ESSU Meeting Minutes & Active Memberships
ESSU Alumni Speaker 9/30/15
September 30, 2015
Today we were lucky enough to have a former Grand Valley student come speak to us. His name is Brennon Huffman. He is the Client Services Director for Experis. Brennon majored in Marketing with an emphasis in Sales at Grand Valley and graduated in 2008. His presentation was about ways that can help us secure a job after graduation.
He explained that one third of companies report having difficulties in filling their vacant job positions. The positions that are most difficult to fill are IT Staff, Engineering, Management and Executives, and Sales Professionals. The major areas that employers struggle with when it comes to deciding to hire people are a lack of experience, soft skills, and hard skills. Five trends that are affecting the talent shortage include a rapid increase in technical development, a shift of demographics, a mismatch between talent’s supply and demand, a fast growing emerging economy, and a lack of hard and soft skills.
Next he asked us all, if we were planning on staying in Michigan or the Midwest after graduation. About half of the students raised their hand. He showed us a graph that showed that Michigan is outpacing the US average when it comes to employment outlook. His advice to us is to get experience, sharpen our soft and hard skills, understand business, network whenever possible, work, and never stop learning.
After his presentation, the E-Board met for thirty minutes and discussed the annual plan. Between Brennon’s presentation and our E-Board meeting, this was a very successful night!