Question

Riipen Case Study The Situation:

Riipen’s mission is to end the very real social problem of underemployment. Employment or income as the number 1 reason students list for choosing to attend post-secondary has grown from 50% to 90% since the year 2000 (Source: New America). Disturbingly, nearly 1/2 of university and college grads are underemployed in North America (Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York). We also know now that if a recent graduate starts their careers underemployed, they’re more likely to stay underemployed 5 years (67% likely) and 10 years (50% likely) later (Source: Strada Education, Burning Glass). Lack of relevant experience is listed as one of the top three reasons why recent grads are rejected from the candidate search. This means first jobs matter. We can no longer rely on a recent graduates first job as the landing pad where they gain the experience to launch their careers. Students need to gain relevant experience throughout their degree to set themselves up for success upon graduation and for the rest of their careers. Riipen aims to solve this problem by bringing the relevant work experience to students right in the classroom where it’s for course credit and doesn’t require them to put off their graduation by taking an internship or co-op. To date, Riipen has enabled 50,000 students at 150+ post-secondary institutions to partake in 1.5 million hours of applied learning with over 10,000 industry partners. Beyond experience, students’ need a way of connecting to the right potential employers and articulating their skills and experience to increase their chance of finding relevant employment. Currently, Riipen solves this challenge by offering a student portfolio where students can collect skill verifications, written recommendations and now even badges for their work that they can market to employers in their network to increase their chances of being hired. Now that we’ve built up global talent pool of industry-vetted student profiles, our organizations want the ability to search through the data base and invite students that have chosen to opt in to gain access to exclusive job opportunities only available to students the can demonstrate experience and skills through Riipen projects. The goal is to a) increase the number of channels that students and employers can connect to make better employment matches b) to increase revenue streams so that Riipen can invest in growing the student, employer, educator, ecosystem and increase access to project-based learning and better employment outcomes for students/companies.

The Ethical Dilemma:

As seen in the scenarios included in the link below, Riipen is debating whether to charge more for this service (let’s call it “Riipen.Recruiter” [play off of linkedin recruiter]) and increase revenue which in turn would allow Riipen to reach more students but may reduce the % of students that get hired through the app in the short term or whether to charge less for the Riipen.Recruiter so that more companies can access and a higher % of students using the platform get hired, however, growth is delayed and Riipen reaches fewer students in the longterm.

Question: You are the Director Technology, develop your own personal position on what you think the company vision should be for the future; Eg. what kind of values and role do you see the firm playing in the next 5 to 10 years? and then answer the following questions as the director of technology.

2. Who are the stakeholders?
3. What is their influence? When preparing this section discuss the other strong, competing interpretations of the situation, who holds these interpretations and what their influence is over the decision. Discuss who’s support in the organization that you might need to obtain support for your recommendation and their influence over the decision.
4. Development of decision criteria and alternatives;
5. Justification of selected alternative. In steps 6 and 7 include identification of the short and long run revenues/costs and positive/negatives value outcomes of your proposal and discuss why it is better than competing proposals. This question is intended to address the “cash value of your proposal in experiential terms”.
6. Implementation: how would you orchestrated a process that can make the values you care about become the truth for your organization?

Answer 1

As the Director of Technology, you need to balance the revenue and growth that are needed for the service to grow, with the possible decrease in placements in the near future. The mission of the organisation is to end or at least reduce the problem of unemployment of college and university graduates. As such, this mission needs to be prioritised at each step, as has been done till now with the student portfolios and applied learning initiatives. However, charging for the service is likely to turn away some users such as broke students (who the service is for) and possibly even some small to medium businesses that use the service because it is free/low-cost and might re-think that if it adds to their hiring costs. Most, if not all, of the users are likely to be highly price-sensitive and this could adversely affect the functioning and the main mission of the organisation. However, you need to upgrade the platform to bring it up to date with the latest ones in the market, else it will not be competitive and will likely not be preferred by its users. You might prefer that the new service be chargeable so the service can be made superior to what it is now, and to offer the best service to your customers.

1. The stakeholders in this case are the students looking for employment options, and the companies looking to hire fresh graduates. Both these groups need to be considered in the making of any decisions, what is good for one might not necessarily be good for the other.

2. The students will want a low-cost, preferably free, platform that they can use to find employment. As they are fresh graduates and unemployed, their spending potential is likely to be nil and this will affect any cost that is applied to the services on this platform. The businesses on the other hand, might have money to spend however are likely to also prefer a low-cost option and turn instead towards spending the money required in hiring experienced workers. One reason for hiring graduates is that they can be contracted at lower salaries than experienced, and having a free platform makes this a very attractive option. Adding a higher cost might deter some companies about hiring graduates here. Conversely, some companies might prefer a paid service as then they can expect more standardised service, upgraded technology, customer care options etc, and these could benefit the graduates by making the service platform itself better to use for everyone involved. As Director of Technology, you know that the best platform would need more money, resources etc. to build and maintain a competitive platform that stands out over others. To attain this you will need the support of the business/hiring organisations group so that they can support the additional costs instead of the unemployed students.

3. Decision criteria and alternatives -  

- will one or both groups of stakeholders be willing to absorb an additional cost to get a job/fill a post.

- can the cost somehow be attained from the group that is least price-sensitive?

- can the cost be repossessed from the student at a later date once he/she acquires a job through the platform?

- can the hiring organisations be charged if/only if they do fill a position from the student pool on this platform, as a way of ensuring no idle costs are acquired, and they are charged only in the event of a successful recruitment?

- is there another party that might want to mitigate these costs - e.g. can universities take the subscriptions for their students for a period of time? say 3 months etc. right after graduation so that the student does not have any initial costs and he/she could potentially find a position within the time period?   

- can the platform upgrade costs be covered elsewhere such as - govt initiatives that seek to help youth find unemployment, IT firms that have corporate responsibility activities and might look at donating/lowering price of required software/hardware for a good cause, partnerships with firms that might want a regular stream of interns for hire from this platform?

4. Selected alternative - The director can reach out to the sales/marketing team to find out if the alternatives listed above can be realised. The director should also look at minimising costs for the upgrade and looking at a lower cost price tag to be attached to the new service. Lower cost will likely not drive away too many users and that would ensure that the business can keep running and expanding but at a slower pace. If the student users are charged a purely nominal fee for what was a free service till last month, say $1 a month for the quarter/6 months, then $2 a month for the second term, and so on then most users will likely take a subscription in the hope that they will land a job sooner rather than later. Consumer sentiment is always looking to minimise costs but at the ultimate outcome of success, so an option to defer the subscription cost or payback when a job offer is made, might also be received well. Business could also be charged a nominal fee to ensure that the students do not bear the full burden of cost - businesses with less than 10,000 employees could pay $1 a month, and between 10,000-50,000 $2 a month and so on. The minimal cost should retain most current users and bring in more new users, and higher volumes will bring in higher revenue. There can also be caveats in the subscription that once a student finds a job, he/she will pay back twice the subscription amount for the next 1/2 years - $2/4 a month. Thus creating a further revenue stream from happy customers who have moved on and are not still using the platform.  

5. The first step to gaining acceptance for your ideas is to ensure that you understand them well and are able to articulate and demonstrate them in verbal and written forms. Verbal communication will allow you to showcase your ideas but a well-presented plan that includes financial success as well is what is needed for any profit-earning company. Create a presentation, or brochures and pass them around. Conduct meetings to get buy-ins from all groups of people so that more understand what you want to do and will help you do it. Having core values that resonate with people - trust, integrity, respect, courage etc. included in your language will go a long way to having them be accepted.