Young Professionals: Are you ready for the job ahead?

This week I spoke to 40+ students from the University of Minnesota’s Ad Club about marketing trends.

Before beginning my discussion, I asked for a show of hands on questions like the following:

• How many know what a call to action is and why it’s important?
• How many have been involved with customer segmentation or other market research projects?
• How many have used key words in your social media, advertising and digital marketing campaigns?
• How many have completed a ROI and conversion analysis on an ad spend?
• How many are familiar with how big data impacts marketing and sales strategies?
• How many know what marketing automation is?
• How many know how to generate and nurture leads?
• How many have done PR?

Less than 5 percent of the group raised their hands to most of the questions listed above.  I’m not sure if the attendees were tired from a hard day at school and therefore not prone to raising their hands — OR — if they truly did not know. What struck me is the learning opportunity sitting in front of me. I was talking to them about trends in the field they’ve chosen. Trends are infinite and require us all to be lifelong learners. In fact, in a recent Pew Research Center study, 63 percent of working adults have participated in some kind of professional enrichment in the last 12 months. These students were at the beginning of the lifelong learning experiences that will carry them through their careers.

I reflected back to my undergraduate coursework at Northwestern University and my MBA coursework at Kellogg School of Management.  My greatest learning experiences always came when I had the privilege of learning from real world professionals and doing hands on projects in collaboration with them. It was the start of what would become lifelong learning for me, and something we strongly support at Axiom as we share our experiences with others.

We do a lot of teaching and lecturing at universities and at association events hosted by professional groups.  It’s our way of giving back.

Whether it’s mentoring a group of robotics students at the University of Virginia or teaching marketing automation best practices to professionals from the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), or sharing new research methods for Voice of Customer for the Project Management Institute (PMI), our presentations are chock full of real life examples, problems, methods and solutions.  More important, the classes always include a project that participants can complete in small groups.

If you’re interested in seeing the courses Axiom team members regularly teach, check out the new toolbox section of our website and click on Education.

For more information, contact Mike Reiber at mreiber@axiomcom.com.