Overview
The Fast Starter, Inc Case
“Fast Starter, Inc” has had great success helping undergraduates get a jump on their careers. Their sales proposition is helping clients identify “Skills that Succeed” and by creating specific steps which if followed are “Actions that Accelerate”
“Skills that Succeed” are those skills critical to an early career that help a young new employee differentiate themselves from the pack.
“Actions that Accelerate” are specific steps and timelines the people that take to build “Skills that Succeed”
Fast Starter, Inc’s recommendations are known to follow the SMART goals methodology that has been highly effective to move people forward (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).
Fast Starter, Inc was recently hired by “put your own middle name here” a young undergraduate who is soon going to be making a first position decision. You have been put in charge of working with this client. Your client wants to make the right decision and is willing to build additional skills that will create long term positive outcomes.
Your assignment is to do the necessary research, prepare an excel analysis, and develop an strong client facing presentation with effective and specific recommendations that will move them from an average salary in their chosen field to a higher level salary.
I will go into detail on each of these aspects: The Research, The Excel Analysis, The Presentation. Target completing the Research and Excel Analysis in week 1 of this 2 week module. Then use the 2nd week to develop and refine the presentation.
The Research (Complete in week 1 of this 2 week module)
You are the client, it is your middle name. You will be generating a financial analysis and creating a consulting recommendation for your client (you).
Your researched answers to the following questions will help you make recommendations about “Actions that Accelerate” and “Skills that Succeed”
What is the title of your expected entry level professional position?
What are critical skills necessary to excel in the position?
What are the important software programs used in the position?
What are the relevant certifications used in that field?
Which of these certifications are obtainable at the entry level?
Most certification programs have a path with an entry point accessible with little or no work experience.
What professional memberships are important in that field?
Most professional organizations have student level memberships.
Your answers to the following two questions will help you create your financial analysis
What is the expected starting salary for this position?
What is the range of starting salaries for this position?
There are many good internet sources for you to do this research. For example, there is good information from the bureau of labor Statistics through their Occupational Outlook handbook (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/home.htm) as well as good information from the First Destination Survey put out by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (https://www.naceweb.org/job-market/graduate-outcomes/first-destination/class-of-2022/interactive-dashboard). There are also private information resources such as Salary.com, Payscale.com, glassdoor.com, and many others. You should also use KSU job postings on Handshake to get a reasonable idea of a first position post-graduation.
You must use a minimum of 5 sources to triangulate on this information. As you do your research, fill out the “Fast Starter Research” document and turn it into the Fast Starter Research drop box. This drop box will be due at the end of the first week of this module.
As a research example I am going to direct you first to O*Net: https://www.onetonline.org/. Since we are all management majors, use the Occupation Quick Search and type in ‘Management’. It will show 20 occupations. Click “show all occupations”. Now scroll through and identify one interesting to you. As an example, lets choose 11-2121.00 Human Resources Managers. Now, I know that HR Manager is not an entry level position, so I use ‘Human Resource’ as a search term and find “43-4161.00 Human Resources Assistants, Except Payroll and Timekeeping”, which is more entry level.
What critical skills are necessary to excel?
As you click on Human Resources Assistants, it will take you to the next page with a lot of information about what skills, etc… are needed to be a good Human Resources Assistant. Read through the list and identify skills important to success in that position.
From the information in O*Net for the Human Resources Assistant, I might pick out:
Database software
ERP software
Oral Expression capability
Knowledge of Personnel and Human Resources
Reading Comprehension
At this point, you would have to do additional research to understand what Database or ERP software is commonly used and what certification or training is needed to demonstrate competence. Alternatively, if public speaking is important, you would need to research the best way to get that training and/or how to signal good public speaking skills to hiring managers.
What is the expected starting salary for this position?
At the bottom of the webpage is the section titled “Wages & Employment Trends” Put in Georgia for State Wages and you can get the information for the Median salary for this job, $43,100 (2023). It also shows you that 10% of workers earn $31,830 or less and 10% of workers earn $57,510 or more. The difference between the average and the high end is $14,410 per year ($57,510 - $43,100). That difference will occur every year that person is employed and will be increased by raises.
Lets move to salary.com for additional research. Salary.com has good salary range information (https://www.salary.com/).
Lets open the website and see if we can find a similar position to “Human Resources Assistants”. When I search on Human Resources Assistants, I don’t find much but when I search on Human Resources Assistant I get some good results. Lets look at the “Human Resources Assistant I”. You can use the “Location” drop down to adjust for Atlanta, or elsewhere. I will use Atlanta. The results give us a median salary of $46,135 with a 10% low of $36,925 and a 90% high of $56,295.
Continue to explore salary.com to see what skills and capabilities are needed for this position.
Lets move to the NACE First Destination dashboard for some general research.
To see how this position compares to the entry level salary of college graduates in general, lets take a look at the NACE First Destination dashboard.
For Degree level, select “Bachelors”. To look by Geography, select Region and Southeast. You will see a mean starting salary of $57,819. So, the average salary of a Human Resource Assistant is about $11,684 lower than the general entry level position with a Bachelors degree. ($57,819 - $46,135)
Now lets look at ‘Academic Program’ to narrow down to the business school. Select “Academic Program” and within ‘Discipline’ use ‘Business’. For Major I have selected ’52 Business, Management’ which is a general category. You will see a mean starting salary of $61,970. So, the average salary of a Human Resource Assistant is about $15,835 lower than other entry level business students with bachelor degrees ($61,970 - $46,135).
So, now we have salary range information from multiple sources. It is useful to review multiple sources to see if they are similar. It would also be very useful to examine a few actual job possibilities from Handshake to see what actual salary ranges there are for real job postings.
- Other Internet and KSU library resources
- Bureau of Labor Statistics - Occupational Outlook Handbook
- https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- The National Association of Colleges and Employers: First-Destinations Survey
- https://www.naceweb.org/job-market/graduate-outcomes/first-destination/class-of-2022/interactive-dashboard
Salary.com
https://www1.salary.com/Entry-Level-salaries.html
https://www1.salary.com/Business-Services-industry-Entry-Level-salaries.html
O*Net
Payscale
https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report
https://www.payscale.com/research/US/School=Kennesaw_State_University/Salary
The Excel Analysis (Complete in week 1 of this 2 week module)
When you make this presentation, you need a ‘hook’ to tell the client how important it is going to be to follow your recommendations. Your ‘hook’ is how much more money they will make in their lifetime if they start at a higher initial salary in their first position out of college.
To calculate this number, you are going to need to develop a spreadsheet based upon the information you found about average and high salaries and some understanding of how raises, inflation and savings work.
Your goal is to develop a spreadsheet that estimates the lifetime increase in wealth from starting at a higher initial salary.
The objective you are trying to calculate is the: increase in wealth over the working lifetime in current dollars due to the difference in starting salary.
The way you arrive at this is to calculate the wealth that will be received in the future and discount it at the rate of inflation. Assume inflation is 4%
The Future Dollar calculation is dependent upon:
the number of years the salary difference will be received see “Number of Years”
the investment return on the salary difference received. Assume that the salary difference is invested in the stock market every year at an average annual return of 7%.
We can’t forget that you will receive raises and promotions in the future. Since they are usually a percentage of your current salary, we need to take the impact of them into account. Assume that you receive periodic raises every 5 years and that those raises are on average 10%.
You will create this analysis in an Excel spreadsheet using a step by step process through StudentsExcel. It is important that you understand the meaning of the spreadsheet and that you are not simply following steps.
The Presentation (Complete in week 2)
Limited to 7 minutes.
Voice over power point will not be accepted.
Your screen recording and your camera recording must be running at the same time, like a Zoom call with your camera on.
Must be recorded using KSU’s Kaltura Media Space https://mediaspace.kennesaw.edu/ and submitted to the drop box by a working link. Review the following about sharing a Kaltura link: https://mediaspace.kennesaw.edu/media/Using+Kaltura+and+D2L/1_9m8yhqas
Your presentation should directly address the client (your middle name) and at a minimum include:
1) A strong hook that makes your client want to know what you are about to tell them
2) A brief agenda that lays out the logic of your overall argument.
3 A brief description of your client
3) A brief description of the starting position recommendation and why it fits the client
4) The salary range for a starting position and a supported difference in starting salary that can be expected when starting at a higher level vs the average level.
5) A financial analysis conclusion about the amount of lifetime wealth that would be created by starting at the higher level.
6) Specific recommendations that, if followed, would develop the skills and capabilities (Skills that Succeed) needed to achieve a starting salary higher than average. Use the SMART structure to clearly communication “Actions that Accelerate”. Your recommendations should be thorough. You need to answer the ‘Why’, ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘how much’, ‘when’, etc… questions for your client. If your client must do research based upon your recommendation, your recommendation is not detailed enough.
For example, if you recommend obtaining a specific certification, you must provide the cost, time commitment, link to study resources, link to the certification itself, provide any prerequisites, etc..
Example: The following example is a high quality student presentation of different case analysis. The professionalism of this presentation is worthy of emulation.https://mediaspace.kennesaw.edu/media/Example+Video+Which+Benefit.mp4/1_8fh2zkzz
Presentation success recommendations
Practice your script multiple times so you can generally be off script.
Make eye contact with the camera.
Use your clients name, introduce yourself and thank them for their business
Complete the attached to summarize the research you have done on the entry level position you are focusing on.