Make a College Connection

December 27, 2005 —

Are you leveraging any nearby colleges or universities for your own benefit? Let me explain and tell you why this helps you and the folks at the school. Since the new year starts a new school semester, the time is right.

First of all, school programs create potential interns. Many classes need some practical hands-on experience, and you have plenty of such jobs available. The reason you don't do them often? Your employees hate those jobs, so they get pushed back.

Interns love doing grunt work. OK, they need intern hours and will do grunt work fairly happily because to them it isn't grunt work, it's practical work experience inside a real company. If you don't have any postponed grunt work now, you will soon. Need to spot check desktop software inventory? Send some interns.

Second, these interns become the best job candidates. If an intern shows up on time and has a good attitude, he or she will behave the same way when hired. Interns who show up to work late with bad attitudes just saved your Human Resources department the effort of a job interview, because you certainly don't want them.

But since interns know they become job candidates, can you really judge their behavior since they know they must behave? I believe you can, because no one can keep their job interview facade up for an entire semester. Short tempered jerks will show themselves sooner or later.

Finally, universities tend to roll out equipment upgrades about the time you should roll them out. Few schools become first adopters, willing to pay full price for newly released equipment. They tend to roll out products during the second phase, when the price drops and fixes have been implemented.

You should do the same on most of your network equipment. Vendors tend to sell as much as possible to the early adopters, then tune their equipment (and pricing) to catch the large second wave of customers. Wait a bit, and the products will be more stable and more affordable.

With luck and good timing, your new college interns can help you install new equipment they just installed at school. They do well because they have installation experience, and you leverage their experience without using your budget. Everyone looks smart.

ITworld.com, Enterprise Networking