to do so.

I spent the entire 2010 summer passing out resumes, interviewing with companies large and small, and working my butt of to try to find just an internship. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like for people with entire careers under their belts trying to find new jobs.

A while back I came across this video by Max Radi at Ignite Portland 8.

The sticking point for this video is at the 4:25 mark. Max explains that our generation is in a bind because we’re looking for Jobs to give us experience, but we are often denied jobs because of a lack of experience. We’re caught in a place where expectations by companies are set in a way that college students seeking internships sometimes what we want to do isn’t necessarily our field of study.

I love social media, I’d love to work in marketing. My problem, I’m an International Business Major…It’s possible I might come out with a minor in marketing, but most people looking for social media people are looking for communications, or PR…That’s not me. But as Max mentions, why not hire someone and mold them, train them to be the person that you need them to be and from then on you have someone exactly qualified and right where you want them.

In today’s economy chances can’t be taken in hiring the wrong person, and that’s understandable. What we study in college doesn’t guarantee we’ll know what you want us to know when you hire us. The training you give us has little bearing on our past experience, or what you expect us to know.

Remember, we need the experience too. If you’re hiring someone for an internship, why not hire the person with the least experience, and give the person with more experience the opportunity for an entry-level position. This will let you mold the intern to the way you want them.

What do you think? How is your company hiring interns?

We’ve all been consumers, we’ve all bought something or used some item at one point in time. What was your ROI for that “thing”? I bet you, that you never really thought of it for a small item or a common place thing you use often and plentifully.

The problem is that Marketers, Accountants, and Financial Managers are all concerned about ROI. It’s always been a debate with social media, it will continue to be until the tools to monitor and analyze direct ROI become more accessible and efficient. Every one wants to know, what are we getting back from our money, but we business people are not the only ones worried about the ROI of our social and online marketing efforts.

Give the people a way to get ROI from what you build.

It’s an interesting way to think about the ROI of a consumer for your efforts. We business people have ours, but the clients look for an entirely different perspective. They want your Twitter to be a stream of intelligent and intelligible content, relevant to your business and relevant to the type of followers. Facebook should be an expansion and an easy way to get connected, talk back (in a good way) to them, and share longer information that can’t be done in 140 characters on Twitter.

More importantly, your website should definitely be easy to navigate, and have a very natural feel to the way it works and is laid out. These simple factors matter to the people who approach the tools you use to engage them because it’s their time on the line too. They want to know the information you’re giving in a high-quality, quick, and easy. Time and Knowledge are the two biggest returns for consumers online. If you can give those two aspects directly back to all your readers and people you engage with on an every day basis, you will be a bright shining star in their book.

Next time you develop something for your clients, think about their time and their return on investment with your product. Are they getting back what they expect, and more?! Give back to them too.