How Can Student Clubs Transform Tech?
You have likely heard of student clubs or may have even been a member of one during high school or college. When I started my investment club in college, I could have never imagined that it would one day inspire me to create a solution for helping diverse students receive outstanding career opportunities.
I serve as the co-founder and CEO of a startup that provides companies targeted recruitment through student clubs at over 140 top colleges across the country. Our platform helps over 500 student clubs receive job and internship opportunities from Fortune 100's to non-profits.
The core foundation of our solution stems from my own unique background. I grew up in a diverse family and have benefited greatly from the valuable resource that is a student club.
Background
M y story begins in rural Massachusetts, where my family was one of a few who did not look like everyone else. I am the son of a Nepalese immigrant mother and an American Peace Corps father. I was the only kid in town with a different name and one of four students in my high school (including my brother) whose skin was any shade darker than white. However, being a three-sport athlete, I learned the value of working together beyond our differences and developed lifelong relationships with teammates that I now call best friends.
I was the only kid in town with a different name and one of four students in my high school (including my brother) whose skin was any shade darker than white.
Founding a club
When I became a business major at Endicott College, I found myself surrounded by like-minded individuals with a passion for investing. We would get together regularly to discuss investment topics from Wall Street to Main Street and how we could potentially contribute. As the meetings became more frequent, we decided to start the Investment Club with a diverse founding group of men and women, and gained our college’s official support.
Backed by the faith of the President and Board of Trustees, our newly formed band of inexperienced investors was allowed to manage a portion of the endowment in the amount of $50,000.
Our club had all the ingredients of a successful company: strong bonds, a good work ethic, an openness to each other’s perspectives and a focus on results. After completing much diligence, we made our first investments and they outperformed the college’s professionally managed fund that year.
Our club had all the ingredients of a successful company: strong bonds, a good work ethic, an openness to each other’s perspectives and a focus on results. After completing much diligence, we made our first investments and they outperformed the college’s professionally managed fund that year.
We had proven that a group of inspired students can do incredible things when given the opportunity. Most importantly, we created relationships that transcended graduation and have stayed with us during our various career paths: our original club members are now making contributions in education, finance, tech, nonprofits and other fields.
I even used my club investment lessons as a critical piece in starting and running a successful real estate investment business for 5 years after college. Today, the Investment Club at Endicott is one of the largest clubs on campus and manages over $110,000 in its fund.
From our club’s success, I learned that there is so much value in understanding and including others’ perspectives.
Diversity means seeing everyone as a critical piece of the bigger picture, valuing others as you value yourself, and seeing them as no less worthy of unique hopes, fears, dreams and being heard.
The club experience ultimately inspired my belief that student clubs are the best way for companies to access the team-oriented, motivated talent they seek.
Clubs are critical campus resources
I ‘d be lying, however, if I didn’t also mention the elephant in the room of student clubs: fear. It’s why we started my original club, really. Students who join or start clubs intrinsically do so to feel less alone as they navigate the difficulties of beginning their professional lives.
Diverse clubs
I have found this fear to be especially relevant to diversity and inclusiveness. Because of the career challenges that young minorities and women face, many of the strongest clubs in the country are minority and women focused (National Society of Black Engineers, Society of Women Engineers, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, LGBTQIA clubs, etc.). These diverse clubs act as peer-run support systems, often as the only place where students can share their struggles and dreams with people they can relate to.
Diverse clubs act as peer-run support systems, often as the only place where students can share their struggles and dreams with people they can relate to.
The solution to calming this fear is very simple. Students in clubs, especially minority and women clubs, need one major thing: OPPORTUNITIES. And, they need to feel welcomed and included, and frankly, a club is the perfect vessel that companies can tap into.
Inherent advantages
Fully 82.7% of companies use campus clubs as a recruiting resource to find top college talent (Source: 2014 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey, National Association of Colleges and Employers). This is because clubs offer three inherent recruitment advantages.
The first advantage is that clubs are a shortcut to finding motivated students. Students prove their passion for their field by dedicating dozens (and sometimes hundreds) of extra hours outside their normal class assignments, which translates to high work ethic and innovation in the workplace.
The second advantage is that clubs act as natural campus filters so that companies can get to exactly the students they want. Do you want to hire women engineers? There’s a club for that, and just about any other specific talent you seek.
Do you want to hire women engineers? There’s a club for that, and just about any other specific talent you seek.
The third advantage is that clubs are the most authentic way for companies to endear themselves to students. Because students spend so much of their energy building these organizations, they truly appreciate when you choose to engage with them. It’s an easy way for companies to get their brand front and center in a meaningful way, which often leads to viral impact on campus.
In speaking with a well-known Fortune 100 company that did an internal study to determine where their interns heard about the company for the first time, the most popular source — with a runaway 60-plus percent of the vote — was in student clubs.
This makes sense because the most effective hiring and branding strategies are about meeting the targeted audiences where they are.
Tech solution
Clubs are great resources for companies aiming to recruit top talent, but the inefficiencies of establishing and keeping relationships with them forces companies to limit the amount they engage.
My startup has created a platform for student clubs to efficiently engage with companies and receive job opportunities. From Harvard to HBCUs, each club’s hope for an opportunity-filled future is possible through our technology.
And we practice what we preach. We just hired our first class of summer interns through clubs. It was an easy and fun exercise that took less than a month to execute. Our group consists of eight women and seven men who run student clubs such as the Society of Women Engineers and Afrekete LGBTQ, and hail from schools such as Harvard and Spelman College.
Through our platform, we reached full club memberships instantly, and cut out the back-and-forth processes that can take up to ten days. Plus, we received higher response rates from students as well as data-driven insights to track and measure performance.
I say this not to sell you, but to say that technology has now made student clubs more accessible than ever. Given their inherent advantages, combined with efficient solutions, clubs present a fruitful opportunity to engage and hire diverse candidates.
Looking ahead
Companies want to include diverse students and diverse students want to be included. Technology is helping to make that happen in many industries, especially tech.
It is now up to us to welcome the next generation’s unique perspectives and backgrounds. As my experiences have taught me, we all have the same hopes, fears, and desire to be heard. By embracing the opportunities to engage students where they are, we can transcend our differences so we can reach greater heights together.
