San Jose FULL ACCESS Student Summit Summary
San Jose FULL ACCESS Student Summit Summary
A FULL ACCESS Student Summit was held San Jose, California on April 8th – April 9th, 2011. This Summit was generously sponsored by Cisco and primarily hosted at the Cisco Headquarters. Other participating employers included AT&T, the Federal Highway Administration, Google, the Internal Revenue Service, Microsoft, NBCUniversal, Northrop Grumman, and Walmart. The selection process for this particular Summit was highly competitive with nearly 100 student applicants. Fifty students representing 23 unique colleges and universities across the United States were selected and in attendance at the Summit. Manpower Group sponsored the participation of numerous resume critique professionals for the students. All students had their resumes reviewed by these and other professionals prior to the Summit, and virtually all took advantage of the one on one resume critiques that were provided during the registration hour.
Prior to the official beginning of the Summit, a Pre-Summit Employer Meeting and Panel Discussion was conducted. This meeting was designed to share information from higher education and the college student perspectives, as well as to share employer best practices of recruiting college students with disabilities.
Sarah Helm and Alan Muir of the University of Tennessee and COSD, respectively, discussed the size of the market of students with disabilities and how COSD works with both higher education and employers to help college students with disabilities to be more effectively prepared to be recruited.
Deb Dagit and Marlon Doles of Merck talked about the strategy and practical tools Merck uses to recruit in this population and provided some insight into their efforts to recruit veterans with disabilities.
Cisco also talked about their Employee Resource Group (ERG) and Community Outreach as a means of learning within the company and enhancing its recruitment efforts of this population.
The Employer Community was discussed and it was decided that this group would meet quarterly primarily via electronic means and in-person when possible. All employers in the room made a commitment to continue with the understanding that the agenda for each of the meetings will be focused on one topic. The next meeting will be in the upcoming summer. To view a complete summary of the employer meeting and panel discussion, please click here.
The Summit officially began with a luncheon at Cisco Headquarters which featured a few guest speakers and our Keynote Speaker, Victoria Maxwell. Our first guest speaker was Tony Sauer, Director of the California Department of Rehabilitation. Mr. Sauer briefly spoke about the partnership between the Department of Rehabilitation and employers as well as the Department’s efforts to better prepare students with disabilities for future careers. Next, we heard a brief welcome and introduction from our student ambassador, Kate Porter. Kate was selected from a number of applicants from the 2010 Boston FULL ACCESS Summit as the San Jose Student Ambassador. In her role, Kate assisted the COSD staff and acted as a mentor and reference to the attending students. Finally, we were given the opportunity to hear from Victoria Maxwell, who is an acclaimed actress and playwright from British Columbia. Victoria shared her story of mental illness and presented her one woman show entitled, “Funny, You Don’t Look Crazy” which is a ‘sister’ show to her hit, “Crazy for Life”. Students later had an opportunity to learn and interact through multiple training sessions provided by Martha Artiles, Chief Diversity Officer, Manpower Group who presented “The World of Work Trends”, Myranda Bertrand, COSD staff member who discussed “Preparation for Your Career Search”, and Crystal Gilreath, COSD staff member who explained “Disclosure and Requesting Accommodations in the Workplace”.
We then shifted to our dinner program, which was hosted at the Wyndham San Jose and included introductions by each employer and dining etiquette training by Mary Jean Billingsley from Johnson County Community College in Kansas. Later that evening, students, employers, and staff enjoyed a relaxing and fun portion of the Summit known as the “Walmart Wii Networking Event”. Refreshments, board games, and two Wii game stations were set-up for the enjoyment of everyone.
The second day of the Summit was described as the “most valuable and important” by most students and proved to be beneficial for students and employers alike. Two, one hour small group sessions were offered, and students were paired with employers they had ranked in order of their interest. Employers had up to 8 students in each group and explained about the more intricate details of their companies or agencies to students. The conversations were informal, informational, and insightful between the students and employers. Students had the chance to ask about some of the thoughts and concerns they had about specific employers, while employers shared their knowledge and tips about the job search and attainment process as a whole.
After these sessions, a brief wrap-up concluded the student’s portion Summit with final thoughts, challenges, and goals detailed by Dee Cosetto.
After the students were dismissed, an employer debriefing luncheon was conducted at Cisco Headquarters. For their initial impressions, all employer representatives were pleased with the structure of the Student Summit and most of all, the quality of students. Each employer described memorable encounters with the students and possible recommendations to put selected students into the hiring process for future interviews.
Several suggestions were made for improvement including having the resumes available to the employers more in advance, the addition of corporate promotional videos at the breaks, encouraging more employer representatives with disabilities to attend, opportunities for students to role-play and practice their disclosure skills and additional employer sessions with students.
Cisco committed to having another COSD FULL ACCESS Student Summit at their facility a year from now in Spring 2012. Many of the employers stated they were committed to attending our next Student Summit in New Jersey in November.
COSD has employed several methods to stay in touch with these students and employers, including Facebook and Twitter pages. Additionally, we will be adding videos from this Summit to our COSD YouTube channel, which features testimonial interviews from students, employers, and volunteers at the Summits. It is our goal that long-term, professional relationships are built between employers, students and higher education institutions as a result of the Summit experience.