Author: Kema Christian-Taylor

5 Steps for Running a Killer Campus Rep Program

When I entered my dorm during my freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, the first thing I noticed was a small package with travel-sized Tide laundry essentials hanging on the door.

Exciting, right? Tide picked my big moment, a college move-in, to start a relationship with me. When it was time to stock up a week later, guess what brand of detergent I chose? Tide won my loyalty, an example of simple collegiate marketing at its best.

College students are valuable. There are over 20 million enrolled in four-year universities in the U.S. alone, influencing $420 billion in spending power. If your company doesn’t market to them, it probably should.

The most effective way to reach college students is through a campus rep program. As students themselves, campus reps connect with their classmates in an authentic way. These programs provide a uniquely holistic branding channel—a public relations, marketing and sales strategy all in one.

At WayUp, we manage over 900 campus reps who have accounted for over 50% of our signup growth in the past year. Without question, it’s our most valuable marketing channel.

If you’re interested in establishing your own campus rep program, here are five steps that will set you up for success.

1. Get Granular

When it comes to establishing the goals of your rep program, I recommend getting deep into the details. College students have volatile schedules and shifting priorities, so you need to be crystal clear when it comes to expectations.

Break your goals down on a rep-by-rep basis. If you’re looking for app downloads, how many do you expect from each rep? How many sales should they bring in? What is a realistic amount of campus press won? I recommend giving students weekly or bi-weekly goals to maintain a steady pace of work in their crazy lives.

It also pays to align your reps’ incentives with company goals on a flexible basis. For example, we implement a new bonus for our rep program every week. If we want an extra push for signups, we’ll pay double for signups acquired that week. If we want to boost our social media channels, we’ll give an extra reward to those who take pictures of their campus with our logo and handle tagged.

By switching up incentives, you can make sure that the program remains a powerful, flexible tool even as business needs change.

2. Hire Very Carefully

Representatives serve as the face of your brand on campus, so they need to be thoughtfully selected. We recommend one-on-one or group interviews with candidates to get a sense of their personality and work ethic.

It’s especially important, and often overlooked, to figure out where students spend most of their time outside of the classroom. If you’re looking to influence fashion-minded students, for example, the astronomy club may not be the best place to start. When hiring on WayUp, you can be very targeting in your recruiting efforts, which helps immensely.

Finally, be sure to find out what your potential candidates are hoping to get out of being a campus rep. Are they looking for a paycheck? Experience? Swag? Make sure you can deliver on their expectations to ensure a successful relationship. This also makes for much more effective and devoted reps.

3. Scale Your Resources

Once you have a program with some size, it’s crucial to invest time making supporting resources to avoid sucking up your team’s time with redundant one-on-one conversations.

For starters, gather all relevant documents and collateral in one easily accessible spot for reps to review during the year. This can include detailed guides on how to win press, sample social media posts, a brand values presentation or a list with key messages and talking points.

Here at WayUp, we have an entire website dedicated to our campus reps, along with the resources to support them, but a Google Drive folder will do the trick as well.

4. Establish Accountability

Most college students have never had a “real” boss before. Translation: It may take some mentoring to show them what it means to be accountable and professional.

In this sense, it pays to stay up to date with them through weekly one-on-one meetings, team conference calls and updates on company news. Give students plenty of credit and praise. The act of contributing to a larger organization is still new to a lot of college students, so that kind of validation can sometimes be just as valuable as compensation.

Finally, keep your tone in mind when communicating with your reps, whether in person, via email or in instructional documents. You don’t want to come across as bossy, patronizing or intimidating.

Remember, this is a learning experience for them. The more inspired they feel about your brand and team, the better their work will be. They’re still getting used to this whole working-for-a-boss-thing, so do your best to be supportive and patient.

5. Listen to Your Reps

You might be an expert in your field, but you hired your reps for a reason: They know their colleges.

Listen to their ideas and suggestions, and get ready to adjust your plan to the nuances of each campus. In fact, you should lean on your reps to provide ideas that tie into their colleges’ cultures and schedules.

Test “big moments” like football games, move-in days or Halloween, and see what works campus-by-campus.

You can try small hacks too. Students are part of a big, highly-networked community, so even small stunts can spark a massive buzz. Check out what Coca-Cola pulled off in a cafeteria. You can bet that campus is buying more Coca-Cola these days.

When done right, a campus rep program can be incredibly powerful. Just remember these steps and your reps will steadily become your secret marketing weapon.

The Worst Thing About the Job Search Has Been Solved

Sometimes, it feels like you’re submitting your job application to Narnia.

The worst part about the job search is feeling like you put so much effort into creating the perfect application only to have it lost in an evil applicant tracking system that will prevent any employer from so much as glancing at your application – much less hiring you.

Pretty frustrating, right? If only there were some way to know if your application has fallen into the right hands…

Oh wait, there is: It’s called the WayUp app. You’re welcome, everyone.

In addition to making your job search so easy that you can apply to positions on your phone (in fact, students are applying to 34% more jobs on the WayUp app than on the desktop version), the app sends you a push notification when employers are reviewing your application.

Yes, you read that right. It’s like getting a read receipt from that friend who never texts you back.

The WayUp app also sends you push notifications when a new batch of jobs comes in that are the perfect fit for your profile, so you can apply quickly before the position fills up. Just like on desktop, employers can also invite you to apply for a position, giving you the confidence of knowing you’re the candidate they’re looking for.

It’s time to end the agony of the job search, and download the WayUp app. Happy job hunting!

3 Skills You Should Probably Leave Off Your Resume

Put yourself in a recruiter’s shoes. You’re reviewing hundreds of resumes day in and day out, and you just want to find a few candidates who jump out at you on paper in the best possible way. You’re looking for candidates with unique, yet professional skills that will be vital for success in the position.

Because of this, when you’re applying for a job, you have to think twice before typing out a long list of skills on your resume. As awesome as it would be to list “photography” on your resume because you sat in on a one-hour workshop back in high school, that doesn’t exactly count as a skill.

As you’re writing and editing your resume so that you can start applying to jobs on WayUp, here are a few skills you should definitely leave off your resume so that employers take you seriously.

1. Proficient in Microsoft Word

Your Microsoft Office skills may have swiveled heads a couple decades ago, but now that everyone regularly utilizes these tools, adding this to your resume is a waste of space. The point of the resume skills section is to list the things that will set you apart – not help you blend in with the crowd.

P.S.: Mentioning the amount of words you can type per minute? No longer a thing. Our in-house recruiter Julie Olsson recommends leaving this out unless you’re applying for a secretarial or paralegal role.

2. Witchcraft & Wizardry

Is it important to add personality to your resume? A thousand times, yes, but listing out-of-the-box skills and interests that probably won’t apply in a professional setting? Hard pass. This includes, but is not limited to, tarot card reading, unicycling and the nae nae.

Because your resume is your first impression of you, put your best foot forward, and play it safe. That means you’ll probably need to save your more eccentric skills and interests until after you’re hired – and even then, only when your employer and coworkers have truly gotten to know you.

3. Social media

If you’re a YouTube or Instagram celebrity with hundreds of thousands of followers, or if you’ve managed marketing campaigns through social media in the past, then great: This skill will serve you well when you’re applying for Marketing & Communications roles, but if you’re using this to refer to your own personal social accounts, this isn’t something you should freely list. Everyone is using personal social media accounts, but that doesn’t mean that everyone has the skills necessary to carefully analyze their audience, grow a following and keep other users engaged.

Think of it this way: If you’re in an interview and an employer asks you about a few of the skills on your resume, you want to make sure that your response shows that you’re a highly qualified candidate who can do the job well. Good luck resume writing – once you’re done, upload your new-and-improved resume to your WayUp profile and start applying to some incredible jobs!

3 Incredible Things College Students Have Done for Our Business

At WayUp, the largest marketplace for college student to find jobs, we constantly show employers the value of hiring young professionals, using our own site to hire college students: from sales and marketing interns to graphic designers and photographers. Here are just some of the incredible ways these students, without even a year of experience under their belt, have made a difference in our company.

1. Changing our name from Campus Job to WayUp

Campus Job was a name that was perfect for us in the early days of our business, but as we began to expand to all types of jobs, including entry-level opportunities, we knew the name was limiting and confusing; it failed to encompass the wide variety of job-seeking students and recent grads we wanted to target. After almost a year of wanting to change our name and struggling to settle on the right one, our self-starter interns, Hannah and Jess, two upperclassmen at Cornell, locked themselves in our office conference room for hours and finally came out with our new name “WayUp.” It was the perfect rebrand that described not only the diversity of opportunities on WayUp, but also what we hoped to accomplish as a business: helping students find a way to keep rising and achieving in their professional lives. The rebrand was one of our biggest moments last year and led to features in Forbes and TechCrunch.

2. Our logo

Molly O’Shea, a sophomore at NYU, created the blue paper plane that is now associated with our business and served as the perfect symbol to get our message across: helping students find their way up.

We were so happy with Molly’s work that we asked for an encore: a few months later, she helped us to design the subway ads that were displayed in every train in NYC.

3. The Campus rep program

Having accounted for over 50% of our user growth, our hard-working campus reps leverage their peer-to-peer network and satisfy an active need: getting college students jobs. They have done everything from writing about WayUp in their student newspapers to promoting our brand on social media to scheduling signup-driven competitions on campus — even sending over the incredible opportunities on our site to potential users. They are the eyes and ears on their campuses and they help us to reach more students than we ever could on our own.

The most important way that students have helped our business? Proving our business model right. In between rigorous classwork and demanding extracurriculars, our students hustle to find opportunities that will help them to gain experience and pay off their tuition — and they use WayUp to do it. It’s inspiring knowing that 1 in 3 students who apply for a job on our site get hired, and if it weren’t for their ambition and drive, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

From hiring graphic designers for social media ads to hiring students to analyze data about your business, if you’re looking to hire qualified students for your business, post a listing on WayUp. You’ll be surprised just how much your business benefits from incredibly talented college students.

3 Fashion Internships for College Students

Want to work with a fashion brand that dresses Beyonce?

You can. The badass fashion companies below have some pretty big-name celebrity clients, and they’re looking for college students who can help take their brand to the next level. If you want to get your foot in the door of this crazy, cool, competitive industry, now is your chance! Check out the top 3 fashion internships for college students on WayUp. Apply today!

Fashion PR Marketing Intern at CREATIV

Known for dressing some of Hollywood’s greats and celebrities like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, and Justin Bieber, CREATIV is a brand development company for the fashion and film industry. As Fashion PR Marketing Intern, you will send press kits and look books to other publications, solidify press opportunities like news coverage and media features, and conduct social media and digital marketing campaigns.

To qualify, you must have a strong handle on social media, including Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, and you must feel comfortable, cold-calling and pitching brand concepts and product to outside sources. The position is located in CREATV’s office in LA.

Fashion Photography Intern at Trapstar London

Founded in London almost 10 years ago, Trapstar London is a trendy, street-style fashion brand with celebrities like Rihanna, Cara Delevingne, and A$AP Rocky proudly sporting their collection. As a Fashion Photography Intern, you will help plan and coordinate photo shoots, create visual content for social media, and edit and maintain image galleries. You must have a strong photography portfolio and you must be an out-of-the-box thinker who will push the limits of digital fashion photography!

Fashion Event Coordinator at Eshne

Eshne is a petite Fashion brand created to alleviate the frustration of petite shopping and provide helpful fashion tips, information and advice. As Fashion Event Coordinator, you’ll be involved in all phases of the event process, from the idea to the planning to the event and the post-event wrap-up. You will seek out the best venues, form partnerships with potential sponsors, even establish relationships with bloggers and retailers who are attending events.

To qualify, you must be self-motivated and driven with excellent organizational and communication skills.

Don’t let your passion for fashion go to waste. Apply for these fashion internships for college students today!

How to Get Hired With a Low GPA

Your transcript last semester was brutal. Why did the hardest final of your life have to count for 60% of your grade?

We know that it might feel like your low GPA is going to make it tough for you to get hired. Many employers look at your GPA when reviewing your application to determine what kind of student you are — and by extension — how you will perform as an employee. You know that your grades don’t create a full picture of how great you are as a candidate…but how can you make employers realize that with a low GPA?

1. Play up your in-major GPA

Everyone plays up their strengths during the job search process and so should you. If your major GPA is higher than your overall GPA because you’re just so damn good at your field of study, then make sure to highlight it on your resume — especially if you’re applying to jobs that are related to your major. Don’t let that Intro to Computer Science class you took on freshman year drag you down!

If your major GPA isn’t higher, then that brings us to point #2…

2. Don’t place blame on anyone else.

One of the worst things you can do in an interview or on a resume is point fingers for the grades you earned. Maybe your French professor was the absolute worst and unfairly criticized every paper you wrote. Maybe you were dealing with issues outside of school that distracted you from your work, or maybe you took on so much for the semester that you realized halfway through that you bit off more than you could chew. Even if all of these things were true obstacles for you, they will come across as weak excuses and won’t make you look good during the job search process.

You can absolutely explain any valid reasons for why your schoolwork may have suffered to an employer, but the key is to take ownership of the consequences and talk about what you learned from the experience. Show the employer that you took the steps you needed to take to improve (or at the very least, identified areas for improvement in your academic life). You’ll come across as the type of person who is not only self-aware but also ready to get right back up after a fall.

3. Unless specifically asked, don’t include your GPA on your resume.

You should always, always be honest with employers, but because first impressions are so vital to the job search process – and because your resume will often be your first impression, leave your low GPA off your resume so that your other accomplishments stand out. (A good cut off point is below a 2.8.) You shouldn’t be discounted when you have so many other achievements that show what a great candidate you are.

On WayUp, we make it so that displaying your GPA on your public profile is optional, meaning that if you have a low GPA, you can easily hide it so that employers can focus more on all your incredible extracurriculars, related coursework and past work experience. If you are specifically asked to provide an employer with your GPA, be upfront and transparent right away.

As much as it may feel like your GPA is weighing you down, you will get hired. Good luck this semester and keep working hard! :). 

3 Paid Business Internships for College Students

Whether you’re in school studying Business or want to start your own company one day, going into a business role will give you invaluable career insights. From learning what fuels our economy to discovering what drives customer behavior and retention, you’ll be unstoppable if you’re chosen by one of the hiring companies below. So if you want to take on new responsibilities and have a real impact on a company’s future, you have got to check out these positions! Read on for 3 paid business internships for college students you can apply for today on WayUp.

1. Business Development Intern at Course Hero

Having trouble keeping up in school? Course Hero is an ed tech company that provides an incredible resource for college students: from lecture notes and practice problems to expert tutors and standardized test guides. In fact, 93% of Course Hero members have improved their grades as a result of the product.

As Business Development Intern, you will help to build resources that will assist students at your school, and you will also look evaluate the current academic resources to identify room for improvement. You will also leverage social media to create greater brand visibility around the product. The position pays $10-15/hr!

2. Marketing & Business Development Associate at Piggyback Technologies

Piggyback Technologies is a faster-than-fast delivery company that partners with retailers to provide same-day delivery for their customers. As a Marketing & Business Development Associate, you will own the process of communicating with the decision-makers at retail companies and use your creativity to close deals and meet customers’ demands.

You must be a creative thinker with excellent work ethic to apply. The position pays $15/hr.

3. Entrepreneur in Residence at Knip

Nobody likes paperwork: Knip is a venture-backed startup and a game-changing digital insurance app that helps you to keep track of your insurance policies and allows you to manage filing a claim, contract changes, and cancellations — all through the app. Featured in TechCrunch and CrunchBase, the app has already proven successful in German and Swiss markets–and with $157 million in Series B funding, the company has a promising future in the U.S.

As an Entrepreneur in Residence, you will research the contact info of insurance companies and cold call these companies to set up calls, and best of all learn to “disrupt entrenched business models, creating change that benefits people.” To apply, you must have completed at least 2 semesters in a business administration-related field, and you must be a self-starter. The position is paid and is on-site on Wall Street, NYC!

Ready to try your hand in the business world? Apply for these business internships for college students before they get taken down!

Rethinking Diversity Recruiting

Diversity is a topic we discuss a lot at WayUp. Internally, we are focused on having a diverse team to build a strong foundation for the future, and our clients also rely on us as a method to correct their own diversity issues.

I was recently listening to one of my favorite podcasts (Reply All), and learned about a really cool study conducted by a University of Michigan professor (Go Blue!). He used mathematical algorithms to simulate diverse groups of people. Without fail, the consciously selected group of the “best algorithms” underperformed in comparison to the randomly selected (diverse) group of algorithms. The “best algorithms” always got stumped on the same problem, whereas the “diverse algorithms” were able to navigate and come up with a solutions.

At the end of the day, besides the moral obligation to have a diverse workforce, diversity is key in solving major company challenges and sparking innovative thinking. The problem, however, is that diversity is composed of so many factors that a quick glance may cause you to overlook in a diverse candidate. To effectively engage in diversity recruiting, you’ll need to think about factors that go beyond race and gender: socioeconomic status, region of the country, upbringing and “challenges” candidates have faced in their lives. These are all important diversity indicators.

So, now that we have covered the importance of diversity and some of its many facets, how can you tackle diversity through university recruiting? Here are 3 quick tips:

1. Look outside of your “core schools”

If you constantly recruit from the same schools, you are limiting your diversity prospects. It’s expensive to travel to tons of schools searching for that one great candidate: This is where WayUp comes in. You will be able to expand your recruiting efforts without having to physically go the extra mile. Additionally, we are working on great virtual events, so you can connect with students from a range of schools without having to leave your office.

2. Search for a mix of quantitative and qualitative qualities

It is best to go into recruiting thinking outside of typical criteria like technical skills, GPA and major. When creating an ideal candidate profile, consider questions like, “Is this person a self-starter?” or “Will this person attack a problem differently than their manager?”

Another thing to consider when it comes to diversity is finding a balance of people with strong IQ’s and EQ’s. A team with a strong balance of intellectual intelligence and emotional intelligence will make strong decisions and will better understand the implications of those decisions. Additionally, the team members with strong EQ will often be the glue that holds everything together when it comes to company culture.

3. Test for results

To make sure you aren’t missing a diverse candidate on the inside, present candidates with challenges during the interview process. This will allow you to see how they navigate problems and if they will bring a different approach to the company. Open-ended questions that leave room for creative solutions will allow you to get a holistic view of each candidate’s potential. Possibly even give them an existing company challenge, so the results can be put into perspective.

Diversity in the workplace is definitely more of an art than a science, and it is not a one size fits all model. Remember that every company has different challenges that require different solutions, so look internally for inspiration instead of comparing your organization to another.

Living, Learning, Earning: The Disney College Program

It turns out, dreams really do come true.

Disney is well known for having some of the best internships for college students, and they’re hiring students from all over the country to participate in the Disney College Program, a 4-7 month internship allowing students to gain valuable work experience with a Fortune 500 company. As if having an impressive company like Disney on your resume isn’t enough, the program gives its students the opportunity to live in company-sponsored housing, take on college-level courses (which could count towards their degree) and have the unique opportunity to get hands-on experience working in Disney’s Theme Parks and Resorts. It is undeniably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity — especially for candidates seeking student jobs that will take their career to new heights.

“Coming to do the College Program changed my life,” says Mariana, a college student hired by Disney. “The people I met and the experiences I had made me into the person I am today.”

The top four qualities Disney looks for when hiring a college student are passion, enthusiasm, leadership and a service-oriented mindset. The program is also dedicated to students’ personal and career development, so students will learn on-the-job skills like problem-solving, teamwork, guest service and effective communication skills. Having been a constant presence in the formation of many students’ childhood, Disney is also heavily invested in their future: Many graduates of the program have risen to senior level positions at the company.

There are opportunities in both Anaheim, CA, and Lake Buena Vista, FL. You must be at least 18 years or older by the time the program begins and attend an accredited university. Apply to the Disney College Program today!

Capital One is Hiring Recent Grads

Come join Capital One as a Data Engineer to launch an exciting career in Technology!

Join a fast-paced digital innovator in the Financial Services industry and build your career with top tech talent from across the country through the Technology Development Program. Through this two-year career accelerator program, you will explore roles, teams, and technologies— from big data to cloud to cyber security—all while developing world-class technical skills. You’ll work in a developer-friendly, data-driven environment where creating superior digital products and experiences is each associate’s passion.

“I am currently developing tools that allow us to use technologies like Hadoop and MapReduce to harness the vast amount of information that we have at our fingertips as a leading financial institution,” says Sarah L., a recent UNC-Chapel Hill graduate and an Engineer in the Big Data space at Capital One. “It’s cool to be developing the tools and working with data that will help drive strategy for the entire company.”

Explore Life as a Capital One Data Engineer!

The program invests in the success of ambitious young employees like you through face-to-face mentoring opportunities with technology leaders. These experts will guide you through your career at Capital One as you make, break—and repeat.

Recent grads who join Capital One will also have the unique opportunity to make an impact: changing the way the world interacts with money. “Data engineering is a rapidly evolving area which shapes customer experience across the entire enterprise,” says Ben H., a Data Engineer at Capital One and a recent grad from the University of Maryland. “Working with new technologies that will touch millions of people is a challenging yet very rewarding experience.”

To apply, you must have received or will be receiving a Bachelor’s degree or higher between December 2014 and August 2016. Strong candidates will have a background in computer science and information systems, in addition to displaying strong interpersonal, analytical, problem-solving and programming skills.

If this career opportunity excites you, please visit WayUp to apply to the position!

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