Here’s an interesting concept from blog reader Todd Palmer, who wants reader opinions as to whether his concept can work in the marketplace; and he also needs a good domain name.
Todd’s idea:
The site would function as a recruiting network, giving students and corporations an entirely new dimension of access to one another. Corporations would post tasks, real or simulated, for students to work on. These tasks would be organized by subject area or industry, such as computer science, mechanical engineering, journalism, marketing, web design, etc.
Already Been Blegged
Here’s what Freakonomics readers have been blegging for lately.
Students would create individual or team profiles and work on selected tasks, submitting their completed work in the form of text, images, videos, power point, audio, or any other format that can be uploaded. Companies will have the ability to rate submitted work, allowing students to accumulate a “work score.”
The benefit for the corporation would be their new outlet to recruit students who have a proven ability to excel at the type of assignment they will be faced with on the job.
They will also find that they have a large audience of well-educated students who are quite motivated to impress them with their submissions. This will give them the power to bleg. They will be able to post tasks that they are unable or unwilling to pay a single individual to do, and they will get at least a few surprisingly high-quality submissions due to the nature and size of their audience. They will be able to tap into the creative minds of the masses at their will.
The students will be able to showcase their skills while still in school full time, and they will also be able to build a work portfolio that can be integrated into their resume. Each top-notch project that they complete for a corporation will get them noticed, and make them more likely to be hired upon graduation. This format could even allow for students to go pro early, meaning they could get recruited while still in school and get a jump on their careers while their new employers pay for the remainder of their education.
This new site could be to summer internships what online education has become to on-campus education. It would give students exposure to real-world scenarios and assignments without the face-to-face interaction of an internship.
Todd asks the following questions:
– Would corporations and students spend the time and effort to participate in such a site?
– If all parties participated in the site as hoped, would it create a win/win situation for companies and students?
– Could it have a large enough impact to alter the traditional college curriculum by encouraging the teaching of material more relevant to the real world?
– What could be added to make the site more useful to all parties?
– What would a good domain name be?
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Are you kidding?
Only a web-based extension of the “unpaid internship” or free labor. Even apprentices under the feudal system were paid in food.
Solid idea! It might also be important to have a system for students to rate the companies (like buyers rating sellers in online marketplaces). That way, the companies that give adequate consideration and feedback on submitted work will have more favorable ratings than companies that merely abuse the free student labor!
Domain names that don’t currently have any serious content:
http://www.marketyourself.com/
http://www.joblog.com
http://www.job-log.com
(this is why I’m not in marketing)
What an idiotic idea… Like not too many people work almost for nothing or even free. Corporate America and bloodthirsty capitalists want you to solve their problems for free? Well go to McKinsey & Co., Deloitte Consulting, BCG… or ask law firms to solve your problems for free…
Another point: Companies ask and insist to know how much you are being paid by another employer. It is not their f*6&n business. It is your personal matter and do NOT tell them. Don’t lie – just decline to tell them. It never works for an individual who is competing in a labor market – but only for a corporation who tries to underpay you. If everyone show a bit of a backbone – we are all better off.
What’s the proposal regarding ownership of IP rights in the work product?
If the students have to assign rights to all submissions, whether used or not, they’re giving up rights to derivative works (refinements or improvements used for other bleggers). If only the “winning” student has to assign rights, what’s to stop her from requiring payment at that point in the process (or scaring off a possible user with that threat)?
Examples of real world assignments would be very valuable for students. When I graduated college I found the real corporate world work environment to be very different than what I was led to expect in classes.
Not sure how helpful this would be to most businesses unless for publicity reasons. Most completed work is not judged on merit, but on who submitted them. The efforts that get pushed forward are not necessarily the best ideas, but instead who has the most political capital to push them to completion. I can see there being real benefit to small businesses who cannot afford high priced consultants, and it could be helpful to larger corporations if they fully commit to program participation.
I think there could definitely be benefit to the students if not the curriculum. I would hope the course material, especially in business school, could catch up to the real world. At the very least it would be helpful to teach some additional classes on real world concepts in addition to the classics. I would say at least 50% of my education has not been useful in my career.
An online meeting place for video/phone conferences would be very helpful. Tasks change or expand as they progress and the impacts need to be discussed. Also, often a quick meeting can clarify requirements and produce better quality results.
domain: http://www.trialbyfire.com
How about http://www.try-n-buy.com?
Question 1, I don’t think that corporations would a. want to spend the time and b. many firms have sensitive information that they wouldn’t want to give to a given student, or “student” (read: competitior) on the internet.
Question 3, see Northeastern University in Boston
It would also (potentially) require a lot time on the students behalf, which they may not want to give while working, attending class, etc.
Which would mean instructors would have to endorse/require it for projects. As an instructor, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to my students – although we do encourage them to develop portfolios of their work (marketing plans and pieces for marketing students, advertisements for designers, web sites for web designers, etc). This would seem too much like a way for companies to get free work, without having to provide anything in return.
As for part 3 – which in my opinion is the more important aspect, I cannot say. I’ve met too many instructors/professors who were happy teaching their way, and haven’t updated books or lesson plans in years because they feel like they can reuse the same info as much as they want. (They are not measured on the success of their students after they leave the class.) The good instructors were changing curriculum yearly or even by the term. However, there is little reward for instructors to do this, so quite often they burn out/stop. To get instructors to teach more relevant work – there needs to be a reward for them to do so.