Sports drinks, bow ties, and a blank canvas: 3 ingredients of career exploration
By Josh Mochel, Associate Manager Analytics, Global Market Research, Bayer Animal Health
Sports drink flavors were an obsession of mine in high school, and I’m happy to know that today’s high schoolers are no different. Our shared obsession for sports drinks was a perfect backdrop for explaining qualitative and quantitative measurement during a career exploration event at the Blue Valley Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS), which is close to our Bayer Animal Health offices in Shawnee, Kan.
About a dozen of my colleagues and I visited CAPS to hold small-group, interactive conversations with students. Almost 100 juniors and seniors attended to get a deeper look at business functions and opportunities at a global life sciences company like Bayer.
(Fake) Stats with a sense of humor
I had the pleasure of speaking with the well-dressed, articulate students about global business, market research and the importance of colleague communication. I know these kids will be successful in life since most of them were better dressed than I was. Gentlemen who can tie a tie (shout out to the lone bow tie wearer in the CAPS group) have a 60 percent greater chance of attending an Ivy League school than those who can’t. Actually, that’s not true, I completely made that up, but I used the methodology of figuring out that fake statistic as a discussion starter about measuring attitudes and attributes. From there, we moved on to the previously mentioned sports drink example.
My favorite exercise with the students was building a fictitious animal health product. Their imaginations ran wild as I guided them through the process of taking a molecule from inception to market. The students caught on quick. Energy is contagious, and I got more “fired up” as they became more engaged in building a global product campaign.
The future looks bright
Above all the academics, I was most impressed with the students’ empathic listening and general desire to learn about my life. I fielded questions about everything from international travel, to do I have a wife & kids, to how did I transition from concert pianist to market researcher, to why do I have two phones (my personal favorite). These questions brought a smile to my face, and eased my fears of a text-only, social media-focused future society.
The CAPS students are thinking the same thoughts as I did in my high school days, and I was honored and thrilled to interact with them. Little do they know, our discussion probably helped me more than it helped them. Amidst the day-to-day grind of the professional world, it’s easy to forget what it was like to have a blank canvas for painting all the future possibilities our lives could take. These top students reminded me of that feeling — and of the fact that original lemon lime will always be my favorite sports drink flavor.
Bayer Animal Health employee Robyn Keiter speaks with a CAPS student about her role in veterinary product support. During the career round table event, Robyn used her skills as a veterinary technician to demonstrate how to perform CPR on a plastic model dog.
