Quintessential Careers delivers!
Note: This speech was delivered by Webmaster Dr. Randall Hansen to the
Stetson University Board of Trustees on February 20, 2003, in recognition of
Dr. Hansen and Quintessential Careers being named a "Stetson Story." Besides
being founder of Quintessential Careers, Dr. Hansen is also a professor of
marketing at Stetson University, DeLand, FL.
Thank you President Lee for that kind introduction. I’m delighted to be here tonight.
Private education is taking a beating because of forces such as the weak economy, state governments
cutting education funding, and even the increase in distance learning programs.
And Stetson University is no exception.
Despite the challenges, though, private education, and especially private education at Stetson
University, is different, better, distinctive. That’s why we need to bring these Stetson Stories to as
many stakeholder groups as possible.
Faculty across this campus are involved in all sorts of activities, sometimes fostered by grants and
faculty development funds -- and believe me, we do appreciate these resources. The freedom and
flexibility faculty have at Stetson to define themselves and their competencies in their quest to achieve
university goals and widespread professional recognition, is what facilitates these innovative programs
and fuels these Stetson Stories.
So my Stetson Story is just one of many that you’ll find across this campus. As employers,
you’ll likely find this one of special interest because it’s about helping people with their college
and career development.
My Stetson Story is about the most comprehensive career development site on the Web,
Quintessential Careers, which I started at Stetson in 1996.
Quintessential Careers is an award-winning career development and job-search tool for all types
of job-seekers at all career levels. We’ve won more than 100 awards and been mentioned in just
about every major job-search book as a key online career resource. We offer tools for teens
through older workers and for women and other under-represented job-seekers. But, we’re not
just about jobs; we also generate significant educational resources -- for college, graduate, and
distance learning.
If you have a question on just about anything related to college, careers, or jobs, you’ll likely find
an article, quiz, tutorial, or other resource on the subject on our site -- we currently provide more than
1,600 pages of content!
We’ve been quoted, reprinted, linked, or recommended by the U.S Department of Labor, USA Today,
and just about every major college and university in the U.S. We get weekly requests from the media for our expertise.
How did Quintessential Careers get started? How did I, as a marketing professor, get involved in career development?
My business and life partner, Katharine Hansen (who serves as Creative Director of Quintessential Careers),
and I published our first book in 1990 -- the first edition of Dynamic Cover Letters. And here, I’d like
to take a moment to acknowledge Kathy, who has contributed so much time, energy, and talent to the
success of my endeavors. She is a gifted thinker, writer, teacher.
I‘ve been researching and developing theories on career development ever since that first
publication. I also discovered the great synergy and connection between marketing and
job-hunting. You, as employers, know that job-seekers must use proven marketing strategies
to market themselves to employers.
Having started Quintessential Careers to help my own students and other Stetson students,
I first took the site online more than six years ago. We were one of the first career-development
sites on the Web. One author labels Quintessential Careers as trailblazing and identifies me
as one of about five Internet pioneers in online career development. I had developed the site
as an extension of what I was teaching in my classrooms. A summer faculty workshop on
Web publishing provided major inspiration. The Stetson server hosted Quintessential Careers
about a year before we moved it to its own domain name and its own server.
From the site’s inception, an unflagging supporter has been my friend, my colleague, my
boss -- Dean Paul Dascher, who has always been there for me -- and who has been one of my
best promoters. Almost anyone who has run into Paul and then sees me invariably asks me
about the success of Quintessential Careers.
Besides serving as an extension of my teaching and my personal mission to empower
people, Quintessential Careers also embodies the qualities of the university’s and the
business school’s mission to help prepare our students to reach their full potential and in
preparation for life and career - as well as for our programs to be worthy of national recognition
What’s the impact on Stetson from Quintessential Careers?
- Rarely does a day go by when some Stetson student, professor, or staff
member is not using the site. Several faculty use the site as a resource in their classes.
- We get emails every week from current students and alumni seeking our advice.
In fact, I have a student, Kristi, who was panicking because she had her first phone
interview yesterday; I sent her to read a few articles we have on how to successfully
navigate phone interviews and then we also did some strategizing via email before the big event.
- About once a month, I get email from an interested high school student.
- And finally, in everything I write and that gets published on Quintessential Careers
and reprinted in numerous publications around the world -- including my weekly career
advice column published Mondays in the Daytona Beach News-Journal -- I am
identified as a marketing professor at Stetson University, thereby raising the visibility of the
university to the broader communities.
The Stetson and Quintessential Careers connection now extends to co-sponsorship
of the annual Real World Panel, an event that brings current students and recent alumni together
to discuss careers, job-hunting, and graduate school. This past fall we hosted eight alumni, who
talked with about 150 of our current students. Many other alumni pledged their support and offered
advice. We’ve enclosed in your packets copies of this year’s program, which includes abundant
real-world advice from recent Stetson graduates.
We also volunteer our time to speak with student groups and conduct workshops here at Stetson.
This year we initiated the Quintessential Art in Business Purchase Award, which provides funds to
purchase a piece of student artwork for permanent display in the Lynn Business Center, a reminder
that the business school springs from the university’s great liberal-arts tradition.
And so, finally, what is the future for Quintessential Careers? Quintessential Careers keeps growing --
both in the content we offer and in the number of visitors to the site. Last month, for example, more than
400,000 people visited the site, And we keep winning awards and national recognition. We are committed
to doing everything we can to empower job-seekers.
Quintessential Careers is an on-going Stetson Story…a great and evolving success story, but just
one story among many on this wonderful campus.
Thanks so much for your time. Thanks for letting me share my story. Thanks for your support of
Stetson University.
Editorial Note: Interested in learning more about Quintessential Careers?
Go to one of these pages for more information about this leading college, career,
and job-search site:
