It's tough out there for a recent college graduate. Almost tougher than ever, in fact. 2020 grads are entering the worst job market in over a decade, with lower starting salaries and increased competition for openings amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Suzanne McDonald, the founder of marketing firm Angles and Insights and its subsidiary Newport Interactive Marketing, has launched a potential solution for people entering the job market in the industry she knows best: digital marketing.
McDonald has taken curricula she has developed as an instructor at the University of Rhode Island and Framingham State University, along with programming she's created for interns over the years, and fashioned a fully online, remote course in digital marketing. ROIinU — very short for "return on investment in you" — is a seven-week course that will take students who already have basic skills in writing and communications and teach them digital marketing tools, linking them up with entrepreneurs along the way.
"There’s a gap between what students are learning in school and what skills they need in order to hit the ground running. This course is really designed to fill that gap," McDonald said. "We felt really strongly that now is the right time to launch this. There are smart and motivated students out there who have never used tools like Hootsuite and Buffer because they change so fast. College programs are not able to keep up with the skills that are needed."
The course will require about 10 to 15 hours each week from each student, McDonald said. Each week will focus on a particular component of digital marketing, like storytelling and digital analytics, with the broader theme of content strategy woven throughout.
The curriculum includes multiple group projects as well as work with individual instructors and mentors. McDonald is bringing on several marketing experts from her own networks as instructors throughout the course. The projects are designed to build usable portfolios: Each one will be done for a local nonprofit or social enterprise startup.
Once students complete the course, they receive a certificate and have the option of being placed in a seven-week, part-time internship with a solopreneur or small agency. (These internships will likely be unpaid.) And once students complete their internships, they are guaranteed three interviews each through ROIinU's agency network—a value proposition for participating agencies as well, McDonald said.
"A lot of agencies are having issues finding reliable people, and they would like to scale, but with the work remote, it’s really hard to train somebody," McDonald said. "To have that trust and discipline, it’s going to hopefully unlock some bandwidth for agencies so they can do more for their clients and actually see the economy grow."
ROIinU is now accepting applications for its "beta" cohort, a group of 15 students who will begin the course shortly after Labor Day. The early-bird price, which is available through mid-August, is $850; the full price is $950.
A college degree is not a requirement to enroll in ROIinU, but it will be preferred for students in the first cohort. McDonald plans to determine whether to continue the project based on how much interest ROIinU generates in the coming months.
"We were actually prepared to launch this like, next week, in case there was a lot of demand, but we're still getting the word out," McDonald said. "The course is designed so that by January, you'd hopefully be placed and getting your career started."
