How Is Choosing College Like The Frog In Boiling Water?

We all have heard the story about the frog who jumps into a pot of water.  When he (she?) jumps in, the water is room temperature, so it decides to hang out there for a while.  Then someone turns on the burner under the pot, and gradually the water starts getting hotter. Then before the frog knows it, the water is boiling, and well…it doesn’t turn out so good for the frog!

Today I received an e-mail from the College Board with the Subject line: For Parents of Seniors talking about the fact that it’s still not too late to make your college choice.  For those still trying to decide, it said “Consider whether the college offers the opportunity to explore many different majors, especially if your child is undecided.”  I wish they would have been really honest and said ‘…and be prepared to open up your checkbook, because taking this approach and not knowing what you want to study before you go will cost you tens of thousands of extra dollars.’

I continue to be surprised by how many families have the attitude that students can’t possibly know what they want to be/become/study before going off to college.  Maybe they can’t know all of the answers, but not even trying to figure it out is like jumping in to the pot of tepid water.   Before they know it, grades will be slipping, they will change majors (often multiple times), then get a degree in something that allows them to graduate – but then leads to seven job changes before they turn 26.

I have a daughter who is a high school senior, and she went on a campus visit where the Advisor for the university told her something like, “Oh sweetie, you don’t need to decide your major before starting college, take your time to figure it out after you get here.’  I wish she would have asked him, ‘and who is going to pay for the additional semesters it takes to graduate (at $23,000/semester!) if I decide to take your advice?‘

Taking this approach is one of the primary reasons that the average college student today spends 5.5 years on campus, and an EXTRA $30,000 on their college education.  And those costs figures are if they go to a state school – they’re much higher for a private or select school.

Maybe I’m just too practical.  I think a college degree should lead to something – like a job that can eventually pay off the enormous cost of going to college.  We should encourage our students to begin college with an end in mind, not just go to college to find themselves.  They might just find themselves in boiling water…

BCS Rankings and College Admissions

Do you know a student who wants to attend a college where there is ‘Big-time’ football program?  Now that the BCS rankings are out and the Bowl game match-ups are decided, it is easy to find schools that match this criteria.

But if you are the one paying for the education, you may want to see some other numbers in addition to the BCS rank – like how much do they cost and what are the odds that a student will graduate in four (or six) years from this institution.  As part of our service when we work with students, we provide a list of colleges across the country – complete with admission statistics, college costs, and graduation rates.  Since I am also a big football fan, I thought I would narrow this data down to the 2010 Top 25 BCS Rankings with College Graduation Rates.

The thing that probably jumps out immediately to most people is the highs and the lows re: 4-year graduation rates.  These numbers reflect the entire student body, not just the football players, so you can see how ‘normal’ students fare at these schools.  At the high end is Stanford, with an 80% graduation rate in 4 years.  At the low end is Boise State, in the single digit range at 6%.

A few other things you might notice include:

• the average 4-year graduation rate for these 25 schools is 35%, which is very close to the average of all schools in the U.S. (only 36%)
• Besides Stanford, only two other schools (TCU and Virginia Tech) have 4-year graduation rates at or above 50%
• Besides Boise State, two other schools (Nevada and Hawaii) have graduation rates below 20%, but we can all imagine there could be some additional nearby  ‘distractions’ in those locations that aren’t available near other campuses

I’m all for having a great time in college following your local team, and people who know me know that I certainly have done my fair share – both during and after my college days.  If you want to go to a ‘Big-time school’, just beware of the overall environment and be careful to set goals so that you aren’t one of the ones bringing these statistics down even further in the future.

Can We Learn From Secretariat?

My wife and I went to see the movie ‘Secretariat‘ last night and we were thoroughly entertained.  Although I was a teenager when this horse ran for the Triple Crown in 1973, I could still remember some of the details of the story – like the margin of victory in the final, and most difficult, race.

If you haven’t seen the movie, go see it.  You know how the races end up ahead of time, after all, the horse did win the Triple Crown.  But some of the sub-plots behind the outcomes were quite interesting.

As you know, I work with a lot of students who are trying to figure out what they want to do in life, so I read a lot about generational trends and college graduation rates.  I was doing some research this morning on ‘extended adolescence’, and some of the articles I was reading made me think back to the movie last night.

Before anyone goes bananas on me for comparing young adults to race horses, just consider the lessons we can learn, such as:

1. Know your strengths (and your weaknesses).  The owner of Secretariat, Penny Tweedy, was known for her ability to sense a good horse, and sense whether the horse was sound enough to race.  Conversely, the horse’s trainer, Lucien Laurin, nearly scratched the horse from the Kentucky Derby because he wasn’t aware that what was causing him to lose weight unexpectedly was that he had an abscessed tooth.  He wouldn’t get close enough to the horse to examine his mouth.

   We (parents and counselors) often give advice to students without first knowing their true strengths , and using only what we can see from afar or what everyone else can see.  We could give them much better help if we first tried to understand their inner strengths, and how those strengths might position them for various career options.

2. Setting Expectations.  In the movie, many predicted that Secretariat couldn’t win any of the Triple Crown races because they believed he was bred only for speed, and not for endurance.  The three races are a grueling 5 week schedule over increasingly longer racetracks, and most trainers lean toward rest after the second race to allow their horses to recover for the last, and longest, test of endurance.  After the Preakness, Laurin surprised Tweedy with a recommendation that they should train the horse hard for the Belmont instead of resting him.

   His expectation was that Secretariat loved to run, and loved to compete, and that resting him would not have him ready for the last leg of the Triple Crown.  What I see oftentimes with students, is that parents (myself included) tend to coddle them instead challenging them to greatness.  Especially once they have found their calling, we should encourage them to go all out for it, and not fall back and float along like many of their friends are doing.

   If everyone else is taking 5 years to graduate, why shouldn’t they?  If you know how you are gifted, why not try to maximize that information and see how far you can distance yourself from the field?  You have to see the movie to really appreciate how big an impact setting high expectations had on the final race.

3. Trends can be powerful.  Something I didn’t know when I saw the movie, but I learned today with some additional research, is that Triple Crown winners come in clusters.  Once someone accomplishes a rare feat, others think they can do it also.  After Secretariat won in ’73, Seattle Slew won in ’77, and Affirmed won in ’78.  And between 1935 and 1948 six different horses won the Triple Crown.

   Before Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four minute mile in England in 1954, no one thought it was humanly possible – now it has been accomplished hundreds of times, even by some high school athletes.

   Sometimes, maybe way too often, we set the bar way too low for the younger generation, and don’t realize how the success of one may drive the repeated success of many.  How great would it be to be on the front end of a trend toward focused results in college that lead to extraordinary results in a career?

It all starts with helping them to know their strengths…

Talent Lessons Learned From the World Series

A recruiting site that I monitor published a good article today by John Sullivan that lists 8 talent management lessons businesses could learn from the World Series:

1. Identify critical success factors and prioritize around them
2. Continuous talent swapping is needed
3. Contingent labor and role players add agility
4. Performance triumphs age, tenure, experience and education
5. Global talent is necessary for winning
6. Castoffs can be major contributors
7. Superstars are important, but so are role players
8. Build a performance culture

John is based around San Francisco and gave really good examples for all of these points from the Giants’ perspective.  Since I have lived in DFW nearly all my life and have followed the Rangers since they first came to Arlington, I can tell you they are all true from the Rangers perspective also.

What surprised me most this year from both of these teams came from point number 2 above – Continuous talent swapping is needed.  One of the key players in the San Francisco rise to the top was rookie catcher Buster Posey.  His development early in the year allowed them to trade their veteran catcher Benji Molina to the Rangers – a move that turned out to help both teams make it to the World Series.

Look, I am in my fifties, and have seen many professionals let go (maybe unfairly) to bring in younger (and less expensive) talent.  This is a great example of it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  Sometimes the experience you have is just the right thing for another organization.  But you just have to be the one to go out and find that situation.

One other point that I would add to John’s list.  Neither team asked their players to be somebody they weren’t – they both tried to maximize the strengths of their players.  One of the times the Rangers got away from this principle, and tried to play Vlad Guerrero in right field, it didn’t turn out so well for them.

Happy Workers = More Productive Workers

Approx 480 words (2-3 minute read)

I just read a post that quoted Shawn Achor stating that happy workers produce more, and I wonder how many people (i.e., employers) are surprised by this.  I like to follow Shawn’s stuff.  He’s a Texas guy who ended up going to Harvard and has stayed on as professor after graduating.  His research focuses on “Happiness” – how fun is that!  He’s a good writer and speaker, and I heard him speak in Dallas a few months ago.

He quotes that optimistic sales people outperform their pessimistic counterparts by 37%.   The article lists examples of what some of the bigger companies are doing to try and keep their employees happy, including things like on-site child care, free meals, recreation breaks, and giving employees time to work on their areas of personal interest while at work.

While all of these amenities and options are nice, most small and medium sized companies cannot afford them.  But what all companies can afford is to do a better job in matching an employees gifts to the work they ask them to do.   That is where they can get some huge increases in productivity.

Think about the ROI for improving the job fit equation:

• Research shows that top performers outperform average performers in office/professional roles on average by 32%, and outperform the poor performers in the same role by 64%.  For a job that pays $50,000 a year, the difference between getting an A-player vs. a C-player into the role is a performance gap of $32,000/yr.  ($50,000 X .64)
• To be conservative, now let us assume that by creating a valid benchmark for this role that we can help to identify an A-player only 50% of the time.  ($32,000 X .50 = $16,000)
• Now assume that it cost about $5,000 to build the benchmark

The ROI in this example would be: $16,000 / $5,000 = 320%

How many other investments can companies make that have a ROI over 300%?

In some ways we are talking about the same thing – employees who are a good fit for their role are happier employees – because what they do on their job is what comes naturally for them.   If just by being myself at work makes me more productive, why wouldn’t I be happy?

The really cool part is that when companies take BOTH approaches (improve the employee amenities / work environment AND build benchmarks for key roles) they can have a compounding effect on productivity.  How do I know?  One of our clients was  rated as One of the Top 20 Privately Held Companies to Work For in America before we ever started working with them and they already had in place almost all of the employee perks mentioned above.  Yet we were able to show them how effectively implementing benchmarks could improve their productivity even more.

So companies shouldn’t shy away from trying to create an environment that makes their employees happy, but should realize that happiness can also come from great job fit.

 

 

The Alice In Wonderland Approach to Selecting a College (and Major)

700 words (2 – 3 minutes)

I often look up the most recent articles on college statistics, and it seems that most of them – especially the articles about costs and graduation rates – still show that we are going in the wrong direction.  When I look at how the college decision process works for most students, I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised.

Too many students take the Alice in Wonderland approach to making these decisions, with a lot of counselors taking on the role of the Cheshire Cat.  In case you don’t remember the scene,  Alice comes to a fork in the road, looks up, and asks the Cheshire Cat (sitting in the tree) which road she should take.  The cat asks Alice, “Where do you want to go?”  Alice replies, “I don’t know.”  So the cat responds, “Then it doesn’t matter which road you take.”

"Which road should I take?

I see a lot of students who spend a disproportionate amount of time in their decision process focusing on where they will go to college, and minimal amounts of time thinking about what they will do when they get out.

They go through the rigor of applying to 4 – 8 colleges, wait on the acceptance letters, then make their final choices based on a variety of disconnected criteria, like: where their friends are going to school, where their parents are pushing them to attend, or how far away from home do they want to go.

Many guidance counselors (who may be the most over-burdened and over-stretched of any of the high school administrators) focus on helping students get into their first or second choice of college, as evidenced by some of them posting this information on the school’s web site. They don’t have the time or tools to effectively guide or redirect, they just answer the question as it was posed.

Independent counselors and college web sites aren’t much help in this area either.  While some may suggest an assessment instrument or a questionnaire to help students figure out the direction they want to go, precious few of the tools they recommend are reliable or valid tools to use for this purpose.

Garbage IN = Garbage OUT (GIGO)

I spent over 20 years in the IT and Consulting industries before starting to work with students and professionals who are in career transition.  One of the oldest phrases in the IT industry is GIGO.   If you start out by with bad data, you’ll end up with bad data.  If students don’t spend any time thinking about their future career before they go off to college, you can bet they will spend a lot of time thinking about once they get there.

The generation going off to college now is sometimes called the ‘gameboy’ generation.  Not only were they raised on electronic games, many of them have incorporated the ‘game reset’ mentality into their decision-making process.  That means when things go poorly or get hard, they choose to start the game over rather than finish it with a poor score.  So we shouldn’t be surprised when they go off to college, change their major several times, and then take 5 – 6 years to graduate (if they are lucky).  Even at a state school, these kinds of changes will cost whoever is footing the bill for college an extra $20 – 40,000 for this additional time on campus!

There are better ways to go about making these decisions, and certainly there are better tools to help students making these life-changing decisions.  PeopleRight Careers has a unique combination of experience working with businesses to benchmark their top performers, and working with students to show them how they can leverage this information into making better career choices that are based on their individual strengths.

A recent survey in the September 2010 Human Resource Executive magazine of over 800 workers age 26 showed that the average number of jobs they had held was seven.  So students are going off to school with little direction, changing their minds frequently while in school, and then continuing to change directions once they get out.  What’s good about this scenario?

 

Can We Get the Tuna to Eat Mayonnaise?

One of the ongoing jokes around my house is how to make things easier in life.  We joke about crazy stuff, like instead of having to add mayonnaise to tuna to make tuna salad, why not just get the tuna fish to eat mayonnaise so we wouldn’t have to add it in.

In working with businesses and students I often wonder about similar things, things that should be simple – but we make them harder.  Things like:

• Why do companies typically rush to hire someone, without first determining what kind of person will best fit into the role?  Companies usually hire fast and fire slow (when it doesn’t work out).  Why don’t they conduct more ‘due diligence’ on the front end to make better hires,  then reap the ongoing benefits of hiring people who have the potential to become top performers – instead of spending huge amounts of time and money trying to change someone that wasn’t a good fit for the role in the first place?
• Why do students and parents spend much more time focused on where the child will go to college, and so little effort planning what they will do when they get out of college?  The colleges love this approach, because most students change majors multiple times and take over 5 years to graduate.  (Translation: the family ends up paying an ADDITIONAL $10 – $50,000 on the college experience than they would have if they had done some effective planning up front)

“The problem with common sense is that it isn’t too common.”