Changing the College to Career Landscape

May 12, 2015 |

Last week we had the honor of hosting Koru – winner of Geekwire’s 2015 Startup of the year award!

college to career koru

Koru is an innovative company, transforming the college-to-career landscape with an immersive, experiential learning program designed to help soon-to-be and recent college graduates land meaningful jobs. Participants are connected with high-growth companies, giving them the opportunity to work directly with potential employers while gaining valuable hands-on experience.

The Koru team shared some insight on what they see happening when graduates make the transition from college to career, and how they prep young adults for employment. Koru uses 7 main principles as a base for their preparation. They call them the K7 and their focus skills are as follows:

  • Grit
  • Rigor
  • Impact
  • Teamwork
  • Polish
  • Ownership
  • Curiosity

To pinpoint what employers are looking for Koru reverse engineered what a rock star new hire looks like. What type of teammate do we all appreciate having in the workplace? The ability to adapt to a changing environment. Understanding of the company goals and bottom line. Effective communication in a business environment. Ownership of their actions and the ability to grow using constructive feedback.

There are nearly 5 million open jobs in the market, yet over 50% of college grads are unable to find career work. Many firms are using resume screening software, which only pulls measurable data and often times isn’t indicative of true performance. Studies show that about one-third of these hires, who look to be perfect picks on paper, turn out to be unsuccessful hires.

Koru’s goal is to bridge this gap by teaching students the real-life and soft skills necessary to stand out in the competitive job-seeker market. If you’re interested in taking a look at the program they provide, read more about their mission at joinkoru.com.

Interested in reading more? Check out some additional resources here:

Koru’s interview guide

What job should I do after college?

The rise of the self-reliant young worker.

Let’s talk

Whether you have a specific question, or you’re interested in learning more about how our approach can be tailored to your situation, we’d love to hear from you.