College Recruiting Enters the Digital Age:
Kimmel & Associates Launches College Recruiting and Internships
Article By Frank Bruckner, Executive Vice President
Kimmel & Associates
“It is a sad fact that students and professionals often make huge life choices regarding the industry they will work in based on limited and dated information.”
The Dean of a major Construction Management Department at a leading American university recently referred to the College Recruiting Process on his campus thusly: “It’s archaic. Companies in search of their next generation of executive talent go to a career fair, set up a table, and hope something good falls into their lap. Thousands and thousands of potential candidates, and companies are selecting their management gene pool from a tiny fraction of all those available.”
It is a sad fact that students and professionals often make huge life choices regarding the industry they will work in based on limited and dated information.
We at Kimmel & Associates aim to change that.
In January, 2008, Kimmel & Associates will make available to the Construction Industry a new service which we believe will revolutionize college recruiting and college internships.
Kimmel College Recruiting and Internships (or Kimmel CRI) will be available to bring together in a single place, on a national basis, all of the students in design, engineering, and construction, with all of the employers of the U.S. Engineering and Construction Industries. We will attempt to provide a centralized source of jobs, career options, industry options, and employers to students around the country.
Further, we will provide the most up-to-date information possible regarding new industries, new technologies, growth markets, markets in decline, and current salary/compensation information about various market segments. Company information will contain material about current and future building markets, corporate culture, and career development options.
Kimmel CRI will allow students to research companies easily and anytime – 24/7 - at our website and to establish contact directly with executives, department managers, and decision makers within those corporations, rather than deal with “career day” boilerplate information that may not present the opportunities that could best advance a young person’s career.
Kimmel CRI will allow companies to research students thoroughly and confidentially and to make contact directly with students who may be in college in an area where a company plans to open a new branch office in 6 months or begin a substantial project in a month or two. This national internship clearinghouse will provide unprecedented information about students, including aptitude and personality profiles which will enhance the fit for employment satisfaction and success.
It is also our hope that as construction companies better understand the time, effort, and energy expended to produce a single student for their potential employment, that they will actively seek and establish financial support relationships with schools of construction around the U.S.
Kimmel CRI will be offered to companies and students of the U.S. Construction Industry as a Not For Profit Service venture of Kimmel & Associates. It will be the fourth leg of the Kimmel Education Initiative established four years ago with the establishment of Building Future Builders, whose goal is to enhance U.S. Construction Education.
At that time four years ago, when the well documented workforce shortage burst into the collective consciousness of the construction industry, we made a commitment to do whatever one company could do to help the industry that had given us so much. We saw four paths to help alleviate the management shortage:
- We created the Kimmel Scholarship for Students in Construction to develop interest in the Construction Industry. Since 2004, we have awarded $220,000 in scholarships to students at 86 colleges, in 35 states. All students in a construction-related field are welcome to apply at the website at kimmel.com or through Building Future Builders at its website of BuildingFutureBuilders.org.
- We have worked actively with Buncombe County Schools here in North Carolina to assist them in creating the first High School Career Academy in Western North Carolina. The Academy will admit its first students in 2008.
- We have provided direct support of University Construction Management Programs. This resulted in the gift of $6.92 million to the Western Carolina University School of Construction Management.
- Finally, we sought a method to allow the students in construction to have access to the full gamut of opportunities available to them, to allow exposure of the next generation of leadership to all corners of the U.S. Construction Industry, rather than to a handful of large firms with large Personnel Departments. We sought further to provide these students with information about today’s markets, tomorrow’s markets, their worth in those markets, and their future earning potential.
For the past four years we have received tremendous encouragement, from both engineering and construction companies, and from students and educational institutions, to establish a service like Kimmel CRI. We had no idea what we might be tackling four years ago when we committed to make this service happen. It has required a large and concerted effort by key personnel here at Kimmel.
Because we are not educators, we have sought the advice of experts from both Education and Industry to guide us in shaping this effort. To that end, Kimmel CRI will employ - on a full-time basis - experts from both Construction and Education to insure that the best interests of students are constantly maintained as our highest consideration.
A small service charge will be requested of each company utilizing the service, some of which will be retained by Kimmel CRI for daily operating expenses. In December of each year, every cent of excess operating expense will be donated by Building Future Builders back into U.S. Construction Education. Finances of Building Future Builders are directly overseen by Eblen Charities, a non profit foundation located in western North Carolina.
In the coming weeks, we will be explaining all aspects of Kimmel CRI, how it will work on a day-to-day basis, and how you can participate in the service. Please log onto our website, www.kimmel.com, and see the entry portal for Kimmel CRI. We invite your assistance in this effort through comments, questions, and suggestions. Our only goal is to provide a beneficial career decision making service to the students and employers of the US Construction Industry.
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