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This is a guest post written by Juliana Weiss-Roessler. She is currently a contributor to CareerIgniter.com.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. At times, finding work can be a real catch 22. In order to find a job, you need work experience. But in order to have work experience, you need a job. The whole process can be a tail-chasing headache.

Many times your resume will be the first contact between you and a prospective employer. If you happen to be applying for a position and have little to no experience, selling yourself on paper can be a difficult process.

Sure, you can list your mother’s best friend as a reference or include the phone number of the church group you volunteer with every other Tuesday, but there is no guarantee that your prospective employer will even read that far into your resume. You need to hook them early.

The real question behind all of this is what exactly should you write for work experience on a resume or job application when you don’t have any jobs? In other words—how do you convince an employer that you are the right person for the position when your resume is shooting blanks?

Sell Yourself

The first step is to be truthful. Yes, it would be far easier if you could tell little white lies like you do on your Facebook posts (i.e. checking into the gym, then going to Starbucks instead), but sacrificing your integrity is not worth the risk. If an employer were to find out that you lied on your resume, not only will you probably be fired, but that lie could also follow you and impact your future job searches.

Instead, focus on the experience that you do have and reinterpret it to be more specific to the job or industry that you are applying for. Lots of people applying for roles on SpringTern are new to the workforce but they still have to find ways to convince people that they are right for the position. The key is to sell yourself in whatever way you can.

If you have done a lot of volunteer work, include it. But instead of simply listing your job responsibilities, reword them and list them as skills. If you have experience dealing with people in clubs and organizations, list that as customer service skills. If you’re required to stand on your feet for extended periods of time, write that as the ability to focus on a job task. If you are a stay-at-home mom or dad, then you have household management skills. If you are a recent college grad and took courses that are relevant to the specific industry you are applying for, then go ahead and focus on that experience by creating a section titled “Relevant College Course Work” or something similar.

Remember, while you absolutely do not need to lie or exaggerate, you do need to make your skillset look as impressive as possible. Everyone else will be doing it on their resumes so you need to ensure that you keep up.

Tackling the Resume

If you lack relevant work experience, one of the best ways to make your resume look as impressive as possible is to add an Objective that details your strengths and talks about your goals within the industry. For example, you could write something along the lines of “Recent college graduate with people skills and leadership ability, seeking an entry level customer service position with a company that will allow me to grow and obtain relevant work experience.”

This tells them that you’ve at least put some thought into your future and what you’d like to focus on. It can also encourage prospective employers to read your resume from a certain perspective, imbuing extra meaning on the types of experiences you choose to include.

The main idea here is that when you need to make up for the lack of work experience, you should highlight other areas of your resume. Instead of a section titled “Work Experience,” simply call it “Experience.” And think of other sections you can add such as “Skills” and “Training.”

Above all, make sure your resume is professionally formatting and contains all the information a prospective employer expects. If you’re finding that your resume looks sloppy or you’re ensure what to include, a resume builder can help by providing guidance on subheadings and multiple templates to choose from.

Experience Is in the Eye of the Beholder

If you’re still worried that you just don’t have enough experience, go out and get some. One of the great things about a site like SpringTern is that it’s not only designed to help people with little work experience get specific projects, you can then use that on your resume when seeking more work in the future.

Many times, hunting for a job can make you feel like a salesman but don’t let that get you down. The great thing about it is that you are selling yourself and no one knows you better. Get creative when looking for ways to highlight your skillset and remember that valuable experience can come from all sorts of places. Happy job hunting!

This is a guest post written by Felix Tarcomnicu. He is currently a contributor on ResumeOK.com

A resume is extremely important. Without a good one, you won’t get an interview. And without a job interview, you won’t get a job. But just because it is important to your career doesn’t mean that creating one is hard. In fact, if you are smart, writing up a resume can be extremely easy and will probably take less than an hour.
The secret to easily crafting your own resume is to use readily available resources. Don’t reinvent the wheel. There are literally thousands of resume templates out there for any position imaginable. So use them to your advantage and see how the templates are structured. Copy the main structure but do make sure to make your CV stand out.
What makes a resume good?
All you need to do is adopt a minimalist approach to your resume. People who review resumes spend very little time looking at them. In fact, the more cluttered your resume is, the more likely it is that your resume will be passed up. So make it as simple as possible.
But when you are making a resume, you need to be more cognizant of the information you are putting on there. You have no space to put trivial information that does not pertain to the job you are applying for. So think of the most significant accomplishments and strengths to put on your resume. For instance, if you are applying for an electrical engineering position, forget about your previous career as a freelance web designer. It does not pertain to the job. All it does is clutter up your resume. And as you are writing your CV, write in simple English but use technical jargon that applies to your career. People reviewing resumes look for those keywords. The more advanced the keywords are, the more attention your resume will get. However, the reviewer might miss those keywords if your CV is too cluttered.

So in summary, to make it a resume as easy to write as possible, just take a good resume example for the position you are applying for and make it as minimalistic as possible by only putting in the most relevant and important information. The fancier the resume is, the more likely it is to get passed up.

Tandem Marketing + Consulting is a young business, but one with ambitions to grow. And in order to grow, they needed an extra set of hands to work on some of their new client business.

Shelley Steigerwald, Principal at Tandem Marketing + Consulting, had the following to say about her experience using SpringTern:

“I was just getting my marketing consulting business up and running and was looking for an intern to provide daily attention to the social media accounts for my client, FunGuy Mushrooms. I posted the opportunity on SpringTern and very quickly received several applications to choose from. Naomi’s cover letter stood out immediately and I’ve been really impressed with her professionalism, competence and self-sufficiency. We have regular Skype meetings to make sure the lines of communication stay open, and have worked together to make sure she’s gaining new business skills along the way — like brand development tactics and communications channel management.

I know we can’t keep such talent forever, but Naomi has brought tremendous value to the project in a very short time, and the client is happy with our process and results, so I’m thankful to have been connected to her!”

Naomi Tse, the bright young student working with Shelley, was equally thrilled with the great experience she was able to gain.

“I found FunGuy Mushroom’s job posting on SpringTern through Sauder Careers Online of University of British Columbia. I was immediately drawn to the posting because it seemed like a fun brand to work for (because they’re FunGuys!).

My experience has been very rewarding, as I’ve watched the number of Twitter followers grow as a direct result of my continuous engagement with the Twitter community. I’ve learned that being an online community manager is a never-ending job as you try to balance and schedule tweets and posts across multiple social media platforms. At the same time, I’ve developed some time management and multitasking skills as well as enhanced my creativity when it comes to generating new content to post. Staying relevant while also adding value to consumers is also another skill I’ve been developing.

In addition, I’ve enjoyed the freedom and trust that FunGuy Mushrooms has given me with handling their social media presence as the voice of the brand. My work with FunGuy Mushrooms will be a great addition to my portfolio and I’m glad that SpringTern provided me with this opportunity to connect with FunGuy Mushrooms.”

Update: Naomi has now been hired on a paid intern with Tandem Marketing + Consulting

If you have used SpringTern and would like to be included in our Success Stories series, please email support@springtern.com

As you grow up, you’re often taught in school that being smart is the most important thing you need to be successful. But once you hit the professional world, you will soon realize that, although important, being smart isn’t nearly enough.

Here are a few skills that are arguably as important, that you should start working on now to ensure your future success.

Building Relationships: The importance of relationship building can’t be stressed enough. No matter your field of work, you will have to work with other people, either inside or outside of your company. Almost everyone will be professional in their work, but the ability to quickly build relationships goes a long way. People will go out of their way to help people that they like. The more and the better your relationships, the better your results. And lets not forget the inherent social benefit of working with people that you enjoy!

Confidence: If you truly believe in yourself it will be much easier to get others to believe in you too. Once that happens, you’ll be given more and more responsibility because they trust that you’ll get the job done.

Initiative: Doing your job is almost never enough to impress anyone. Your colleagues need to see you going above and beyond and no one is going to tell you how to do that (if they did, it wouldn’t really be going ‘above and beyond’, would it?). Showing initiative in ways that add value to your project/team/company/customer will turn heads in your organization. Make sure that you constantly take the initiative to find ways to add more value and success will quickly follow.

All of these skills can be practiced no matter where you are in your career – whether you are a student, a recent graduate or someone who has been working for years. All of them are simple in concept but require effort and practice. So start working on them today!

We are excited to add a referral system for our business and non-profit users.

The system is simple to use. In the menu bar, simply click on the ‘Refer a Friend’ button then enter their email address in the text field. The email is pre-populated with a message, but feel free to change the text if you would like. Your friend will be sent an email with a link to sign up to SpringTern. When they post their first project on the site (which is free for them to do), your account will be credited with a free listings.

Thats all there is to it!

PitchPen is a global online marketplace that provides high quality, verified and on-demand social media and marketing talent and teams to brands without the agency overhead.

PitchPen was looking for candidates with a track record of getting results on social media and capable of being big influencers online and offline in their communities. PitchPen’s project went extremenly well and they wanted to share their story.

Olga Orda, Co-Founder & CEO at PitchPen, says, “I was recommended to try SpringTern by a colleague. We posted an advertisement for a social media consultant and I was overwhelmed by the quality of candidates that replied in such a brief period of time!

Using SpringTerm has been a terrific experience – straightforward, easy to use and best of all, we met several excellent, engaged and high quality candidates within our timelines. I would definitely recommend using SpringTern.”

If you have used SpringTern and would like to be included in our Success Stories series, please email support@springtern.com

They say there are two things in life that are certain, death and taxes. Let’s add one more to that list, you’re not the only one applying for that awesome job you saw online.

So how can I differentiate myself from the competition? How can I stand out?

Well for starters, you’re here building up your experience with SpringTern projects, so you already have a head start!

Next, be sure to read this post here.

Finally, SpringTern recently partnered up with ViewYou to give you another way to start you on the path to success. From Rick Anderson, ViewYou Co-Founder:

“Think: a hybrid YouTube and LinkedIn. ViewYou provides a platform for visual resumes – Multiple user-uploaded videos are combined with traditional documents like a resume as well as links to your social media sites and personal web pages. It’s all professionally organized in one location, secure and unique to you.”

Through our partnership with ViewYou, you’re able to sign-up and create a profile free of charge (All you need to do is sign-up for a PLUS profile here http://www.viewyou.tv/signup and use the coupon code “SPRINGFREE” when prompted).

Happy New Year from your friends at SpringTern!

Most applications through SpringTern, or other job sites for that matter, are reviewed extremely quickly by the hiring manager. In fact, studies have shown that recruiters spend an average of 6 seconds reviewing each resume. You need to make the most of that 6 seconds by making a great first impression. Here are some tips to help you stand out from the pack by writing a great cover letter:

• Transferable Skills: Companies using SpringTern understand that you often come to the site to get your first work experience so they do not expect to you have much prior work experience. But you can show that you have the skills that they need through course work or extra-curricular activities. Include one or two short examples to demonstrate this. Try something like this: “As the VP of the Marketing Association, I have proven my ability to manage a team toward a common goal.”

• Customize Your Application: Recruiters and managers can tell if you are sending a generic application out to lots of different companies. Take the time to read the details of the listing and make sure that you customize your examples to the specific needs of that project. It isn’t enough to talk about your skills; you need to link that back to the listing. Something along the lines of: “My proven communication skills will allow me to have successful customer interactions as part of this project.” See the connection between the skill and their project?

• Proofread, proofread and proofread again: All too often we see applications or bios that are littered with spelling and grammar mistakes. This says to the recruiter that you don’t care enough about their listing to put in the time to proofread and will get your application into the rejection pile almost instantly. This is an easy one to fix so take the extra couple of minutes to proofread your application before you hit submit.

There is never a guarantee that you will be selected from a pool of applicants, but following these three tips will certainly improve your chances.

We are very excited to announce that we will be coming out of beta in only a couple short months!

We would like to thank all of our customers for using SpringTern during our beta period this year. We understand that finding great talent is of the utmost importance for the success of your organization and we feel privileged that you were willing to use SpringTern to connect with student talent.

Our beta free trial period will be coming to an end effective January 22nd. From then onwards, there will be a cost of $45 to post a project on SpringTern. Non-profit organizations will enjoy a reduced rate of $25.

As a thank you for being an early adopter, all of our customers will be credited with one free listing. We will also be introducing a referral system so that you can earn additional free credits by referring other organizations to SpringTern.

We look forward to working together in the future to help you connect with student talent.

Sincerely,
Ben & Ron

So you’ve found the ideal project on SpringTern, applied and been accepted by the company. Now that it is time to get to work, how do you make sure you’re effectively managing the project so that you make the best possible impact?

This post isn’t going to talk about how to do the actual work. That will depend on the nature of the project. But there are things you can do to manage your project effectively and ensure that you earn a great reference at the end.

Here are three things to keep in mind.

Over-communicate: It can be challenging working on a project remotely. Without regular face-to-face interaction both sides can feel out of touch from the other. Make sure that you’re providing the company with regular updates on the progress of your work. Even if everything is going according to the agreed plan, it doesn’t hurt to send a quick email to tell them that. Remember, for communication during remote projects, more is almost always better.

Ask Questions: Companies using SpringTern know that you are looking for a learning opportunity on your project, and a key part of learning is asking questions. This shows you are actively thinking about your work from different angles and that you’re interested in the company and how you can help them.

Go Above and Beyond: This can be a hard thing to learn, but doing good work on your defined task isn’t enough to stand out in the professional world whether you are a full time employee or working on a short-term project. Always try to find ways to impress the people you are working with by coming up with ideas on how you can add more value. If you’re working on their Facebook page, how can you help with their Twitter account too? If you’re helping with a list of sales targets, what extra info can you gather to make it more useful? Find where you can do more, then go do it!

Of course, doing good work is the core of any successful SpringTern project. But if you really want to stand out, keep these three tips in mind.

Hopefully anyone reading this has already got the basics of their online presence set up. This would be centered on your LinkedIn profile. (If you haven’t done this, please stop reading this and go do that now!)

But everyone has a LinkedIn page and if a potential employer searches for you, how can you ensure that you stand out?

One of the best ways to catch a recruiter’s eye online is to have a personal website that has interesting content that portrays your strengths. Here are a few reasons on why having a personal site can be so effective:

• Total Control: When you aren’t limited by another sites constraints or features you have the control to include everything you want

• Unique: Despite being very effective, personal sites are still uncommon so this makes you appear very unique

• Digitally Savvy: Having a personal website gives you instantly credibility in the online world and its almost impossible these days to find a job without any online component

But I’m not a developer?
So you’re on board that having a personal site is a great idea, but where do you start? Creating a website isn’t nearly as difficult as it was just a few years ago. There are lots of services that can make it both easy and cheap.

One of our partners, Wix, provides a free to use online tool that lets you quickly and easily create your own website. Wix is used across all sorts of sites and needs, but offers the flexibility to create an appealing and unique site that will let give you the canvas you need to show why you are the best candidate for the job!

At the end of the day, the best listing is one that connects you with a student that is able to do a great job completing your project. Finding that student often means attracting as much in interest in your listing as possible. That is not to say that you want every student to apply. Of course, you want those that are motivated and passionate about that type of work. But there are certainly things you can do to maximize your chances.

We have carefully reviewed the characteristics of hundreds of postings on SpringTern and found some clear patterns among the listings that receive the most interest and applications.

Time Commitment: While SpringTern does not in any restrict the time commitment of projects posted on the site, students generally come to SpringTern with the expectation of finding roles that they can complete alongside school work or part-time jobs. This means that anything over 100 hours can become a significant challenge. The most popular projects are between 25-75 hours in total.

Posting Deadline: We understand that there are business-needs driving the timeline for your project, but when possible we recommend setting your expiration date at least 2-3 weeks into the future, if not more. SpringTern works with career centres and student organizations across North America in order to promote all of the listings we receive, but this can sometimes take several days. Longer postings will allow more time to get it in front of as many students as possible.

Incentive: SpringTern is designed to connect organizations and students to complete volunteer projects. Although no money changes hands, that are always non-financial incentives available. Are you willing to give a student a reference letter? A recommendation on LinkedIn? Extra coaching and mentoring? Introduce them to people in your network? Students find these extremely valuable and you should highlight your willingness to provide them.

Sell The Project: No one expects you to hand over your overall strategy to a student. But students are highly capable and the content of your project should reflect that. Additionally, ensure that you show the impact their work will have on the organization. For example, if a student helps develop a list of prospects, make sure they know how it will be used.

Sell Yourself: The person that will be working directly with the student has a huge impact on what they take away from the project. Let the student know why they would be lucky to work with you! Are you a leader in their field of interest as shown by a professional designation (eg a Chartered Accountant) or experience? Do you have experience managing and mentoring people? Showing an interest in the people you work with, even on a short-term project is important.

Can we guarantee that you will find the perfect candidate if you follow these guidelines? Of course not. And anyone that says they can is probably lying. There is always going to be an element of luck involved, not to mention the actual content of the project. But based on our analysis, this is what is going to optimize your chances.

This post is written by Alexey Saltykov, Co-Founder and CEO of InsurEye Inc, online business that offers consumers independent insurance reviews and helps to compare auto insurance and other types of insurance.

When I first heard about SpringTern.com and the benefits this service offered both to students and employers, I decided to give it a chance and try the service out since I was curious as to how it works. I have to say that the reality exceeded our expectations and we got multiple applications including students who already had some professional experience and PhDs. In total, we engaged 8 marketing students, more than we ever expected, and it was a great experience!

For example, one of our students, Kristine, was focused on creating content-rich infographics educating Canadians about home, auto, life, and travel insurance. All her work was extremely professional and resulted in great outcome for our company. Many of her infographics were featured in such media outlets like Globe and Mail, Money Sense, Business Review Canada and others. It brought us additional publicity and thousands of new website visitors.

As a business owner, I think SpringTern.com is an amazing way to get access to great resources. All our students were ready to learn, and some have continued supporting us after the official end of their engagement. They covered multiple topics such as creating marketing materials, conducting market research, initiating contacts with potential clients, supporting our SEO strategy, translating articles, interacting with media representatives and replying to initial customer leads. All in one, great results! I wish all the best to SpringTern.com and always refer other small business owners to this site and its services.

If you have used SpringTern and would like to be included in our Success Stories series, please email support@springtern.com

Morgan Todd, a Queens University graduate and current student in George Brown College’s Strategic Relationship Marketing Program, successfully used SpringTern to combine her interest in marketing with the love of frozen yogurt. She wanted to share her story here.

My friend Meaghan sends me a million links a week. From fashion blogs to sweet recipes to job advice, she’s on top of the World Wide Web. I usually find what she sends me pretty interesting; I’ve even tried a couple of the recipes and bought a couple of the accessories. The best thing Meaghan’s ever sent me though would be the Menchie’s Kingston Springtern page. She thought my interest in marketing might be perfect for the role and that the experience would give me a little bit more knowledge of the industry. Boy, was she right.

As soon as I was sent the link, I created an application. Although unfamiliar with the brand, I LOVE frozen yogurt, and so working for a frozen yogurt company probably meant free product. That was my logic. A week or three went by and I had almost given up hope on the position until Kevin called me one morning, very excited about the opportunity and ready to build a team in Kingston and start reaching out to the consumers. At this point, I had experience on my own Facebook and a little bit of Twitter, but that was about it.

Working for Menchie’s has been a blast. I take great pride in amount of success we had as a team in building such strong relationships between Menchie’s and the Kingston community. What initially started off as a few students posting Facebook posts or creating a Pinterest page turned into almost 2,000 Facebook “likes”, 2,000 Twitter followers, and the highest grand opening day sales for the entire company by 21%. Can you say learning opportunity?!

From data entry, to developing a brand voice, to analytics and communications, Springtern set me up with a great opportunity to develop much-needed skills for my professional resume. That was my goal, to help me look good to future employers and to have a little bit of fun while doing it. Instead, I ended up with much more. I am now a paid social media strategist, running Facebook, Twitter, Hootsuite, Pinterest, and more for the Menchie’s Kingston, London, and Waterloo locations. Soon, I’ll have Springterns of my own to pass on my knowledge to and continue to develop and understand Menchie’s from a marketing perspective.

My advice to anyone looking to get started with Springtern is: YES! Do it. Find a posting that looks interesting, send along a message, and do your best to secure a placement. It’s very easy to manage a Springtern position and do schooling at the same time; I managed to successfully finish my fourth year at Queen’s and work for Menchie’s with no problem. Ask questions; you get so much valuable information for free from your mentor and they know what they’re talking about (most of the time). Finally, you’ll get as much out of this experience as you put into it; you could even end up landing a sweet paid gig at the end of it all!

I don’t know where the future lies, probably with a lot more frozen yogurt and even more pink and green, but I can definitely say that Springtern gave me a great opportunity to connect with leading industry professionals, gain experience, and ultimately secure a job that I love. Oh, and Meaghan, you’re probably reading this, so thanks for passing along the info!

This post is written by Angie Li, a university student entering her 4th year at Carleton University. Angie used Springtern to gain some professional experience and wanted to share her story.

Since high school I’ve had a number of part-time retail employments which supported me financially but offered barely any industry experience. When I began university, I felt that I had taken all that I could from these part-time jobs. I wanted to advance into a position where I could gain experience and exposure in my own field. After applying to a number of internships, I was unsuccessful and completely frustrated. I realized that my lack of industry experience made it nearly impossible to take the jump from part-time jobs to an internship. I had come face-to-face with the ultimate Catch-22: ‘You can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job’.

Angie Lin achieved success using SpringTern

Fortunately, I came across SpringTern – a very powerful tool that connects companies that needed a bit of a lift from talented, driven individuals. Having reached what I thought to be the end point of typical retail employments, I yearned to learn more about my field. SpringTern presented such an opportunity where I could gain skills related to my career objectives and connect with industry professionals.

I acquired a social media internship through SpringTern in which I would work closely with Karim Kanji, the co-founder of a marketing communications firm and part of Kiddology, as well as a very notable professional within the Canadian marketing industry. During this internship, I was able to gain invaluable experience with a number of social media interfaces, strategize and conduct campaigns, and engage and grow communities, all while having Karim as my mentor. In addition, the company in which I was managing the social networks for was a start-up — a major plus for me. I wanted to get in on the beginning and be part of fresh and exciting developments as the company grew. Moreover, as the internship was to be completed remotely, I was able to gain valuable industry experience while succeeding both in my school work and extra-curricular activities.

During the summer of 2012, after working just one month with Karim, I was offered a position as a Marketing Intern at a financial advising firm. At this very point, I truly jumped for joy as I was finally able to acquire hands-on experience in my field that I was never able to before. With the help of SpringTern I was able to connect and learn from Karim, a true industry professional, which had given me the edge to acquire the marketing internship at the financial advising firm.

It’s been over four months now that I have been working with Karim as well as at the financial advising firm. As my marketing internship ends, one of my final tasks was to hire a new intern for the upcoming Fall. As someone that experienced the benefits of this powerful site first hand, I turned to SpringTern as a way to connect with other students yearning for valuable industry experience. I hope to provide an opportunity for others that also faced the same Catch-22 I once had.

If you have used SpringTern and would like to be featured in our Success Stories series, please email support@springtern.com

Krav Maga Toronto offers practical self defense training to individuals, groups, and various organizations. Clients come to develop the skills to survive real life self defense situations.

Krav Maga Toronto was looking for an analytical individual to do a financial analysis of their business.

Says Christopher Gagne, Director and Lead Instructor of Krav Maga Toronto:

“SpringTern connected me with a student who worked with our business to develop a comprehensive and versatile business plan, helped establish an efficient accounting system, and conduct crucial financial analysis. He gave us a clearer vision of our company’s growth, financial status and position in the market.

The student’s ability to understand “the bigger picture,” while attending to detail is very impressive. His strong communication and sharp qualitative abilities make him a prime candidate for financial analysis type positions. He helped our business take a very important step forward.”

If you have used SpringTern and would like to be included in our Success Stories series, please email support@springtern.com

Building on the well-established relationships between Canada and other countries, the Canadian Fund for International Understanding through Culture (Can for Culture) is dedicated to creating opportunities for cultural collaboration.

With various events taking place all around the world, Can For Culture was in need of a financially savvy student to help the board treasurer compile annual financial statements for the board’s review.

The project went very well for both parties involved, from Can For Culture:

“SpringTern is an extremely powerful tool for any organization looking for some extra help. We were very impressed with the calibre of the applications we received. SpringTern gives direct access to a pool of talented, hard-working and bright individuals. The work we received back was better than expected! Our student redesigned our excel files so that we would have a more automated and formal driven template.”

From the student:

“SpringTern helped me connect with a great volunteer opportunity that enhanced my professional network, and allowed me to develop career-relevant skills. As most of its advertised opportunities are short-term commitments that can be completed remotely, I was able to gain valuable industry experience, while still staying on top of my school work and other extra-curricular commitments.”

If you have used SpringTern and would like to be included in our Success Stories series, please email support@springtern.com

This is the first in our series of success stories, highlighting businesses and job seekers that have successfully connected through SpringTern.

Ryan Coelho founded #GameOn Leadership to provide the next generation of young leaders with the coaching they need to reach their full potential. As many student users of SpringTern will be acutely aware of, it can be difficult to determine your career path with confidence at an early age. Through workshops, a supportive community and online resources, Coelho helps students and young professionals take control of their career.

#GameOn Leadership, with an emphasis on helping students find professional opportunities, makes a perfect fit for using SpringTern.

The company has enjoyed great success in their short history, but Coelho is looking to take the company to the next level by boosting their marketing efforts to reach more users in the target market. With this challenge at hand Coelho turned to SpringTern to find ambitious young students to help grow the business. The recent posting for a Marketing Explorer allowed Coelho to find two great candidates, one based nearby in Toronto currently studying at UofT and the other based south of the border attending Yale.

Says Coelho, “Being new to the intern hiring process, one of the hardest parts of it is to find quality candidates that are passionate about what you do and want to be part of your organization. SpringTern took the effort out of having to find the right interns, and allowed me to present the opportunity to the candidates online and have those interested get in touch. Without SpringTern I can honestly say I probably would not have interns at this point.”

The project has only begun recently but initial results are positive. “One of our interns is currently beginning to engage with online marketing for #GameOn Leadership and we are still exploring unique opportunities for the other candidate. We’re excited to see what happens!”

In fact, #GameOn Leadership is so excited to connect with students using SpringTern that they have offered a $10 discount to anyone that wants to attend one of their workshops. Enter the promotion code ‘SPRINGTERN10′ when registering online.

If you have used SpringTern and would like to be included in our Success Stories series, please email support@springtern.com

SpringTern has hit a few exciting milestones over the past few weeks. After seeing our 100th application come through in early April, there has been a lot of exciting activity on the site with applications tripling since then. We also passed 500 registered students and saw our 100th project posted on the site.

While these figures are exciting and show that we are offering something that job seekers and businesses both have a need for, some of the best moments are the feedback that we get from our users.

Hearing a student say “Thank you SpringTern for my first internship experience with 4ormat. So psyched to start!” is extremely rewarding and demonstrates the reason that we started SpringTern in the first place.

And it’s not just students, but businesses too. One small PR firm said, “I am so impressed with this! What a great system you have set up! I’ve already told several people about it and will continue to do so.”

We hope to see our numbers and stats continue to grow, but promise to always remember the individuals behind those numbers that we are working for.

One of the best parts of founding SpringTern is the opportunities we get to work closely with students all over North America. This shouldn’t surprise us, but we are constantly amazed at how smart and motivated today’s students are.

Student leaders are quick to see the value of SpringTern and are eager to work with us to bring the service to their programs. In a few short months, we have partnered with dozens of student organizations to reach thousands of students in Canada and the US.

There is one quick example we would like to share that should help give an idea of what we mean. After an initial discussion with the people in charge of the Management and Economics Students’ Association (MESA) at University of Toronto, they decided that instead of the usual email blast to students, that they wanted to regularly promote SpringTern’s opportunities to their members. We’ve set up a system where they are now sharing project listings on their website and updating it weekly with the latest listings on their Outreach page.

MESA recognized the need among their students to quickly get real world work experience and are taking the initiative so that they can capitalize on these opportunities.

We look forward to our continuing partnership with MESA, as well as the many other schools that we are working with. The chance to work with the best and brightest young students is one of the best parts of our jobs.