Build a Network … of People

While online job boards typically post 450,000 new résumés every week, most jobs (up to 85%) are secured through professional networks. In RIPP Phase I, juniors will learn about the ins-and-outs of building professional networks with our tips and techniques. The sooner students start building their networks, and the more they know about how to build a network, the better their chances will be to get the job they want when they are ready to go to work.

We provide an in-depth presentation that will help them develop a ‘road map’ for this very important process, followed by post-survey questions to gauge what participants have learned. Students will also hear from experienced business people about how to build a personal network. Students who also successfully solicit, secure, and serve a Rainmakers Internship will be provided a FREE lifetime membership to The Rainmakers Club, an online community where they can build their professional network for the rest of their lives.

Near-Lee Real Industries — Get That Job!

Participating juniors attempt to earn a score of 100 percent on a series of pre-employment tests for a variety of jobs available in a family owned business called ‘Near-Lee Real Industries.’ In doing so, they will get an idea of the level of challenge inherent in these tests, which are quite typical and gauged for minimal to medium skills level positions all the way up to the higher levels of management. Participants are asked to do a homework assignment: complete (but don’t submit) an online application for a real job with a real company.

Strengthen Your Core: The Final Stretch

Strengthening your core — your core competencies — is critical. You will need to do that every year you spend in the workplace so you can add your accomplishments to your résumé and update it annually, so your job is to learn how to do that. We expect juniors to begin to finalizing their performance-based résumés using the baseline data they started with in grade eight, and revised and updated in freshman and sophomore years. Using business language and concrete data, by junior year you should have much to ‘brag’ about as you list your increasingly strong competencies … IF you have followed the directives we gave you when you were just a middle school sprout or a newly minted high school freshman.

Race for a Place — An Employment Simulation

In this unique game, select students play the role of human resources managers making multiple hiring decisions about candidates who have applied for one of three ‘open positions.’ As participants determine which candidates are best for ‘their company,’ students begin to connect their academic choices and behaviors in and out of school to their ability to get a job, thus catalyzing appropriate changes in their own academic performance and personal behaviors. They learn what they must do to get a good job, what they should do, and what they absolutely should not do.*

*Race for a Place is offered to schools participating in The Internship Depot’s programs as an activities enhancement for a reasonable fee.