The Soft Pitch

In a few days, my daughter will be heading back to school along with thousands of other kids here in Arizona. (Yes, I know, seems way too early to me, too. It’s the end of July and already I’m shopping for pencils, a new backpack, and of course the “perfect outfit” for the first day of her sophomore year in high school.) Most of her teachers along the way have done a great job of helping her learn and develop her ability to think. It’s an under appreciated but critical role in our society.

I think it’s the same way with distributors in the technology supply chain. Every year we train and certify thousands of our customers on the latest technology from leading suppliers. Without this knowledge, resellers and technology engineers would be hard- pressed to use the latest technology in the systems and applications they design every day. Last year, Avnet Electronics Marketing broke new ground with X-Fest, a series of design workshops held around the world helping design engineers pull together all the components needed for a solution.  Instead of a component-by-component or even supplier-by-supplier approach, the training focused on true “Across the Board” solutions.  Thousands attended. In some places it was standing room only because it was the only training engineers could get that didn’t focus on just one piece of technology but focused on multiple components and how they worked together.  Bringing together all the different suppliers and technologies into one workshop is something only a distributor can do.

Avnet’s other operating group, Avnet Technology Solutions, just announced the latest step in an innovative training program they introduced two years ago. It’s an “internship” for resellers at a hospital. It’s part of Avnet HealthPath University, a program designed to teach resellers how to think like a healthcare provider when it comes to technology.  It teaches them how hospitals work and the language and concerns unique to the healthcare industry (like the legal requirements of HIPPA that drive humongous needs for data storage). Now, with the internship program, resellers actually get to walk in the shoes of a healthcare provider, spending a week at a hospital shadowing the IT department, meeting hospital administrators and executives to learn first-hand about their challenges and technology needs.

Almost every day, I’m getting an e-mail from one of our businesses announcing a training or certification for this product or that new technology.  We deliver thousands and thousands of hours every year. So maybe I’m too close to it, but seems to me the there’s a great story here about the continuous learning that must occur in the technology industry to get new products to market and adopted by end-users.  What do you think?  Anyone interested in digging deeper, just give me a call: 480-6430-7653.

I’ve heard the talk about Gen Y – about how they act as though they believe they’re privileged or entitled and want to jump right in and take on major responsibilities.  I’ve heard the complaints, which to me at times sound more like whining from those of us who are in the boom years.  Jump right in and take on responsibility? What could possibly be wrong with that? Sounds like an eagerness to make a contribution, and I say bring it on!  I love what I’ve seen of Gen Y employees coming in: they are energetic, bright and full of fresh ideas. If anything, I’ve found they challenge my own thinking and have helped me explore new paths of my own.

Take, for example, our summer interns. Used to be a summer internship meant you got to hang around the “real workers” and maybe stuff envelopes or file. That’s all changed.  These interns WORK. They’ve been recruited from some of the best schools across the country.  Most have some sort of supply chain or technology background.  A few participated in Avnet’s recent Avnet Tech Games. So we sent them through orientation, gave them some training, and put them into real jobs. But most interesting to me is that they are helping us to shape our intern program themselves.  Why? Because they are part of Gen Y, they have great ideas and who better than they can help us understand what it will take to recruit the best of the best of their generation?

Last year, we took their desire to make a contribution from the beginning to heart and designed a program that put them into regular contributing jobs after a short training program.  That class let us know, that as much as they like having a regular job, they also wanted to learn more about how the company functions overall.  So this year we built in more time for them to learn about technology distribution and Avnet in general. Plus, this class of interns will be helping with some community projects. They like to make a contribution, remember?  So participating in a community project is right up their alley – plus it supports Avnet’s value of community involvement. So this summer, in addition to the training classes and their job responsibilities, they will participate in a project for several non-profit community organizations that Avnet supports. Michelle Chung leads this program for Avnet, staying in touch with the students through a blog and guiding them through the 10-week program. She’s a great one to talk to about internship programs and what makes them work for both students and employers.

The best part?  We hired several interns from last year’s program and they’ve jumped right in and are working hard to make a difference. Thank goodness, because we need them for us to stay competitive in the future.