It has now been three years since I began working on TalentEgg. I came in “guns blazing,” with strong opinions on everything from resumés to the value of an arts degree to the campus recruitment process as a whole.

One major lesson that I’ve learned over the past three years is the value and/or importance of being able to separate your personal convictions from your business goals. In most cases, I’m happy (and feel lucky) to say that TalentEgg as a company allows for a lot of intersections, i.e., the things I believe in are naturally executed through what we do at TalentEgg.

However, in other cases, this isn’t possible. For example, my belief in the value of an arts and sciences education. Or perhaps, more accurately, my belief that the value of a business education is grossly overestimated/overcompensated. Especially in business, too many employers let students’ majors dictate their hireability.

An article was published on the Career Incubator (our online magazine) today talking about how you can get a job in marketing without a marketing degree. It was generally well received, but it also started an intense debate between me and Zaki Zaheer (@zakizaheer), a York University marketing student and Marketing Director/co-founder of Water Creative, on Twitter about whether it’s possible for someone without a marketing degree to have a successful career in marketing.

Zaheer says he believes that in order to be a competent marketing professional, you must have a degree in marketing:

“how much do [non-marketing-majors] know in practice about the implementation of CRM – properly and customer retention etc. and ofcourse the development of a marketing strategy/ies and segmentations market research and the analysis of it.”

This, along with many other things he said during our conversation, truly blew my mind. Although certain professions, such as accounting, engineering, medicine, etc., require testing and certification, the general sphere of marketing and business are not professions and require no certification at all.

Is it possible that people still believe that knowledge such as “developing a marketing strategy” or “segmenting a market” is rocket science, whose complexity can only be deciphered by someone who is formally educated in business?

Most smart, hard-working people can be successful in business if they want to be, if they make the right choices, if they connect and collaborate with the right people, if they demonstrate that they’re committed to success. At the entry-level, an arts grad with the right on-the-job training (through internships and graduate training programs) is better prepared to succeed in the business world than a business grad with no work experience at all.

I know from my own experience running TalentEgg that you don’t need a business or marketing degree to be successful in this industry. None of the core team members at TalentEgg has a business degree. We’re all arts and science grads (two economics, one psychology and one journalism) and we’ve figured out how to successfully market our products and services just fine through research, trial and error, and common sense.

After three years of working in and on the business of TalentEgg, I sometimes find myself very far away from the Lauren who started with fierce determination not only to build a great company, but to change campus recruitment as a whole. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve become a bit complacent on issues that I used to be really passionate about in order to focus on the day-to-day execution of TalentEgg: marketing, sales, business strategy, accounting, human resources and more. (Surprise! I didn’t go to school for any of those either.)

So, thank you, Zaki Zaheer, for reigniting my passion to continue to fight to give smart, ambitious, capable students the chance they deserve to connect and be recruited by top employers, regardless of their degree title.

Ironically, I first heard about this press release via Twitter – ‘Social Recruiting’ Jumps by 11 Percent as Cost-Conscious Employers Pursue Top Graduates Online

Here’s what it says:

“[students] will also need to be ready to engage with employers on-line, as cost-conscious recruiters turn to peer networks to reach hyper-connected graduates. “Canadian recruiters will visit fewer campuses this year, as they increasingly turn to popular social media websites, like Linked In, Facebook and You Tube to find their hires.” says CACEE Executive Director, Paul D. Smith, “Surprisingly, it’s the professional recruiters who are changing how they reach out to graduates – not the other way around.”

The release further points out that 34% of employers turned to social media to recruit students in 2009/2010.

A few questions that come to mind for me: For one, what kind of employers are represented in this survey? While we don’t formally poll employers, the team at TalentEgg engages with hundreds of employers every week. While there are surely many employers leveraging social media, a vast majority favour the tried and true methods of on-campus relationships (with career centres, department heads, etc).

Secondly, what does ‘social media’ mean? Is it Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn? If yes, and in the case that employers like Mobilicity (quoted in the article) are using these tools exclusive of other means, then they are certainly missing Canada’s top young talent.

I speak and interact with current students all the time, and the team at TalentEgg is actively engaged with Gen-Yers every day through our website. We know a thing or two about top young talent. And how does that talent find their jobs?

Through trusted resources. Referrals from friends, referrals from trusted media (like google).

We’ve been running a poll on the TalentEgg.ca homepage for the past month asking our audience how they heard about TalentEgg. 30% come from google,30% from referrals from trusted influencers (parents, teachers, etc), and 15% from career centres. All of these referrers are contextually aligned – and this is why employers that use TalentEgg have so much success.

If you ask me, instead of focussing on interrupting students through out-of-context advertising and placement on social media networks designed for SOCIALIZING, and which are not actively used yet by students, employers should focus on being visible and accessible where it really counts – among key influencers and trusted media.

Today I uncovered yet another fantastic part about being an entrepreneur. Office dogs.

It has been so great having Lily around the office… Alerting us to the arrival of delivery people, protecting us from other dogs that come to visit, singing along to CHFI 98.1 (radio) with her trademark howl, and much, much more.

Today, Lily’s new best friend arrived, and so we now have 2 office dogs. Without further ado, I hereby introduce the TalentEgg community to PANCAKE: