Previous experience required! Job shadowing benefits employers and students.

• Author: Poe, Bob
• Position: BUSINESS

Almost all of us had the same problem when we graduated from college. We needed to find the right job, or for that matter, any job that could get our business careers started. The problem was, all the jobs we saw advertised required a year or two of experience, and we didn't have it--if only we could find a way for employers to meet us. Employers face a similar problem: How can I interest top college grads in my industry and business without being inundated with hundreds of resumes? We've all been through the process of advertising a job opening only to get a pile of resumes, most of which aren't very close to the candidate we were seeking. This is especially true for entry-level professional positions.

Things haven't changed much; graduating students still face the dilemma of how to get that work experience, and employers still face the challenge of meeting top graduates before a competitor snatches them up. At the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) College of Business and Public Policy (CBPP) we get it. That is what's behind Dean Rashmi Prasad's efforts to build a variety of "experiential and community-engaged learning" opportunities for business students at CBPP.

Engaged Learning

Many Alaska Business Monthly readers may have heard about the annual Alaska Business Plan Competition, which has helped a number of student-developed and community-developed business ideas get off the ground. Our Leadership Fellows Program gives many of our top students at both the graduate and undergraduate level access to a broad range of leaders in our community. Likely, many Alaska Business Monthly readers would relish the chance to learn, as our students do, from Alaska leaders like Linda Leary, senior vice president at Alaska Communications and CBPP alumni; Jeff Kinneeveauk, president of ASRC Energy Services; or Janet Weiss, president of BP Alaska. And, through our Justice for Fraud Victims initiative, CBPP students help everyday Alaskans untangle the mess resulting from today's all-too-common problem, identity theft. The Job Shadowing program is one of our most recent additions to this experiential learning effort.

The Job Shadowing program at UAA is now entering its fifth semester and has grown to about fifty CBPP students and ten host employers each semester--about one hundred CBPP students a year. This isn't "take your kid to work day" where students are just kept busy until the day ends. This is engaged learning--the students get a firsthand look at...