Now, the Cincinnati-based bank is running a contest until July to help college students entering the job market. Anyone nationwide, and of any age, can apply, said Larry Magnesen, senior vice president and director of corporate communications for Fifth Third.
“While it’s aimed to people who may have graduated this year… we know there are people who graduated three, four, five years ago who remain unemployed, underemployed,” Magnesen said.
“We’re mainly concerned about people who made a very significant dollar investment for their higher education… and now they find themselves facing less than attractive job options with that burden of debt,” he said.
Graduates can enter for one of 1,000 job coaching scholarships during the campaign period, which started May 11 and runs through July 20. Interested participants can enter by Tweeting an answer to the following statement: “Tell us why you deserve free one-on-one job search coaching” with both the #BrandOfYou and #53Enter hashtags.
Additionally, Fifth Third will host a series of one-day Twitter events called “Job Twitterviews” and “TwitterResumes.” On June 23 for Job Twitterviews, the bank will pose a single-question job interview on Twitter and challenge participants to answer with a 30-second video response. During TwitterResume events on June 2 and July 8, job seekers can advertise their personal brands in a single Tweet.
NextJob coaches will be providing feedback to Tweets from participants during the live events, and on those dates, Fifth Third will award some of the job coaching scholarships for the best responses.
Find more information online at www.53.com/BrandOfYou.
The scholarships are valued at about $1,000 worth of services each, representing a total $1 million investment by the bank.
Fifth Third and NextJob have found some people, especially college graduates, are unaware of jobs that exist that would make good use of their skills, and what techniques to use to find jobs that never show up online. A surprising number of graduates don’t know necessarily what they want to do, Magnesen said.
These services can help match job seekers with available positions, and also help develop their personal brand with one-on-one coaching, Magnesen said.
“The best bank customer is one who finds a job,” he said.
Fifth Third isn’t selling any particular product related to the contest, but bank officials do think people might consider the effort when choosing financial services in the future.
“If somebody finds a job six months or a year sooner, it’s going to be worth a lot more than $1,000 in lifetime earnings by launching their career sooner,” he added.
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