16 Oct Connecting Business with the College Community, the Next Step in HR Education

Written by Mark Fogel on the SHRM blog is this informative article on connecting business with the college community, and how it is a fantastic next step in HR education. How do you feel about this update in HR eduction?

You can read the original article here.

Many of you know I am passionate about preparing our next generation of HR practitioners for the workforce of tomorrow. I have been teaching graduate, and occasionally undergraduate HR courses, in the business school at a major university on Long Island for close to a decade. It is hard to integrate my classes with local businesses when the courses are primarily at 6 or 8pm at night. I am sure many if not most graduate HR programs face a similar challenge.

I try to bring practitioners in to speak, host panels and do an online HR simulation in one of my classes. But, the real-life experiences of being integrated into a business is and will always be the best learning experience as far as I am concerned. So short of the occasional internship opportunity, my students and those at the university have faced a void of HR reality that I have looked to fill throughout my tenure.

I have now found a solution that I want to share with the HR community in hopes that you think about partnering with local schools too.

I have partnered with GEICO insurance to do a case competition in my graduate selection and recruiting class on Attraction and Retention of Millennials for GEICO’s Management Development Program. The project involves having 6 teams of students research millennial hiring and retention trends as it relates to Geico’s current and future employment needs.

GEICO’s local talent team is providing support and opening their doors at a major work center to have my students come into their business to interview and observe their employment practices. Their regional facility has expanded hours of operation and this helps in coordinating schedules for on-sites too. The project/competition ends late in the semester with formal presentations and prizes for the best research. They bring in a few senior executives along with the Talent team to listen, question, and discuss the research results, which adds to the overall experience and creates great networking opportunities.

This is an amazing partnership that can be replicated by other businesses on a variety of projects and is a win-win for all. Students get a bird’s eye view of HR challenges and Geico gets great insight and research in return. With minimal to no cost and great ROI, this is a no brainer.

This is not to say that SHRM and other learning systems, courses, and conferences are not great value adds in the learning experience. They obviously are and I continue to do my part in volunteering in the conference space myself, however this is a missing piece of the puzzle for HR education. Especially for early and emerging practitioners or those wishing to enter the field.

What are you waiting for?

You can read the original article here.

Source:

Fogel M. (3 October 2017). “Connecting Business with the College Community, the Next Step in HR Education” [Web Blog Post]. Retrieved from address blog.shrm.org/…/connecting-business-with-the-college-community-the-next-step-in-hr-educatio