TheLadders Guarantee

Recently, TheLadders.com made waves with a new promotion: if you sign up for their expensive premium job searching service, and you don't find a job, they will refund you your money. We did something similar last year, offering a full refund if someone did not have a job after six months of taking the exam.

Of course, there are strings attached to the Ladders deal (you have to go through the program and complete all the tasks). We at the CBL think this is great and should be extended to career services offices all over the US.

Imagine if traditional college tuition was broken down into academic training and professional training.

Academic training is typical college: classes, dorms, labs, etc...

Professional training is career services: resume review, career advice, interview tips, etc...

Let's say the split is probably 95% academic, 5% career. So for a typical $30,000 a year program, you would allocate $1,500 allocated to career services. At the end of four years, if a student has gone to all the training seminars and advisory groups, and are not employed three months after graduation, they get a check for $6,000.

Seems like a good, market based solution to me.