Grooming the talent | An innovative program in The County prepares young professionals for career and civic advances
Photo/Whit Richardson
Chris Maple, an analyst at MMG Insurance and a student at the Young Professionals Institute, fields questions during a mock press conference
The reporters have their notebooks out. The camera is rolling. Chris Maple, dressed in a dark suit with slicked-back hair, stands beside a wooden podium ready to field questions from the press.
Maple, who represents Talent Aroostook, a professional recruitment firm focused on attracting youth to The County, has just given a short statement in response to negative comments made by a successful Aroostook County native about professional opportunities in The County. Maple’s job is to point out where this naysayer is wrong and to highlight what The County has to offer its young professionals.
The questions start coming.
“Why did he make those comments?” one reporter asks.
“Did his comments warrant a press conference?” another one chimes in.
Maple clasps his hands behind his back, then he brings them forward and sticks them in his pockets. Maple answers the questions one after another. In a few moments he takes his hands out and clasps them behind his back again. He explains that The County offers plenty of opportunities for young people, from the abundance of outdoor activities to the inexpensive cost of living. He, for instance, returned to The County after spending six years going to school and working in Boston.
Sometimes he parries a question with one of his own. “A better question we should be asking ourselves is ‘Are there good opportunities for me here in Aroostook County?’” he says. “I think for a lot of people the answer is a resounding ‘Yes’.”
After a minute, the journalists have no more questions and the camera stops filming. Maple thanks the audience and leaves the room.
Instead of returning to an office, however, he returns to a classroom, where he commiserates with fellow students about his performance. The press conference, in fact, has been staged, the reporters simply volunteering their time to lend authenticity, Talent Aroostook a figment of the imagination, the camera rolling to provide the object of later scrutiny.
Maple and 15 classmates are enrolled in the Young Professionals Institute, a professional development program launched by the University of Maine at Presque Isle and Momentum Aroostook, and sponsored by MMG Insurance. The program, which started in 2008, finished its second session last month. Employers like MMG spend $100 per employee to send them to the eight-week course, which is designed for employees aged between 20 and 40 who work in the government, nonprofit or for-profit world.
In a county sensitive to the issue of youth out-migration, a program like YPI helps strengthen the work force by building connections in the community and fostering the development of future business and civic leaders.
“We all see this as a way to build skills and encourage this younger generation of professionals to stay in the area,” says Clare Exner, a business professor at UMPI and one of designers of YPI.
Sharpening skills
After the students, who come to Presque Isle from as far as Houlton and Limestone, finish their faux press conferences, everyone gathers for a debriefing in the classroom, which has three sets of clustered desks, a dry erase board and a green, leopard-print painting on one wall. Don Zillman, president of UMPI, begins by calling the exercise “edgy and challenging.” “I was delighted at the different approaches,” he says.
The embedded journalists say they were all impressed with the students’ performances. In their work reporting the news of northern Maine, they seek facts, but also some emotion around those facts. “We always look for feeling, not just sound bites,” says Shawn Cunningham, a reporter for WAGM 8 in Presque Isle.
Marie Strouse, a financial analyst at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service office in Limestone who is enrolled in the program, says the advice she would take away from the role-playing exercise is to lead the conversation, rather than being led by someone else. “I’ll remember that,” she says. “Take a moment to compose yourself and answer the question in a way that’s more beneficial to you.”
Sharpening skills like dealing with the press is exactly the mission of YPI. It’s those types of skills that aren’t necessarily taught in college that the program is designed to address, Zillman says. Besides how to work with the media, the program addresses important leadership skills like how to shape and deliver an oral presentation, how to write concise and successful proposals, how to run meetings and even etiquette for formal dinner occasions. Zillman says the hands-on approach is by design. “Our goal is to further connect and strengthen one of The County’s greatest assets, its young professional community,” he says.
“Thinking out of the box is one of those skills I learned most from the class,” says Margo Dyer, an assistant in the human resources department at MMG who took the inaugural class in 2008. “Don’t just focus on the present, but focus two, three steps away from the present and be more prepared going into situations.”
One situation that Dyer, 38, finds herself much more prepared for are formal dinners at business events. Each year the YPI ends with a dinner and the final topic of study is etiquette, from understanding different fork functions to where to put your napkin. “Those types of things you sort of took for granted,” Dyer says. “You never learned them, no one taught you them.”
Dyer recently attended an annual meeting of the United Way of Aroostook County and was able to explain to others at the table how many glasses are supposed to be part of a table setting. “It was a great topic of conversation,” Dyer says.
Matt McHatten, senior vice president at MMG, says the YPI offers MMG employees an accessible opportunity because it’s offered one night a week and otherwise not available in The County. “There’s an awful lot of practical skills that young professionals don’t necessarily get exposed to or the opportunity to refine,” he says.
Maple, the hand-clasping speaker in the press conference exercise, is a program analyst at MMG. He says the program is an opportunity to gain skills he knows will be useful in his future at the 130-person insurance company. “[MMG] sent me here because I need to develop the skills they knew I’d learn here,” he says. “It’s easy to focus on your job and not focus on skills that are necessary for the future.”
Alumna Dyer says the networking was one of the best things about the program, adding that she feels much more connected with the business community in Aroostook County now. “There are other individuals who have unique skills who I know I can pick up the phone and call and bend their ear on certain situations.”
The students have the opportunity to network with more than just each other. Zillman and Exner designed the program so that seasoned professionals from the community visit the class and share their experiences, from Kris Doody, CEO of Cary Medical Center in Caribou, to Brian Hamel, an economic development consultant and former president and CEO of the Loring Development Authority. “Hearing how different executives handle different situations, with public speaking, writing proposals ... you couldn’t buy those,” Dyer says. “Those are priceless.”
A town-gown connection
The program has its roots in Zillman’s arrival at University of Maine at Presque Isle. After he took over as president of UMPI in September 2006, he began investigating how the university could boost its relevance in the community. In the spring of 2007, Zillman hit the circuit, speaking with business owners about how the university could better serve the community. One thing was clear, he says — businesses wanted more professional development opportunities for their younger staff members.
Zillman and Exner began to design a program to address the community’s needs. The program, YPI, turned out to dovetail perfectly with the work Momentum Aroostook, the county’s young professionals networking group, was doing, McHatten says.
Not only does the YPI help train professionals in the area, but McHatten says the program can be a recruitment tool to attract employees from outside The County. “To perpetuate and grow business in Maine, we need additional talent, not only developed here, but brought in,” he says.
Zillman says the team is already discussing plans for the third YPI that will be held next spring. The class is about the right size, Zillman says, so there’s no plan to expand it unless there is more interest than one class can handle. In that case, Zillman says there are enough committed professionals and alumni in the community to set up a second program.
So far there have been no inquiries about replicating the program elsewhere, but Zillman says it’s a simple public-private partnership that pays great dividends. “This is serious stuff,” Zillman says. “It’s not just a social, let’s-have-good-wine-and-cheese-and-get-together-and-get-to-know-each-other RealizeME activity. No reason it can’t be replicated in all sorts of other places.”
Whit Richardson, Mainebiz new media editor, can be reached at wrichardson@mainebiz.biz.
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