Innovation Chamber: Increasing the region’s population through college students (Part 2 of 3)

This is a post that builds off of my first post on migration – the Silicon Prairie needs to grow. I tell people that we need to focus on college students, and the immediate response is that I don’t want to hire college students for my business. And many college students are ultimately not ready…

About the Author: Tom Chapman, director of entrepreneurship and innovation for the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, is a regular guest contributor to Silicon Prairie News. In his series, Innovation Chamber: A Look Outside the Chamber for Innovation, Chapman draws on his professional experiences to lend advice, share observations and provide milestones to the entrepreneurial community in the Silicon Prairie.

At the Chamber, Chapman has worked with hundreds of local (and some non-local) new ventures, many very large companies seeking innovation advice and a host of funders looking for deals. To learn more about Chapman, see our introductory post.

Contact Chapman at tchapman@omahachamber.org.

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University of Nebraska-Lincoln students at a Husker football game. Photo by Kiley via Flickr.

This is a post that builds off of my first post on migration – the Silicon Prairie needs to grow. I tell people that we need to focus on college students, and the immediate response is that I don’t want to hire college students for my business. And many college students are ultimately not ready to work in a new startup or in a key position. However, even if that is the case, we should still focus on them. College students are unique in that they are 1) transient, 2) digitally scaled and 3) socially connected in a unique way compared to virtually every other group.

First, unlike most people, many college students have already decided that they are going to leave their current home market. Some people are making this decision because they want to and some are making this decision because they must. Consider large college towns, such as Iowa City, Champaign-Urbana, Manhattan, Kan., and Columbia, Mo. These places simply do not have enough jobs to support the number of graduates from their respective schools. The Absorption Percentage number – equal to 20 percent of university size divided by metropolitan statistical area (MSA) population – ranges from .9%- 21.8% in the Big 10 and Big 12 schools that we measured. Essentially, this number represents the number of college graduates that come into the market versus the total population of workers. Thus, a growth rate of this percentage would be necessary for all of the graduates to find jobs in any given year. Very few cities manage to grow at 1 percent per year and no city in this list has sustainably grown at 2 precent per year or above – other than Austin, Texas. Thus, many of the students in virtually all of these locations are moving somewhere.

Chart by Tom Chapman

A surprising few move to Omaha. Here is the data from Big 10 and Big 12 schools.

Graph by Tom Chapman

Graph by Tom Chapman

Omaha needs to improve its reputation and ultimately its migration from these markets simply because these are places that are ripe for migration. Moreover, by improving its reputation it helps solve the information gap problem that leads to both to the echo problem and that is at the heart of the empty stare problem. If more college students that move to Omaha, Chicago, Minneapolis, or stay in their home market are favorably disposed to Omaha – then recruiting people when they are 30 gets a lot easier because they are already favorably disposed and we can offer them the opportunities that they want. So, while we want college graduates to choose Omaha – improving the reputation of Omaha by recruiting college graduates is actually a longer term strategy than simply getting them within six months of graduation.

Second and third, college students represent a unique social network as their networks include people from all over the country (either as high school students who went away to school or students that came to their campus from other parts of the country) in one digital step on Facebook, Twitter or the next social platform. And this group uses those platforms in a way that is more mainstream across the campuses – than in many companies or communities. Thus, being widely, digitally connected is the norm – rather than the exception. And these vast digital and social connections create a viral potential unlike many other social networks. Moreover, these networks use Facebook and Twitter but are not dependent on them – but are dynamic and a mechanism for actually establishing credibility is to be out front of the next thing and tagging students in ways that other cities and communities are not.

Thus, the impact of this group to create a viral change in reputation for a place is unique. So, if for example, Omaha becomes a “cool” city on every Big 10 campus – the impact is felt internationally because of the diverse networks represented AND CONNECTED in these places. There is no other social network nexus point as powerful as a college campus. Thus, achieving reputational change should start there. The hard part about this equation is how.

Here are some things that I think are true about how to market to tell the Silicon Prairie story to college students:

  1. Be authentic – tell the real story – iliveinomaha.com, Silicon Prairie News, etc.
  2. Be non-traditional – foursquare, Gowalla, SCVNGR, Turntable.fm, etc. Provide strong incentives to do stuff and get engaged without necessarily being “sold” on the city.
  3. And traditional – career fairs and brochures are useful as part of an overall plan, but these tactics are not a plan unto themselves.
  4. Identify and recruit people that have a disproportionate impact – connectors, mavens and entrepreneurs. So, examples of key targets are college newspaper editors, fraternity and sorority leaders, athletes and people already starting companies on campus.
  5. Own nearby schools like Iowa State, Nebraska-Lincoln, Nebraska-Kearney, South Dakota, etc. – where Omaha is a familiar place already and the ultimate sale is a little easier.
  6. Partner with really cool companies and people to tell their stories. While its fantastic that we have great companies like ConAgra and Mutual of Omaha here – sometimes it’s better to tell their stories and leverage their global brands rather than simply to recruit to the companies. Chef Boyrdee and Marlin Perkins could rise again and be impactful for this community to tell our story to a new generation.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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