Dr. Neil Hair

Always close to if not top of the list of any college is the focus on marketing itself effectively. I'm passionate about being at Saunders for many reasons, the people I work with, the quality of the students, the innovation of materials and delivery systems and of course the new look to the building. As a marketer though my training tells me to look at the experience from the point of view of the consumer. The primary consumer in this case being the student of course. Thinking this way usually helps. My thoughts follow. What does every graduating student want?

1. A good looking resume in more ways than one. (Check previous blogs out that I have written on this for ideas on how to better market yourself on paper and online).
2. A resume that has extensive experience on it in the form of client projects, volunteer work, co-ops, technological competence, team working skills and signs of creativity and innovation.
3. Confidence in their abilities to do well post classroom experience.
4. A decent job stemming from that resume.

We're doing a lot in these areas to make our students more competitive. The co-op experience is one but my personal favourite is without doubt the client projects many of us use for in class learning. A group of former students just got back from talking with their former client about implementing their plan (and with a bit of luck paying them to do so). Its exactly that sort of experience that makes a resume stand out. Real world consultancy experience. Put together four or five of those on a resume and I guarantee you 'the graduate' will stand out. My own personal experience shows this works. I had the good fortune to be close to a number of faculty as an undergraduate at Cardiff Business School. I was a researcher for the schools vice chancellor for a year and my marketing Professor passed on to me an opportunity to work for a South Wales minerals company one summer. The first project helped me stand out as a person that was able to interact and research with senior managers. The second showed off my creative thinking skills (I identified a market for blast furnace slag to the tune of several million pounds back in 1993). Subsequently the minerals company offered to pay for my masters degree in International Marketing and the former research experience helped me get into a research post at Sheffield Business School where I started my teaching career.

So what does this mean for students? My advice is to take up every opportunity you can, pro bono projects for local clients – no youre not likely to be paid for them – but you ARE building your competitive edge by taking these on! Saunders has great links with local enterprise for you to take advantage of. Hence the success of the co-op experience (if taken seriously by the student). Get yourself into classes that use experiential methods as a means of advancing your understanding. Many of us use these including professors Colton, Demartino, Hull, Perotti, Lawlor, Scully, Boehner, Tang to name but a few. In my calculations the average marketing student having been through our program could have at least TEN real world projects to their name by the time they graduate. Who wouldn't benefit from a page worth of evidence of their experience – learning on someone else's dollar – and gaining experience in putting the theory of class into practice (I will blog on how you frame this experience in another post).

What does this mean for marketing our college? We should do our utmost to inform students of the opportunities we have for them in these areas. Our experiential approach is second to none. We favour a learning by doing approach and we're good at it. We show students how to market themselves on the basis of their experience (nothing sadder than seeing a students resume without their consultancy assignments on it). Finally we show the results of these efforts – the proof of the concept in the fact that many of our students go on to form healthy start ups, hold senior positions in large fortune 500 companies through a series of rapid promotions, or pursue graduate school degrees where prior experience counts towards being accepted. Perhaps the most important ingredient is showing students that we are making them more competitive than our competitors and doing so by taking advantage of our 'unfair advantage' in the community.

Blast furnace slag isnt exactly sexy. What you do with it can be. I think I'm very much living proof of that and I have my former marketing professor to thank. So, thank you Professor Robert Morgan, Associate Dean and the Sir Julian Hodge Professor of Marketing and Strategy.