First Jobs Aren't Child's Play

Meakem, who is young enough to remember his own passage into adulthood, has nursed many of FreeMarkets's employees through that process. "It's like the army," he says. "Every private is somebody's kid. It's important to make sure that people are met at the airport when they first arrive in town and that everyone has a party to go to on Saturday night. New hires need to know that they're not just a number."

They also need to brace themselves for culture shock. Even the best jobs rarely offer the same intellectual stimulation and sense of community as college did. And undergraduate institutions often make things worse by raising students' expectations. "Extremely sobering" is how Richard D. Thau, author of "Get It Together by 30" (AMACOM, 1997, with Jay S. Heflin), describes his first job-hunting experience after graduating from Haverford College in 1987. "On Sunday, the commencement speaker said I was one of the smartest people in America. Then, on Monday, I had to take a typing test."

For four years in college, your recruits have been urged to take big risks and to feed their minds. They come to the job ready to see and to conquer. And you're about to disappoint them. Or are you?

The New-Hire Halo

First Chicago makes sure that it doesn't disappoint its recruits. From the start, its First Scholars are told that they're expected to walk on water. The company then devotes time and money to making sure that they can do just that.

The bank started the First Scholar Program more than 30 years ago, and the program remains a model for how to put a halo on your new hires' heads. Each year, the bank recruits about 15 liberal-arts majors -- top students from top-ranked schools. In return for a four-and-a-half-year commitment, First Scholars win a salary of nearly $40,000 ($13,000 more than the average liberal-arts grad makes right out of college). First Chicago also pays tuition for a night-school MBA program at Northwestern or the University of Chicago.

The program is considered to be a fast track to the ninth-floor executive suite. Scholars are immediately set apart from the bank's hundreds of other college hires. They lunch with John McCoy, CEO of Bank One Corp. (First Chicago's parent company), and other top brass, and they meet frequently with senior execs who act as mentors. The bank also assigns one executive, Vice President Janet Leong, 43, the task of doing nothing but shepherd the Scholars' careers. "These people could become our colleagues for life, so it's important that we start their careers off correctly," Leong says.

True, that strategy risks creating a morale-damaging caste system in which the majority of college hires are relegated to the slow track. In fact, some managers complain about Scholars' outsized egos -- although Leong insists that all new recruits eventually enjoy the same opportunities within the bank.

More to the point, without its high-octane program, the bank couldn't hope to lure top talent from international banks and from management-consulting firms. Even the program's title helps feed the sense of elitism that appeals to bright 22-year-olds who otherwise might choose to join, say, McKinsey & Co. It's an overlooked lesson: Job titles matter to young workers more than you'd think they do. "Staff assistant" and "analyst" are what you call cogs in a machine, not people whom you want to feel good about their jobs.

That distinction is especially important in the rental-car industry, where the moniker "entry-level worker" conjures up the image of a polyester-uniformed wretch behind an airport counter. That's why Enterprise calls its college hires "management trainees." "People ask our recruits, 'If you have a college degree, why would you want to take a job renting cars?' " says Judy Stoltz, 33, group training director at Enterprise, who has trained hundreds of rookies. "They have to understand that this isn't just renting cars. It's a management-training program." So, by calling its young hires management trainees, the company signals its aspirations for them.

Tim Hutchins, now 25, shared those aspirations. He put himself through college by operating a forklift at night. After graduation, he interviewed with companies such as PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch -- but none of them offered much growth potential.

Then Hutchins discovered Enterprise. The "management trainee" title pushed a button. For Hutchins, management wasn't something out of a Dilbert cartoon -- it was a goal. "That title said to me that I could advance if I performed well," he says.

His friends, many of whom had won first jobs that paid $35,000 a year (about $10,000 more than the typical Enterprise entry-level position), thought he was nuts. Then he shot the lights out: Within 13 months, he was promoted to assistant branch manager. Including performance bonuses, his salary could top $50,000 this year. "These days, when we sit around drinking beer, my friends realize that I've surpassed a lot of them in both salary and responsibility," he says. In fact, several of Hutchins's friends now work for Enterprise.