S5 E5 | CXR Podcast: Steven Rothberg talks scholarships

Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcast for talent acquisition and talent management listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent. We’re glad you’re here.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:21
I’m Chris Hoyt president of CareerXroads, but I’m going to be a little different chair today. Today I’m going to be president of the board for the CXR Foundation. So I am representing the foundation today, which is our nonprofit today with we have industry friend, Steven Rothberg. Steven, you want to give us sort of the escalator pitcher? Who yours for those who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you?

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 0:46
Sure, yeah, no sweat. So first of all, my my beard is not nearly as well qualified to be on this podcast as yours is. So I am the founder and chief visionary officer of College Recruiter, it’s a job search site. For students and recent grads. We believe that every student in recent grad deserves a great career. But we help about 3 million a year.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:08
Wow, that’s a big number. That’s no joke.

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 1:11
Yeah, it’s, you know, every once in a while you do you do one or two good things in life?

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:17
Well, I have to tell you, so you get so if that’s one, then your second one, obviously, is going to be getting involved with the foundation of this nonprofit and the right the scholarship. I don’t know if your wife Faith might disagree. She might think there may be one or two other things in there. But we’ll just focus on this.

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 1:33
Well, I think she would think that the busier I am at work, the better it is. So yeah, she was she was definitely supportive of it.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:41
I love it. That’s great. Well, she’s lovely. And we should have had her on to as well.

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 1:45
Instead,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:47
As well. Look, for those who don’t know, last year, the Foundation did a college scholarship. We did this for the field of TA the idea was for a child or relative of someone within TA to receive a $10,000 scholarship. Awarded directly, obviously to the school and all the fun stuff that goes with that, but to just assist, right, because we know it is college is not cheap. And so this was just one of the ways the foundation thought that they could sort of pitch in and now we’re in round two of this piece. And, Steven, you are on the committee, the selection committee. Yes. For the selecting all of the applications that come in, you want to talk just a little bit about sort of that, how that’s going.

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 2:34
Yeah, sure. So we had a couple of meetings late 2021. Kind of like thinking in my brain. Okay, when I write a check, I think actually, maybe I haven’t even written one yet this year, but what years what number to put down it’s like,

Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:51
I’m just gonna interrupt you. Because in the greenroom when we were when we were just chatting, you said a statement that gave me chills. You said, well, two years ago during COVID

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 3:00
Yeah, it’s yeah, it’s it’s, it’s, it’s, uh, two years ago, is it 20 years ago was 20 minutes, it’s hard to remember what the setting is. But yeah, so there was there were a group of people that, that were invited to be on the committee, I was fortunate enough to be one of them. Basically, our role initially was to sort of take out the or to take the vision of the foundation, they sort of the general, this is what we want to do translate that into more nuts and bolts to have like a series of sort of rules, who exactly would be eligible, what the selection criteria would be? How the process would work, the dates, that type of thing, and even just managing expectations, you know, do we want 10 applications, 100, 1000, 10,000? You know, what, what are we looking for, because that, because that then drives the criteria, the broader you make it the more you publicize it, the more applications you’re going to get. The downside, or one of the downsides to that, of course is then you get a whole bunch of disappointed people. So hopefully, we struck a pretty fair balance.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:08
Yeah, I love that. And I think the call out for this, just to be clear, is that it is offered to people connected to anybody in talent, right? So it’s nephews and nieces. It’s children, or the talent professionals themselves, which I think may have been a little bit overlooked last year. So, So it’s literally anybody in that umbrella or that community of talent, right, that we call family.

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 4:30
Yeah, there was definitely there was a discussion of is this a scholarship just for somebody who is say, in a HR, you know, training class, you know, whether it’s a certification or a degree or something along those lines, is it? If it is does that have to be a bachelor’s degree is an associates okay, what if it’s a Google certification, you know, anything along those lines? And then of course, is it just for that person? What if it’s a spouse, a child, a parent? And, essentially, you know, friends and family? Well, more family. no, you know, the guy that you spilled your coffee on last week on the bus? No, he is not eligible. I know. At least not. But But yeah, I mean, you know, kid, parent, grandparent, somebody along along those lines, if you’re in talent acquisition, clearly, if they’re in talent acquisition, and it’s gonna be, you know, some say it’s gonna be some very meaningful assistance to, to some lucky people. Fortunate

Chris Hoyt, CXR 5:46
Yeah fortunate and I like, so the, the whole point of it is to help, you know, carry a little bit of the weight light and a little bit of that, that financial burden for the TA the family, right, the TA family, but does talk to me a little bit about does the discipline of study or degree come into play there?

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 6:09
Yeah, so the, there has to be like that, that connection, that that family connection to somebody in talent acquisition, right. So you know, a recruiter or an HR manager or an HR generalist, Senior VP of talent acquisition, or somebody that is working for an affiliated organization. So you know, if you work for a job board, or conversational AI company, and ATS something along those lines that is in that’s in the talent acquisition field, you your spouse, your partner, your child, your parent, those are the people that that we’re looking for. And we’ve had a pretty, pretty good response so far yet. I personally haven’t seen any of them yet, because we’re not yet at the deadline. But I know as soon as that deadline hits, my inbox is going to be stuffed. That’s that. That should be interesting.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 7:08
Well, I think I think the last number that I saw is there are now over 400 applications that have been submitted so far. And those of you on the committee, the small but mighty committee have decided to extend that deadline. I think it’s out until February 10. Yeah?

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 7:27
Yeah, yeah. So it’s what is that roughly a week and a half from now, as of the recording date? The hopefully this can be more than a time, I know of a couple of people who have gone through the process, personally. And it is not an onerous process. It is. And we did that as a committee very deliberately, we did not want to have one of those scholarships, where it would take somebody like three hours to go through and provide a ton of information that maybe some people would be uncomfortable sharing. And also it just dissuades people who otherwise would be highly qualified. I mean, heck, if you’re a single parent with three little kids, and you’re trying to get a degree in HR, or whatever it might be, we don’t want to put a three hour process in place, because then that’s probably going to exclude you. So a lot of the people that were looking to help the most are would be the ones that would be the most likely to be shut out of the process if we made it really lengthy.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:29
Yeah, I think so this is one of those things that I think we’re lucky enough to get to be part of that just feels good, right? To be able to be fortunate enough to be able to do this piece that the foundation is set up to, you know, to deliver in this way. I mean, for those who don’t know, the foundation, I think the work sort of really sparked from CXR Care initiative that was done. So when we would do CareerXroads would do live meetings. Anybody that was going to attend the meeting, and anybody that was local to the market that we were going to be in was invited a day early to come out and we would work at a shelter or a food bank, you know, any of these things, donating some of some of our afternoon, right to the local community. It’s all it’s always about community with CareerXroads, whether it’s, you know, the professional community or your home community, that kind of thing. That sort of grew into a passion for helping when the Recruiters Recruiting Recruiters, it’s still hard to say, project came up with so many recruiters that had been displaced due to the pandemic. And the work going on there. That was exciting. That’s really when we formalized I think the foundation and of course now there’s this the excuse me now there’s this scholarship project that is underway in its second year that we’re excited about. The foundation’s also doing a mentor and mentee platform that is up and just about ready to go live. It’s been in pilot for a little bit we’re super excited about that doesn’t cost anybody anything and that is sort of the drive I think of just trying to pitch in and help help with the community.

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 9:52
And you know, one of the things that was really exciting to me too was that this this scholarship, it’s it’s targeted. It’s very logical the community that it’s addressing that talent acquisition community, but it’s recognizing that there are family members, etc, that are very closely tied. So, you know, if you’re in HR, and you’ve got a kid who is going into engineering, this scholarship is absolutely something that that kids should be applying to. Yeah. And just to make sure that we don’t forget, the URL is CXR.Foundation/Scholarship. And if that redirects you to like a Facebook login page, then you’ve done something wrong.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 10:37
Yeah, hopefully, there’s no redirect, I don’t, I don’t think no, you’re raising a good point, Steven, I just like I want to give you a big virtual hug you in the entire car, there’s, there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes to make this look like there’s not a lot of work. And you guys have just really, really leaned in, everyone has volunteered a ton of time, and we just we just really appreciate and love you guys, thank you so much.

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 10:59
Yeah, it you know, it’s, it’s a really, it’s a real pleasure, I’m going to be very excited to see, you know, who benefits from this, maybe you know, maybe they’ll be willing to share their story with us that the difference that that’s baked in their life and those around them, but you know, the the amount of money that’s available for the scholarship can literally fully fund somebodies community college education. You know, if you go to a typical four year school, it is not going to pay for all that. But it is going to make a huge dent in that for anyone. And we are definitely really looking for people from sort of non traditional students, disadvantaged backgrounds, people of color, we want the money to make a difference. For for that individual, somebody who’s got a, you know, full ride at an elite school or whatever, to me, personally, that’s not going to be as compelling as maybe a first generation college student who was raised in a, you know, single family household and has just been listed like living day to day, week to week, and that this might make the difference between him or her going to college or not, this might make the difference between somebody who’s 45 and has been working in retail and now wants to get into, you know, coding, or whatever it might be. or not, that’s, that’s going to, if that kind of person ends up getting selected. Boy, that’s going to be awesome.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 12:39
Yeah, well, and, you know, I’ll share with you we learned this last time, because the questions came up for parents or professionals who might be concerned about how the income comes in that check from the foundation will go directly to the college and it is not taxable income for the individual. So you do not have to worry about not getting the full $10,000 applied to school, you do not have to worry about paying taxes on that as income. It goes straight to the school on behalf you know, for for the student. So if that’s a concern, I know last year that came up and you know, we were kind of scratching our heads going, oh gosh, and actually pretty, pretty easy to figure out you can tell it was our first year last year and sort of playing in that space. But for anybody who might also have those questions or concerns, if you’ve got other questions or concerns you’re anxious about obviously at CXR.foundation, you can sort of bring those up there’s a Contact Us page out there you can you can just shoot a note over I think also um, hopefully I don’t misspeak here I think we’ve got an info@CXR.foundation email address, you can send some stuff there if you’ve got questions about it but the process the application you got to go through the website at CXR.foundation/scholarship.

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 13:47
Yeah, and it literally is is just like a 10 minute kind of a process. So as of the date of this recording people have a week and a half left set aside some time today at two o’clock just you know go and do it get your kid your nephew, your aunt whoever it is. This is the this is not a lottery kind of thing. We’re gonna we’re gonna have like 10 million people applying and your odds of being selected are really small as they would say in 100 games so you know believe me the odds may the odds always be in your favor. Whatever.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 14:22
Hunger Games, that’s where we went. The Hunger Games?

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 14:26
CXR is you know If you aspire to be the Hunger Games then then so be it.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 14:31
Alright Katniss look, I’m really glad you’re on as a as a as a parent who has paid for two kids to finish college. Let me tell you this is free money. You’re crazy if you ignore this if you yourself are going or if or if you’ve got a kid that’s going to school or a family member you’re nuts if you don’t do it, Steven, thank you so much for not just for being on the show and kind of sharing you know another 15 minutes of your life with us but also for all the work you in the entire committee will have to get the rest of them on as well. That go through and do this stuff and stand this up for the community. We Appreciate you, man. Thanks so much.

Steven Rothberg, College Recruiter 15:02
My pleasure. Let’s we’ll get together for a virtual bourbon celebration.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 15:06
When it’s coming up, we got those happy hours. Which reminds me, thank you so much. We’ve got a live podcast, Gerry and myself coming up on February 8, you can do that. I don’t know what we’re going to talk about yet, we haven’t decided. But I will tell you if you haven’t noticed Gerry and I are grown out of beards a little bit, not for any particular reason other than we can. But the idea is maybe we’ll talk about the beards of HR, we don’t know. But anyway, that’s coming up February 8, we’ve got a book club that’s coming up on February 11. And it’s the Taken for Granted podcast that you can be part of that. So you can join that that particular book club that’s kind of going that’s February 11. That’s going to be done in a couple of parts. And then the second part of that that I just mentioned will be on March 4. So those are the next couple of things coming up on the agenda going on. Check them out. If you need help finding any of that or you just can’t remember you didn’t jot it down while you’re on the treadmill. It’s e at CXR.works/events. Thank you everybody. We’ll see you next time.

Announcer 16:00
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