Web site creates alternative options for job seekers

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For many students, traditional job-recruiting opportunities, such as meet-and-greets with alumni and employers, can be awkward and boring. With that idea in mind and Internet technology at his disposal, Ted Williams set out to create a way for students to land a job without having to worry about awkward meetings, grades or connections.

Williams, founder of the job recruitment Web site GrouperEye.com, launched the site on Jan. 15 as a platform for students to showcase their job skills.

Together, GrouperEye and companies seeking job applicants — such as drink company Honest Beverages and financial advising company The Motley Fool — offer contests for students to come up with marketing and business plans. By submitting their proposals, students can win prizes, get to know company executives and potentially land jobs.

“This model works. Students love being creative,” Williams said. “It’s definitely better than the conventional résumé and interview process.”

The idea for the platform stems from a marketing class Williams took during his senior year at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. A representative from a vineyard visited the class and challenged students to design a wine bottle label and an advertising campaign with a hypothetical budget of $4,000.

“When he came back, he was just floored by the concepts of the students,” Williams said. “We wanted to offer a direct channel for students to show, ‘This is what I can come up with,’ and get noticed.”

Williams said he plans to overhaul the GrouperEye site in June by refining the aspects of the platform that are most useful.

“We’ll roll out a much more polished product by the start of the next school year,” he said. “We’ll also be looking to add bigger brands that students are familiar with.”

With 400 registered students, many from Ivy League schools, GrouperEye could offer a glimpse of the future of Internet networking, said Kurt Demaagd, an MSU professor of telecommunication, information studies and media and an expert on the future of the Internet.

“I suspect as the idea gets more traction sites like Monster.com, with established networks of job seekers and employers, may copy the idea and give it real value,” he said. “It is unlikely that this model will replace traditional recruiting in the immediate future, but it is at least an idea with which people are starting to experiment.”

Although the site hasn’t caught on in East Lansing, economics senior Carey Inhulsen said he expects job-recruiting opportunities like these to pick up momentum at schools such as MSU.

“I like to show my creativity and a lot of my friends do, too,” Inhulsen said. “If that can help us get jobs, rather than just who I or my parents might know or meet, that would be great.”

Despite his misgivings on the Web site, Demaagd said students should use every way possible to get their names out and learn what employers want.

“Given the current job market, only a bozo would offhandedly dismiss a potential way to reach prospective employers,” he said. “That extra willingness to put in a little effort may be just the signal some employers are looking for.”

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