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Comment on: Topic 'NEWS ON JOBS AROUND THE WORLD': ke to be your representative,’ ” says Sabine Klahr, director of international programs at Boise State University. “We don’t answer those e-mails typically.” “There are no standards at this point,” Klahr explains. “You could work with agents throughout the world who are not” — she pauses, searching for the right word — “they are not reputable business people, essentially. How do you know that you can trust them?” Klahr’s question forms the foundation for the American International Recruitment Council. Incorporated as a nonprofit organization last summer and now counting 35 colleges as institutional members (including Boise State), the council is rapidly moving forward with developing standards and an “accreditation lite” procedure for certifying reputable international recruiting agents. Yet, in embracing the practice of colleges paying recruiting agents per-student commissions, the AIRC aims to regulate an industry atop what many see as shaky ground, ethically speaking. The federal Higher Education Act bars such incentive compensation in domestic student admissions, but exempts international recruitment from the ban. The National Association for College Admissions Counseling’s Statement of Principles of Good Practice includes a ban on commissions based on the number of students recruited, “and it does not make any exceptions” for international recruiting, says David A. Hawkins, the association’s director of public policy. “All along we’ve noted that the use of agents in and of itself isn’t a problem. It’s the way in which perhaps they’re compensated that our principles would really be more applicable towards.” By contrast, the commission approach is more common among Australian and British universities, increasingly fierce competitors with American colleges when it comes to attracting international students. Mitch Leventhal, AIRC’s chair and president, sees the strategic use of recruiting agents as a way for the United States to maintain its historic edge. (By contrast, recruiting fairs, he says, “are 1960s.") “If you’re involved in this, you are associating with institutions who have sort of stepped beyond the question of ‘can we, can’t we,’ and are beginning to think differently about the way American higher education recruits globally,” says Leventhal, vice provost for international affairs at the University of Cincinnati, a founding institutional AIRC member. “They were gracious enough to extend an invitation for us to join their effort when they announced their formal incorporation,” says Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “We just as graciously declined, mostly because the very purpose for which they have now formally organized themselves is being debated within AACRAO. So we thought it’s premature for us to join that conversation, when there was at least some significant opposition within our own ranks to the very activity that they now seek to regulate.” Self-Regulation The AIRC’s institutional members, about a third of which are Ohio colleges, bring varying degrees of experience with agents, says Leventhal. “Some of them have been using agents for a long time, but they recognize they’ve been doing it in isolation.… Some have only recently adopted a strategy; some are considering it and they want to make sure they get it right. And then there are a couple, I think, who are not sure they’re ever going to do it.” Officials at AIRC universities describe using a variety of payment models, including commissions, but also flat fees paid to agents and even loose institutional affiliations with agents who are paid only by students. At Cincinnati, Leventhal works with 12 to 15 agents. They earn, per student referred who is accepted and enrolled, 10 percent of net tuition paid the first year. (So if, for instance, after a scholarship, a student pays $17,000 in tuition in the first year, the agent earns $1,700 total for his or her services.) Many colleges that have joined AIRC point to limited recruiting budgets (commission-based recruiting requires a much lower upfront cost than hiring a staff person abroad, say), and limited name recognition. Still, they strive for significant international student representation on their campuses. “We’re not a household name in the world,” says Michael Basile, director of the Institute for International Studies at Murray State University, located in southwestern Kentucky, a two-hour drive from the closest international airport. (“We’re not even within shouting distance of any large metropolitan area,” Basile says.) “We really have to go out and dig,” Basile explains. “So I think there’s an advantage to having representatives that are located in different parts of the world that we want to attract students from.” AIRC held its first meeting in Cincinnati in October, and, according to its timetable, expects to approve a set of standards and a certification process for agents at a meeting in May (to coincide with the annual meeting of NAFSA: Association of International Educators, in Los Angeles). AIRC’s plans derive from American higher education’s historic process of self-regulation through voluntary accreditation. The process for certifying agents is under development, but here’s what Leventhal says is currently being considered: Agents would apply for certification, paying a fee; they also would pay for an IntegraScreen background check of their company. Following that, a certain number of employees would complete a professional development curriculum created by AIRC, which would probably focus on standards, best practices and structure of the U.S. higher education system. The agents would undergo a self-study as well as an external site visit before certification. Re-certification would come up after three years. After certification, a compliance board would investigate any complaints, and certification could be revoked, Leventhal explains. The AIRC’s goal is to pilot the process with a very small group of agents in 2009. “Hopefully in 2010, we’ll then have systems in place so we can put a good number through the process each year,” says Leventhal. He knows the council’s proposed approach is ambitious, but also, given a general reluctance to use agents in the United States, believes it must be so. “What we need in this country to make people very comfortable is an established set of practices. So they know that it is in fact ethical and it can be done safely and you can hold your head high about it,” Leventhal says. “I have exactly the same concerns that the people who are arguing against agents have. The difference is, I think we can address the concerns through the systems we’re so good at, self-regulation.” ‘Horror Stories’ There are many horror stories about abuses, both on the part of agents and that of American colleges. Even proponents of using agents relate such stories, although, as Leventhal says, they believe that these abuses can be addressed. For example, when asked about a common concern that engaging agents on commission encourages an “any warm body” approach to enrollment management, Leventhal stresses that college admissions offices have an obligation to accept only qualified students, rather than take scores of unqualified students whom an agent might refer. Admittedly, not all U.S. colleges are so scrupulous. Says Leventhal: “There are institutions in the U.S and we can all name them — and I’m not gonna, but it’s not hard – but there are institutions in the U.S, proprietary in nature, small struggling liberal arts colleges…. They’ve signed on dozens and dozens, hundreds of agents. There’s very little oversight of the agents. They’re going after the numbers. It’s not hard for the students to get in. I don’t know what their success and retention rates are.” In May, The New York Times reported on the phenomenon of recruiters earning money from both ends — accepting commissions from colleges and direct payments from students themselves. “In the mid-’90s, we did have some problems with agents that I would say they were less than … well, they were unscrupulous,” says Joe Tullbane, associate dean of St. Norbert College, in Wisconsin, an AIRC member. “That is, they would send students to you and you would pay their fees and a couple different things might happen. You might find that the agent had already charged the student a considerable amount of money — so in a sense, they were charging both sides for the same service. And that seemed wrong. Secondly, there were agents who would place a student and literally after you paid your money to them the student would change to another institution” (which would be harder to do now, post 9-11). “There are plenty of them out there that are kind of fly-by-night operations that put a shingle out,” Tullbane says. “The last thing I want to hear as a small school is, ‘I can provide you with 50 students a year.’ Well, I only want two or three, from every country.” Tullbane says he feels “pretty confident” about St. Norbert’s current checks and balances for its agents; it has about 60 on the books, he estimates, but works actively with about 15. He adds, however, that he’s hesitant to add any agents to their current roster. Speaking of why the institution joined AIRC, he says, “We felt here at St. Norbert that it’s unhealthy to sort of be your own assessment agency. “Part of the reason we’re involved with the AIRC is so we can be assured that best practices and best standards are being established — so that when we work with agents, we know that everything is above-board and going on in the best possible fashion,” says Ray Lagasse, director of international programs at the University of North Dakota, another AIRC member. “It’s not just a rubber-stamping of whoever or whatever shows up on our doorstep. If they go through that procedure and then they obtain a particular certification, that rigor or those steps at least provide a particular level of assurance. “We have heard horror stories,” he continues, of agents “promising this, promising that, in the name of a particular university. We do not have the time or the energy to deal with the fallout from any of this.” Student-Centered or College-Centered? Those critical of the practice of using agents look beyond the question of preventing flagrant abuses to ask further: Does the agent model best serve the interests of potential international students? Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the Institute of International Education, says via e-mail that “IIE supports any effort to set standards and disseminate best practices in the field of commission-based recruiting. Our position on use of third-party recruiters is that while we recognize that some U.S. campuses feel this kind of approach works best for them, in general we believe that international students are best served by having access to the widest possible set of options, and this is available to them free of charge from the network of over 450 EducationUSA advising centers supported by the U.S. Dept. of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs around the world.” (IIE hosts a handful of these centers, and also works with the State Department to provide training and resources to EducationUSA advisers. IIE publishes the quarterly journal, EducationUSA Connections.) In a follow-up phone interview, Blumenthal explains, “Basically a third-party recruiter is working for a college or a few institutions, so they’re going to understandably be representing those colleges and are not going to be presenting the student with [questions like]: ‘Have you thought about a community college, have you thought about a state school, a big school, a small school?’ “Do you begin with a student focus or do you begin with a campus interest? They’re both legitimate ways to proceed but from IIE’s perspective, the best success comes when the student is matched with the right school after reviewing all the options.” “This is a two-way street. It’s not only what’s best for the school. It’s also what’s best for the student,” says Nassirian, of AACRAO. He adds that it can be exceedingly difficult to understand what’s really happening in the office of any given international agent, signed contracts and good intentions aside. “You’re not there. You can’t read the language; you don’t understand the customs. If you did, you’d be there yourself.” AACRAO’s ethics committee has also been questioning the wisdom of low-budget internationalization efforts more generally. Nassirian asks: “If you don’t have resources to recruit those students, how do you believe yourself to be good destinations for them?” — Elizabeth Redden The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2009/01/06/recruiting.…; Added by Melissa Furtwengler to Green Jobs Now! at 5:51am on January 12, 2009

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Topic: Meet Erica Jayne Walsh, Former Sparky the Christmas Reindeer & Dedicated Geese Seducer: oor, New York, NY 10017 http://www.bountyjobs.com Linkedin Profile RecruitingBlogs.com Profile Personal Email Specialties: Negotiation, Strategic Sourcing, Marketing, Public Relations, Metrics/ SLAs, Website Optimization, & Branding I had the unique pleasure of meeting Erica Jayne Walsh at ONREC this past September. She catches your eye for many reasons, some by the merits of mother nature and others ... the more lasting impressions ... for reasons of a personality you can't help forget. She is a force of nature; charming, a pervasive wit and when you think she couldn't do more to compel you to send her a follow-up email - she impresses you with substantive intellect and a thorough understanding of business models within our industry. She may be young but not impressionable - she leaves you with impressions and all of them remarkable. I could make it all sound so simple, however, and simply tell you that of all my meals at ONREC, I recall most fondly sharing a deep dish pizza in Chicago with my new friend, Erica Jayne. Q&A with Erica Jayne Walsh Erica Jayne: My home life is interesting; I am a single twenty-something living in Midtown Manhattan. I bet that everyone is immediately thinking “Sex & the City” and though I do enjoy the shopping, restaurants, and nightlife lately my home life has been lacking because I am always working… so the TV show “The Apprentice” is far more relatable. To best answer this question and avoid seemly like a totally dull human, it probably makes sense to divide my life into two phases … “The Pre-BountyJobs Era” and “The BountyJobs Era”. Up until 6 months ago, I was living in downtown Indianapolis, working as a Sourcing Associate (paper-pusher, strategist, and spend analyst) for Eli Lilly and Company in the Procurement function. I had a robust life that would be much more interesting to your readers than my current home life… I raced sailboats competitively at the Indianapolis Sailing Club, was a Naturalist & Conservationist at the Indianapolis Zoo, a Mascot (Walrus, Reindeer, Rhinoceros, and Meerkat) at collegiate sporting events, parades, and around the zoo campus. [I wasn’t the best mascot… on one horrific day in December while dressed as Sparky the Reindeer (Rudolph is trademarked) I broke the two cardinal rules of mascoting. I not only spoke in costume but also was tackled by a 3 year old girl with pigtails and my reindeer head fell off… ruining the illusion of Christmas for hundreds of Indianapolis children forever]. I owned a beautiful condo on a lake and harassed the neighbors by attracting geese with food only to then sick my West Highlight White terrier, Lexi or “The Lexinator”, on the geese and the rest of the neighborhood. Aside from Lexi, sailing, and volunteering the other joy of my life was pro-bono business consulting. I have always been quite passionate about entrepreneurship, while in college I was president of the Society of Entrepreneurs and didn’t want to betray my fellow classmates by wasting away in the Corporate World, so I started and ran my own consulting practice and spent my evenings and weekends working with retailers, restaurants, and technology companies in the Indianapolis area. THE BOUNTYJOBS ERA In April of this year, I underwent a major life change and dropped everything for the opportunity a lifetime. When I say everything, I mean everything… I am no longer the proud owner of a beautiful condo on the lake, but instead squeeze myself into a 250 sq. ft. apartment in Manhattan that costs three times my mortgage. [The view from my apartment is spectacular; you actually can see “everything” going on in the apartments in the building just behind me. Actually, if you are willing to risk the guillotine of a window and stick your head out 5 inches, you can see the Empire State Building.] Lexi has moved to Ohio to spend quality time with my Mom and her dog “Belle”… and I am no longer sailing, volunteering, or working on my Masters. Instead, I have opted to work 16 hours a day, every day of the week. Now before you think I am crazy or start to feel sorry for the lack of luster in this era of my life… I’d like to mention that right now… I am living my ultimate dream. Actually, if we could decrease my city apartment rent by about 50% I’d be living the ultimate dream… right now we should stick with “dream” for the sake of realism. Six Degrees: Any other interests/ hobbies or surprising facts? Erica Jayne: Aside from everything I’ve already mentioned… my biggest interest is learning. I love finding out that I am an idiot… my grandpa always use to say “the more we learn, the more we learn we don’t know”. I wish I could specialize in everything, speak every language, relate to every culture, design buildings, engineer cities… essentially I want to be superwoman… but who doesn’t? The thing that would probably most surprise all of your readers is that I am a high-school dropout. I dropped out of an esteemed college prep school after 10th grade to pursue my career as an international fashion model. I moved on my own at 16 to Barcelona Spain to work the fashion circuit. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter, September 11th occurred causing my mother to rethink the independent teenager strategy and pull me back home. The NY fashion industry took a major hit, causing the other US fashion markets to become flooded with top NYC models… eliminating my chances of breaking in. I worked for 2 years making minimum wage, doing strange jobs (gift basket arranger, greenhouse foliage caretaker, freelance event planner, hostess/ waitress, and freelance photographer). I spent most of my time during those two years helping better fashion models launch their careers, working with reporters in the Detroit area to identify modeling scams, and trying to convince whatever business owner currently suffering through my employment that there was a better way to run their business. By the time I turned 18, I realized that I would never make a difference if I wasn’t taken seriously, so I got my GED… applied to college… got in… attended… and graduated 3 years later Summa Cum Laude, with a BS in Business Administration. Six Degrees: How’d you end up at BountyJobs? Erica Jayne: While I was working in Indianapolis for Lilly, I became increasingly frustrated. Prior to joining, I had no idea that big business was so inefficient… for example, it took Lilly 3 years to move forward on a project that was projected to save the company 30 million dollars with almost no risk. One of my responsibilities at Lilly was to work with the Recruitment component to determine better ways to do business. This included a variety of projects such as redesigning how we orchestrated background checks, on-boarding a new recruitment advertising firm, organizing and resourcing our temporary labor division, streamlining contingency search vendors, forming strategic partnerships with executive search consultants, and outsourcing parts of the sourcing function. Just to give you a sample, one of my projects was to eliminate the number of search firms under contract from a number in the hundreds to a number in the low teens. This project seemed impossible. We had little record of who had made placements, where the relationships stood, how these firms came to be under contract, what functional roles they supported and who really was valuable. It seemed that each internal recruiter operated in their own silo, and this applied just to the corporate recruiters sitting together on one floor within our corporate headquarters… completing disregarding the chaos at the Lilly subsidiaries and international entities. We became so frustrated with the lack of organization within our internal recruitment arm that we decided to outsource a part of the function to an RPO. Then one day, I got a call from Jeremy Lappin, the CEO of BountyJobs to discuss a standard search firm contract that had been given to his firm when they called into pitch Lilly the BountyJobs solution. After going bountyjobs.com, I realized that BountyJobs was not a search firm and in fact eliminated all of the contingency search problems and inefficiencies that I had just spent two years complaining about and suffering through. BountyJobs had been in business less than 16 months when I first was exposed to it, was doubling every quarter and already had 20% of the Fortune 500 as clients. Jeremy then explained to me his plan to create a global solution that every recruiter (internal and third-party) used everyday. Then I pretty much begged and harassed Jeremy for weeks until he agreed to be my mentor by bringing me onboard and teaching my how to launch and run a company. Six Degrees: Tell us about BountyJobs? Erica Jayne: As a company, BountyJobs is refreshing… we are energized, agile, and always customer focused. Our product has been designed to help an old industry (contingency search) take advantage of the scale and reach of the internet and the efficiencies that technology provides. I joined the team long after the rocket was designed and launched, but the founders and core team realized that having each internal recruiter operate in isolation and without a strong technology system prevented companies from analyzing performance, sharing knowledge, and continuously improving. The team also realized that organizations were forced to limit the search firms they worked with because of the administrative hassles of on-boarding and managing the firms. When you think of global companies like Lilly, it is a little ridiculous to think that one RPO firm or 30 search firms can fill thousands of jobs all over the world in every specialty (Sales Reps from Anchorage to Dubai, PhD Research Scientists, Regulatory Advisors) … but when you have tens of thousands of professional search firms and headhunters that cover ever region of the globe and every specialty… the likelihood of filling the job dramatically increases. So BountyJobs took the concept of a marketplace and applied it to a technological platform that streamlines all of the inefficiencies, eliminates administrative burdens, and enables employers to take control of the search process and stay in control with real time information and detailed reporting. I’ll spare your readers the pitch, but if they are interesting in learning more they should check out our website (www.bountyjobs.com) and request a live demo… and we’ll walk them through it in about 5 minutes… it is really intuitive and there isn’t any cost to use the technology. Six Degrees: What do you do for BountyJobs? Erica Jayne: Jeremy has been kind enough to let me dabble in a bit everything. My two main focuses are marketing and business development. On the marketing side, I do brand management and positioning, develop and orchestra events, manage PR, build sales collateral, develop & execute the marketing plan, and form partnerships with industry thought leaders. Then on the biz dev side I analyze data to drive business development decisions and I work to close deals with other providers. This past week, my main focus has been on overhauling the front pages of the BountyJobs website, which we hope to be launching before the months end. Also, I should have another surprise for you in early Q1 of 2009. Six Degrees: What most excites you about working for BountyJobs? Erica Jayne: I love seeing the fills come through… we are doing thousands of fills in 2008. This is exciting, because each time I see another fill I realize… a candidate just found a way to improve their life, a headhunter just made money, and an employer just found the talent that is going to help their company achieve its objectives. It is really fun to be a part of something that is a win for everyone. I especially love seeing BountyJobs grow so quickly and knowing that I am a part of that growth. This week we just moved into a new office that is more than 5x our previous space… based on the constant stream of positive feedback and the rate at which we are growing domestically and internationally… I would be shocked if Jeremy’s projection [‘Every recruiter using BountyJobs every day’] didn’t come true. Six Degrees: How does BountyJobs fit into your life plan? Erica Jayne: Through this on-going experience, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I know who I am as a person and as a professional. Ultimately, I have the confidence and the where with all to know that I can provide BountyJobs with the right strategic insight, pursue an MBA at a top school, launch my own company, and ultimately build the life and world that I dream of. Everyone always asks entrepreneurs and people involved in entrepreneurial enterprises about their exit strategy. Honestly, when you are growing fast, living your dream, traveling the world, and making friends with amazing people… an exit strategy is the last thing on the mind. Six Degrees: Any final comments? Erica Jayne: Thanks so much for letting me be a part of sixdegreesfromdave. As I indicated I love learning from people and forming partnerships. If anyone wants to chat more with me about entrepreneurship, life, and/or workaholism, please reach out to me… I’d be glad to help however I can.…; Added by Dave Mendoza at 1:20am on November 10, 2008

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