Fellows Expected to Deliver Results

The Arkansas Fellowship program is in full swing for its inaugural cycle, as selected college graduates settle into their positions at high-profile companies throughout the state, and host companies from Northwest Arkansas have high expectations for the recent graduates.

Rather than taking on typical entry-level work, the fellows have been placed in key ancillary roles, where they could have real influence on the course of some of the area’s hottest companies. 

The program aims to help Arkansas retain a larger portion of the talent graduating from the state’s colleges and universities. It fosters two-year employment arrangements between recent graduates, chosen from a pool of applicants for their accomplishments and ambition, and Arkansas-based companies that agree to create a new position for the fellows and pay them $40,000 a year.

“My sense is that we have a lot of really smart folks that come out of our colleges,” said Randy Hurban, owner and CEO of Moxy Ox LLC, “and we want them to contribute to our regional economy, rather than thinking they need to run off to a larger market to get work. They can get it in their back yard.”

This round, 11 fellows were chosen from 80 applicants who were personally interviewed by members of a fellowship board, which included Arkansas startup scene fixtures like Jeff Amerine, the director of technology ventures at the University of Arkansas Technology Licensing Office.

Through the fellowship, graduates are shown the merits of local career opportunities that might otherwise have been overshadowed in their job-search process by well-known national brands with offices in other states.

“At Acumen [Brands Inc.], you can have as great of a work experience and opportunity to learn as you could in Silicon Valley, Portland — anywhere,” said Nicholas Sammer, vice president and general manager of the company.

And the program takes a lot of the legwork out of the hiring process, on both sides.

 

Vetting Process

For Moxy Ox, Acumen and the other Northwest Arkansas host companies — Collective Bias Inc. and DataRank Inc. — the fellowship provides a useful shortcut in the potential employee search and vetting process.

“It’s difficult for us to find those graduates who don’t just have a good GPA, but those that have a natural curiosity and an interest in entrepreneurship and are really invested in what they do,” said Ryan Frazier, DataRank CEO and co-founder. “The program allows direct access to those people.”

Thus, the fellowship encourages local businesses to recruit from local schools.

“Our participation shows we are committed to developing the talent in this area. It shows our commitment to doing business in Northwest Arkansas,” Sammer said.

But it is more than a symbolic gesture. The employers expect these fellows to deliver.

Jacob Moore, who came from John Brown University in Siloam Springs, is tasked with revamping Acumen’s business plan for men’s wear on CountryOutfitter.com.

“We’ve given him a real business problem, and we’re expecting some real results,” Sammer said. “The traditional Western category is primarily men’s, but our business has exploded around the female customer. There is a huge amount of growth available to us in the men’s category and I would consider Jacob’s project extremely impactful.

“It’s an enormous opportunity for us,” he said.

 

Learning the Ropes

Moore will start on that project mid-July, but in the meantime, since he started on June 16, he has shadowed staff members in different facets of the company in order to familiarize himself with how it all works.

Collective Bias has also taken the approach of giving its fellow a taste of each department, but on a longer timetable.

Maggie Good, a recent graduate of Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, will spend 4-6 weeks in each department of the company during the first year of her fellowship and the second year will be spent in one particular department, depending on where her strengths lie and also the agency’s needs at the time, said Amy Callahan, co-founder and chief client officer.

Other host companies are using the fellow to fill an already identified gap in their operations.

Moxy Ox hired Arkansas fellow Brandi Mikula from the University of Central Arkansas in Conway to work in sales and marketing, and she has already been thrown into the mix, meeting with customers within the first week of the job, Hurban said.

DataRank’s Will Gilbrech, who came to the firm from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, is heading up the sales development team, a newly formed department which researches and seeks out potential clients for the Fayetteville startup.

“We didn’t have anyone doing it before Will joined full time. It was a big hole that we needed filled and really needed someone who could take ownership of the process and build a team around it,” Frazier said.

And Gilbrech, 22, does not mind having the responsibility.

“At a larger corporation, I might be part of a 30-man team,” Gilbrech said.

But at DataRank, he added, he has the opportunity to impact Fortune 500 companies. “Here, you’re important, no matter who you are.”

 

Startup Standard

Acumen touts a similar philosophy of employee empowerment.

The area’s leading startups have a strong focus on hiring the right staff, mainly because the startup business model typically requires each team member be a self-starter who is trusted to make choices on behalf of the company.

“Once employees show the aptitude and ability to make decisions, and if they are a cultural fit, we just give them the training and skills and let them go at it,” Sammer said.

For this quality vs. quantity staffing strategy, the fellowship is well-suited.

Several of the fellows have been part of all-star entrepreneurial teams in college, finishing in the finals for the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup. Their accolades include prestigious internships and acknowledgement from entities like the Collegiate Effie Awards, but in most cases it came down to a personality fit.

One of the biggest draws of the fellow chosen to work for Acumen was his high energy and capacity for risk-taking — shown by his joining the program — which are the nuts and bolts of what the company stands for, said Glenda Kelderman, human resources director. “We are an entrepreneurial company and have a heart for anything that promotes the entrepreneurial spirit.”

Sammer said he presumes a lot of people who work at Acumen will, at some point, start their own business. He called it a “flywheel effect” from working in an environment that encourages trying new things, risk-taking and creativity.

In fact, each host company reports a similar attitude from its staff.

“When they start something on their own, as I know Maggie [the Collective Bias fellow] intends to do, we want them to do it here in Arkansas,” Callahan said.

 

Talent Pipeline

It was not much of a stretch for Collective Bias to create a new position for the program. The company was listed by Forbes as one of America’s most promising companies for 2014, partly because of its fast growth both in sales and hiring.

To Acumen, it was also business as usual, Kelderman said.

The agency has grown from 100 employees when Kelderman started one year ago to 200 now. And when a talented person who is a cultural fit comes along, the company hires them.

“Some skillsets are difficult to find in NWA,” Sammer said. “We are always looking for a tap into a constant stream of up-and-coming talent.”

And it looks like the Arkansas Fellowship could feed into that stream for Acumen and other local companies for years to come. The intention is to match a new group of fellows and host companies each spring, with a potential for an increase in participation each year.

The program is modeled after the Orr Fellowship in Indiana, which started with five fellows in 2002 and now has 59 current fellows, an estimated 80 percent of whom will stay in Indiana, according to its website.

“The buzz started going right after the fellows were announced,” Callahan said. “People wanted to know how we got involved in it. I imagine next year is going to be very different.

“We were fortunate to get in on it the first year.”