The Rainmakers Social Impact Challenge

Business works to influence human decision-making all the time. Regardless of the behaviors targeted, individuals who are paid to drive marketing campaigns must always evaluate the outcomes of those campaigns with hard data. Since companies spend billions on commercials that increase sales of their products or services, their executives must be convinced that those billions of dollars produced the outcomes they paid to ensure.

To simulate the challenges of those demanding activities, teams of seniors form ‘marketing agencies’ and meet with the school principal or district superintendent to discuss school/district goals. Teams then devise a social marketing campaign they believe will produce a response that is aligned with the administration’s objectives. The campaign might focus on improving grades in math, reducing the number of students who vape, eliminating bullying behaviors, or convincing students to reduce their use of non-recyclables on school grounds.

Most critically, students must develop an evaluation plan that will track campaign impact with accurate data accrued via acceptable methodologies just as they would if they were in the corporate market.

Teams review their campaign ideas with school officials and seek approval for same to ensure that students’ ideas align with and support the goals of the school.  The administration must also approve the content of any posters or emails sent to students and the data-gathering\evaluation plan.

Teams will implement the program and then gauge the effect of their campaigns at the end of a three-month period of time. The team develops a video presentation that spans the entire project from beginning to end and will have a terminal meeting school leadership to present all findings, including what the team learned in the process (what went right/what went wrong/the challenge of developing a way to measure ‘soft’ data.).

The administration selects the top two projects and forwards them on to The Internship Depot for external judging and awards as appropriate.

Strengthen Your Core: At the Finish Line

Most states require that students write a correctly formatted résumé in senior year and we will help our participating high school seniors craft the very best résumé they can build using data from what we are sure will be their great improvements in performance between grades 8 and 11.

Most states require that students write a correctly formatted résumé in senior year, so we will rely one their English teachers to guide them through what might be preferred résumé formatting. We will also make sure they know how to restructure their résumés into answers for the essay questions that appear within online job applications. Either way, our Rainmakers Candidates will be able to develop their résumés using language that will help ensure that college admissions officials and business people take notice.

Seniors will be able to join our Phase II teleconferences and hear our volunteer business Mentors (who have years of experience in hiring practices) critique select résumés and use those critiques to improve their résumés .

Prepare to Sell Yourself

When our Rainmakers Candidates make the phone calls that will help them secure an internship, they will need to have a short, introductory ‘pitch’ that will grab a business person’s attention. Sometimes called an ‘elevator speech,’ it should fit into the time limits defined by a short elevator ride. Every single high-performing professional in every industry has a personal elevator pitch.

The ‘pitch’ should also reflect the individual student’s skills inventory — that will help define the type of project that a student might want to offer to potential internship Hosts. Fortunately, the needs of business are deep and varied and can utilize almost every skill a participating student might offer. The challenge is in ‘pitching’ the idea appropriately.

Getting all the salient information a job-seeker would like to present to a potential employer in about three minutes is not an easy job. Our Mentor teleconferences will focus on helping them know what to say and how to say it.

Sweat Yourself

It’s one thing for a job seeker (or an internship seeker) to inform potential employers about his or her knowledge and skills through an online job application or a paper résumé. It’s a whole different experience when a job applicant needs to discuss the same information on the phone or in-person with a hiring manager.

Direct interactions with job interviewers can be a nerve-racking experience and it is quite common for ‘newbie’ job candidates to get very, very nervous during any kind of live exchange, whether by phone, Skype, or in person. In fact, the in-person interview will definitely challenge the power of an interviewee’s deodorant. The only way to become comfortable with that particular part of the job acquisition process is to do it over, and over, and over again. At some point, the process will be something a job seeker will become comfortable doing and ultimately be more successful.

The biggest test we give to our high school seniors — our Rainmakers Candidates — is that they need to secure their own internship Host, and in doing so mirror the processes each individual will have to master to get a real job when it really counts. They will need to cold-call potential internship hosts the same way they will need to call potential employers when they are older.

We want to make sure our Rainmakers Candidates can do well in their first live interactions with potential internship Hosts, so we offer them the opportunity to improve their telephone solicitation skills by participating in and/or listen to mock telephone interviews via telecommunications technology.

Our volunteer Mentors who play the roll of the interviewers are business people with significant experience in the process and will provide eye-opening feedback to our participating students.