Cracker-Barrel 2: "Employment Support for Your Members: What Can You Do-What Can IEEE-USA Do?"

This session was moderated by Peggy Hutcheson and had around 75 attendees. Surprisingly, they started right on time; 7:00 pm on the dot.

The purpose of the session was to engage the audience in discussion of how IEEE can help with employment and career support for members and to get feedback.

She posed the following questions to the audience for responses:

Q: If there no obstacles, what would we do for unemployed and underemployed members?

Q: What can we do that is genuinely novel – not done before?

Q: What new combination of products and services can we offer?

Q: What are we already doing that can be improved upon?
Q: What are we doing that should be left behind?

Answers varied from network/collaborating with employers to help/support members in self employment.

She ended the session with an activity. The moderator surveyed audience via note cards for one thing from the discussion that we would recommend that IEEE do. We passed cards around a few times and rated them. The top answer was to organize/streamline the website, product and services.

This session was very informative and the audience was very engaged. Now it’s time to take these suggestions and make things happen.