Although the economy is recovering and salaries for top-earners are rising, long-term unemployment is soaring. This bifurcation in the labor market is also happening in the “first job market” for newly-minted college graduates.

 

Please share this with your friends who are in college.

 

It’s college graduation season again. Last year, at the height of the recession, I was hoping to hire some top new college graduates at a bargain price. As explained in my blog entry on The Class of 2009, I was surprised to find that salaries for the very top college graduates actually rose at the height of the worst recession since The Great Depression.

 

While most students couldn’t find any first job, the demand for the very top students—those with both great writing skills and great technical (e.g., HTML, Web design) skills—soared as companies sought to cut costs and increase productivity.

 

Prior to 2009, a Fortune 500 company might have needed 1,000 newly-minted college graduates each year to fill entry-level positions in sales and customer service. Today, thanks to the Internet, SMS texting, and automated call centers, this same company might only need 105 newly-minted college graduates for such positions: 100 "normal" graduates for traditional positions, plus 5 superstar top graduates to design the systems and to write text for the websites, the SMS texting programs, and scripts for the call centers.

 

In today’s technological world, top college graduates are not worth twice the price of an average student—they are worth ten times the price.

 

Top new college graduates are now getting multiple job offers at starting salaries of $60,000-$120,000, while most students with average skills are being left out in the cold.

 

Last week I received an email from a college president asking: “When you hire a newly-minted college graduate, what do you most look for?

 

I answered: “Writing ability.” Most newly-minted college graduates lack good writing skills. Good writing requires clear, logical thinking a knowledge of grammar, and the ability to spell.

 

Sometimes, in the middle of a job interview with a student prospect, I ask the student to sit down at a computer (not connected to the Web) in the next room and write 300-600 words about our interview. Far too often, I am both shocked and dismayed to discover that  few of them can write a clear paragraph.

 

Good writing skills used to be what distinguished Ivy League graduates from the rest—because most Ivy League students came from prep schools that taught writing. This is no longer so.

 

Just last week a graduating senior from an Ivy League college blew an interview that I had set up for her because her email mixed homophones like “their” and “there” and contained misspelled words (which, apparently, were not corrected by her spell checker). 

 

Earlier this year I spent weeks helping a college senior get interviews with a top private equity firm. In the e-mail that the student sent to the firm’s senior partner confirming the initial interview he wrote “higher” instead of “hire.”After canceling the scheduled day of interviews, the partner sent me a note saying “this guy would get laughed out of here for writing like this.”

 

The real blame here is with the teachers. Students in cases like this have no idea why they are failing in the job market. They simply do not know what they don’t know about their own shortcomings.

 

Our nation needs to develop a post-bachelor’s, standardized writing test, to be administered to all U.S. graduating seniors and all job applicants. Such a test would enable employers to discern the qualified applicants, would enable students to discern their own shortcomings, and would help educators teach what they should be teaching to most help their students.

 

Entrepreneurs must be on the "cutting edge" (black ink) versus the "bleeding edge" (red ink) of new products, ideas, and trends.

In October 1985 I was introduced in the United States Congress by then-Vice President George H. Bush. I testified about the coming S&L Crisis, saying that if the scandal was left unchecked it would cost the U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars and cause millions of U.S. citizens to lose their life savings.  My written prepared remarks were titled: "Taking Uncle Sam for a $200 Billion Ride." I was ridiculed for using such a enormous figure, $200 billion, to describe the magnitude of the situation--no government scandal prior to then had cost more than a few billion dollars.

The same week in 1985 I met with an editor at Simon & Schuster (S&S) about writing a book, called Other People's Money,  to expose the scandal.  S&S stalled me for three years (1986-1988) while I kept writing articles and op-ed pieces about the S&L Crisis. I became a media darling on the subject on CNN, NPR and national news and talk shows.

In December 1988, when the S&L Crisis was already a household word, I appeared on The Larry King Live! Television Show. The next morning I got a call from the same editor at S&S saying they wanted to publish Other People's Money right away. I was furious!  I exclaimed to the editor: "You could have published this book three years ago when it was new information, now everyone knows all about it."

The editor calmed me down and explained. "Paul," he said, "three years ago when you came to me with this story I presented it to my colleagues and they thought you were a nut. If we had published your book back then, it would have sat on the shelf. Now that we have five different book proposals from prominent people on this same subject, we can see that this story is finally ready for a popular book. We are a business, not a charity. We want to hear about new things when they are on the bleeding edge (red ink), but we don't want to publish a major book on new things until they are on the cutting edge (black ink), and the public is ready for the information."

The editor added that if I would stop screaming at him he would outline the business terms of their offer to publish my book. S&S published Other People's Money in 1989 and it was an instant success--being featured on the cover of The New York Times Book Review and paving the way for my future life as an author.

P.S. Readers following the current U.S. Banking Crisis should note that the main cause—100% insurance of consumer bank deposits—has never been fixed. As first pointed out by FDR in 1932, and highlighted in Other People’s Money, only a system that puts the depositor at some manageable level of risk (say 10% of their money) can keep risk-taking financial institutions from having unlimited access to capital before it’s too late.  For more info see the New York Times Book Review.

The rest of the story how I got rejected at Wharton Business School and how I got Wharton to reverse their decision two days later 

Before asking a higher level for help, you must first "make your own luck" by doing everything you possibly can on your own. 

In order to get someone to reverse a rejection, the rejecter must have a way to "save face" for themselves and/or their organization. 

Last week I wrote "Reveling in Rejection" explaining how I was rejected from the MBA program at Wharton Business School on April 8, 1974, and how I got them to reverse their decision and accept me on April 10, 1974. 

Although I didn't realize it back then, it was a pivotal event in my life. It taught me that any decision made by human beings can be reversed, and started me learning the process of how to get people to reverse their own decisions. 

This past week I heard from readers asking for more information, and from college friends who thought I should have told more details of the story. One college friend felt someone reading "Reveling in Rejection" could get the wrong impression that I was "just lucky" because the Director of Admissions was a fan of the artist Joan Miro. 

Here's the rest of the story. 

After I got rejected on April 8th, the Admissions Office told me that no one had the authority to reverse the committee's decision except the Director of Admissions. And the Director of Admissions did not take calls or meetings with individual applicants. 

My father taught me to always "do the math" when faced with a decision--logically figure out the consequences from each possible action. Here was the math: 
--To get accepted I had to meet with the Director of Admissions; 
--The Director didn't take meetings with applicants for admission; and 
--Therefore I had everything to gain and nothing to lose if I got to meet with the Director under false pretenses. 

This last point was key--I had nothing to lose. This led me, after trying in nicer ways, to get the meeting with the Director by implying something was wrong in his Admissions Office. The Director, probably a career college administrator, would only lose a few minutes of his time by taking such a meeting with me, and he would have everything to gain if he could avoid my bringing his name before the Board of Trustees. 

After I got the meeting set up with the Director of Admissions for Wednesday, April 10th, I did everything I could in the next 24 hours to further my application. 

I contacted the people who wrote the three letters of recommendation I had submitted with my application and told them I had a "final meeting" tomorrow at Wharton--asking them to phone or fax any additional information they could to the Director of Admissions. 

I similarly contacted my key professors and gave them the contact info for the Director of Admissions. 

I assembled my friends to help me role play different scenarios of what might occur at my upcoming meeting with the Director. 

Although I had never met the President of my undergraduate school, I walked to the President's House on campus and explained to his secretary that there was a "final meeting" tomorrow on my application to Wharton Graduate Business School. The secretary asked me to write out my credentials. I drafted for her the text of a letter as if it was written by the President about "outstanding Lehigh student Paul Zane Pilzer."

Each time I completed one of these tasks I stopped and said aloud to myself: "What else can I do to be better prepared for my meeting with the Director of Admissions?"

On the drive down to Philadelphia the next morning, I felt confident that I had done everything humanly possible to prepare for this meeting. This confidence helped me succeed on April 10, 1974. 

I thought about my father's story of Joseph, a poor, pious man who prayed every night that God should let him win the lottery. Finally, after a lifetime of poverty, God appeared to Joseph in a dream saying: "Joseph! Give me a chance! Buy a lottery ticket!"

I felt confident that I had bought all my "lottery tickets" in preparing for this meeting. On a spiritual level, I knew I was ready to ask for God's help because I had demonstrated that I deserved His help by having first done everything I could on my own. 

During my meeting with the Director of Admissions, I mentioned items about my application that he could later use to "save face" if he reversed the decision of his committee. When he asked my ATGSB scores, I told him that I had taken the test without any preparation and I could easily bring my math score up to the level of my verbal score. When he asked why I was not first getting my undergraduate degree, I told him that I could easily obtain my BA that year before beginning my graduate studies at Wharton. 

The letter of acceptance I received on April 10, 1974 did tell me to disregard their letter of April 8, 1974 and offered me admission to the Wharton MBA program. But the letter also stated that I needed to bring my math ATGSB score up to the level of my verbal score, and obtain my bachelor's degree from Lehigh, before beginning my studies at Wharton. The Director did this to save face and have an empirical explanation for why he was reversing the decision. 

When I drove back to Lehigh that afternoon, I was already thinking about my next task. I now had to convince the Lehigh University Faculty Committee to grant me my bachelor’s degree without my meeting the school's foreign language distribution requirements. And I would have to re-take the ATGSB exam. 

Later than month, I submitted a brief to the Lehigh University Faculty Committee arguing that computer programming languages (e.g. BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL) were "the new foreign languages" and I attached my April 10th letter of conditional acceptance from Wharton. In effect, I told my teachers that if they denied my request to modify my foreign language requirement they would also be denying me the opportunity of a lifetime to attend Wharton Graduate Business School. The faculty granted my request for a bachelor’s degree subject to my taking one more course in French and one more programming language course. 

In May, I re-took the ATGSB exam after studying day and night. I was able to bring my math score up to the level of my verbal score as required by my Wharton acceptance letter--which was very challenging for me because I already had a high verbal score. 

I enrolled in summer school courses at Hunter College in French and COBOL to meet the Lehigh University foreign language distribution requirement. 

So, in conclusion, I didn't just "get accepted" into Wharton on April 10, 1974 from a single meeting with the Director of Admissions. 

One year later, in 1975, I ran into the Director of Admissions on campus at Wharton. He told me how he was intimidated during our first meeting on April 10, 1974. The President of Lehigh University, a former senior official with NASA, had phoned him that morning to talk about my application. While the Director had enjoyed our conversation about Joan Miro, he had already decided to admit me after his call with the President. I remember the Director telling me: "It’s not every day the President of a major university, who had managed the Apollo Space Program, calls you asking to admit a candidate."

The Director also told me that there was no need for him to require me to raise my ATGSB math score, but that I was so cocky about my ability to do so that he wanted to see me do it--and he would have waived this requirement if I had been unsuccessful. He added that he had no doubt he would have heard from me again (and again) if I had been unable to increase my ATGSB math score. 

One reader of "Reveling in Rejection" asked me how I managed to have enough credits at Lehigh to earn a BA in less than 3 years. That story, and how I went from flunking my first semester to graduating early with honors, is the subject of a future blog entry.

How I got rejected at Wharton and learned one of life’s most important lessons

Rejection by a qualified prospect means that you, personally, have failed to accurately communicate the potential of the product or service you are trying to sell.

In the fall of my third year of college I decided to pursue an MBA at the Wharton Graduate School of Business. Although I was only 19 and a junior at Lehigh University, I told my friends that I was going to Wharton “next year.” Then I applied for admission.

On Monday, April 8, 1974, at 9:00 a.m., I got rejected. I had called the Wharton admissions office to inquire about the status of my application. The receptionist retrieved my file and read my rejection letter to me. The letter thanked me for applying, and suggested that I finish college, get two years of work experience, and reapply.

I hung up the phone, then called back, again and again, trying in vain to schedule an appointment with the Director of Admissions to appeal the decision. Finally, realizing that I had nothing to lose, I left an obnoxious message explaining that I needed to speak with the Director of Admissions “before I report what happened to the Board of Trustees." A short while later the admissions office called back and gave me an appointment to see the Director at 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday, April 10, 1974.

On Wednesday morning, I attended my 8:00 a.m. Art History class at Lehigh. The class was a one hour lecture about the Spanish artist Joan Miro, whom I had never heard about before this class.

When the class ended, I drove to Philadelphia for my meeting at Wharton. On the drive down, I realized that I still didn’t know what I was going to tell the Director of Admissions.

When I walked into the Admissions office, the Director was on the telephone with the university bookstore. He had just purchased a signed lithograph by the artist Joan Miro, and was promising to come right over with a $1,500 check to pay for it. When he put down the phone, I repeated to him everything I had just learned about Miro, exploiting his fascination with the artist and his need for reassurance that the lithograph was a good purchase. Then I asked him if I could see the print. He jumped up and we walked to the university bookstore, continuing to talk about Miro on the way. When we saw the print, I congratulated him on his purchase and he invited me to lunch.

At lunch, I told him that I wanted to get my MBA from Wharton. He asked about my ATGSB (now called GMAT) score and grades, and told me that, with my interest in things like modern art, I was exactly the kind of well-rounded applicant they were looking for.

After lunch we went back to his office and he checked his appointment book. It was then he realized that I was the person who had left the obnoxious phone message. I protested how I had tried “nicely” to see him but that his office had left me no choice—leaving that message was the only way I could get to see him. He then dictated to his secretary a new letter granting me acceptance subject to my taking two summer school courses and getting my bachelor's degree from Lehigh. 

The bifurcation among new college graduates, and among existing workers, is creating a new opportunity in our economy that could eventually become a major industry: The "business" of "business opportunity"--creating new functions in our economy for people displaced from traditional jobs.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way.