AJ Warner, Co-Founder, TouchdownCareer
AJ Warner is the founder of Touchdown Education selected by CITIC Bank as one of China best educational consulting firms for the last three years. AJ also founded TouchdownCareer in New York City to support Chinese students building their careers in the United States and partners with university career offices to supplement their support for Chinese students seeking US-based internships.
Before founding Touchdown, AJ worked for Deloitte Consulting, where he provided strategic consulting services to Fortune 100 clients. AJ started the Beijing chapter of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) and served as Chapter President from 2016 to 2018. AJ later served on an EO global leadership development committee. AJ also initiated and served as Chapter President of the University of Texas MBA Alumni Association. AJ is the longest-serving board member of the BeijingKids Magazine. In 2018, AJ started podcasting about entrepreneurship in China.
Website: https://www.touchdowncareer.com/
Email: ajwarner@touchdown-international.com
AJ’s direct number: +1 (614) 286-1861
AUTOMATED EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs authors business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service based business faster and easier. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
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[00:00:57] Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. And our guest today is A.J. Warner and he is chief career designer with TouchdownCareer. We're going to learn more about the work he does helping companies find talent through internships. Some interesting work that he's doing on background that he has for those of you that are in the scaling up community. A.J. spoke recently at one of the scaling up conferences in Anaheim. So you may recognize him and may recognize some of the things he's talking about. But we'll have a chance to kind of dig into the some of the things that he spoke about there, really helping companies understand how they can leverage this unique kind of capability, unique access to talent, which can really be helpful. So I'm excited to talk about this. I'm excited to provide some benefit here for to folks looking for good talent. I think that's something we're always looking for, particularly service based companies. But this should be a good conversation with that. A.J., welcome to the program.
[00:01:46] Well, Bruce, thanks for inviting me. I appreciate the opportunity to share what I do with your audience.
[00:01:50] Yeah, yeah. Let's start with background. I know that you've been an entrepreneur. You've been kind of working in the business world in various ways over the years. Part of the yo family yo network as well. Tell us a little bit about know before you got into this. How did you get into business? How did you become an entrepreneur? What was kind of your story that led you to what you're doing today?
[00:02:10] Well, I think being an expert goes all the way back to when I was a paper boy. That's what first introduced me to business. I pushed myself really hard to get a lot of customers. And I really got excited about the idea of being a business person. When I was in college, I was an exchange student in Japan. I had such a great time there. I stayed longer and actually started business, helping different research institutes prepare for presentations overseas. And when I had to come back to finish my undergraduate studies, I actually sold that business. So that was my first exit from a business. Years later, my wife, who's originally from China, twisted my arm and said that she wanted to move back to China. And I made a deal with her that I would be working on a entrepreneurialism adventure while we were in China. So we set up a company called Touchdown, which at that time was in the application consulting field, and we were helping MBA students apply to the top MBA programs and it with business master's programs. And five years ago. A lot of our clients came asking for help to find internships, and that's what allowed us to sort of extend our service. So going beyond just application to what the students were really coming to America for, which was to have great careers. And so we started touchdown career back in 2015.
[00:03:23] Awesome. And what it do, I guess, where did you find the focus? I mean, in terms of the types of companies, the type of interns.
[00:03:30] You know, lots of different internships out there for all sorts of different kinds of companies. What was kind of the process for you to figure out where you could really kind of play a role in this market?
[00:03:38] Well, we found that a lot of small and medium sized businesses don't necessarily have existing internship programs, but they definitely have needs for talented people. And so when we were talking with students, understanding clearly what they were looking for, which was related to business finance, data analytics, we began to focus on small, medium sized business needs and began working with these companies to identify their needs and then introduce interns with the right talent, either quantitative data, financial that would be able to come on board and create immediate value for those firms.
[00:04:11] Yeah, I think it's you know, if you're a big company like G.E. or something that you like, you have the wherewithal and the process and the the budgets to kind of put together your own internship programs and have, you know, set up the systems and the interviews in the process. But if your, you know, 50 million dollar company, you probably don't have, you know, maybe you have some resources, but certainly not the experience and the kind of capabilities to put together a real top notch intern service. So it really it's this small and mid-sized company market that you focused on. Give me some parameters for that. What typically are the companies that that do best or that you you help best in terms of size of company number of people situation?
[00:04:47] Typically, companies between 25 and 200 people are sweetspot for us because they need people. They're in the process of growing a lot of these companies. So they're constantly on the outlook for great talent. And we're bringing people with the latest skills, very quantitative, not afraid of numbers who can quickly learn different programming languages as needed. And we identify exactly what the company needs and then we filter out the right students to introduce to the company. So we work with the H.R. directly and try to make it as easy as possible for them to get the right talent. And then we help facilitate. Everything with the interviews and the onboarding, so we make everything easier for the companies.
[00:05:25] And what is that kind of assessment process look like when you when you speak with a company? What questions are you asking? What sort of parameters are you looking to define with a company in terms of the type of talent they're looking for?
[00:05:36] Well, first we're looking. Is it going to be they just need someone for the summer or they're looking for someone who they can have for three to six months and evaluate for a longer term position? That's the first thing where he wants it. Just purely an internship or is maybe an internship to hire opportunity. Then we identify what skill sets are they? Technical skills is gonna be like a data position where Python in our programming is critical or is it a financial position and what type of financial skill sets they're looking for. So we dig deep into what they're looking for for each position, and then that allows my team to then go through all the students that we're coaching and identify two or three candidates that best match those requirements.
[00:06:16] Crews do deal with any of the kind of cultural fit aspects. I mean, I could see on one hand that sort of the benefit of having an internship program is you get people from different cultures and you get kind of, you know, a certain amount of diversity in terms of thinking style and backgrounds. And there's some real benefit to that. You know, on the other side or on the same way, you also want to make sure it's gonna be a reasonably good fit. How, I guess, how have you kind of navigated that sort of cultural but general sort of business culture? Is this the right place for this particular person?
[00:06:46] I totally agree, because our goal is not just to have a one time place and we want to build a relationship with the companies that we support. So we want to be a talent channel. So fit is really important. One of the things about our process is that we sit down with the students for two to three hours. We call it a first meeting and really get to know the students, understand what they're looking for, help them get clear about what opportunities are in front of them. This allows us to evaluate their English, evaluate their cultural skills. But these students are all studying at U.S. universities. Many of them have been in the US for four or six years. They fit very comfortably into the US culture. So we don't really find any issues because they're not coming from outside. They're already here and they've already got American friends. Many of them have worked on campus. They're actually quite American.
[00:07:34] Yeah, acclimated to the US culture and business environment.
[00:07:38] And they have certainly U.S. TV shows. They love Big Bang Theory. I mean, I honestly never watched it, but they love it as friends is very popular, even though it's, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. So they watch all the American shows. They're very mostly Americanized, but they're very comfortable in America.
[00:07:56] Yeah. Yeah, they they probably probably know more about American culture than a lot Americans. So tell me about how how do you actually kind of filter the candidates on the other side? So how how do you kind of find the right interns? What's the process look like? And you mentioned this first interview. How are you kind of sorting through all the possible people that are looking for internships to find what you think are the right ones or the best ones to bring into your program?
[00:08:21] Well, we supplement what the career officers do at school. So with certain universities, we will collaborate with the career offices and other cases. We actually go to universities and make presentations. So, for example, last week we're at Indiana, Miami of Ohio. Ohio State. Next week, we're going to be at George Washington University, John Hopkins, Columbia, up in New York. So we work with the students directly. So we're talking with them. We're presenting and hearing what they're looking for. So we get to know the students and, you know, the sounds that we bring on sins that we feel would be a good fit for the kinds of companies that we work with now.
[00:08:57] And what are some of the, I guess, best skills capabilities are things that you've found kind of most successful in terms of things that companies need.
[00:09:07] And, you know, skills, capabilities that the interns that you've been able to find have worked. Where are you finding the best matches from a skill capability point of view?
[00:09:15] Well, a lot of these students come from leading programs in the US. Like, I'm just thinking a company in Chicago we worked with. It was a small CPA firm and they had access to limited talent. And we were able to bring to them top students from the University of Illinois with 3, 8, 3 9s in master's programs in accounting. And they were just couldn't believe the kind of talent that we brought to them as an example. So accounting is something we're strong in data analytics. A lot of students these days study data analytics and they go and get all the certifications. And so and we worked with a company in Baltimore that does very, very sophisticated data analytics. And we've been working with them now for three years. Every year we're bringing interest to them because the talent that we access is not just limited to Baltimore. It's across the country. So we're bringing people from New York, from Boston, from Chicago, from California and bringing them to them. And they're able to pick the best candidates to match their needs. Finance put a lot of people in finance in New York. But I mean, there's one student we put in a investment bank in San Francisco. And in two weeks, he's. Already helping them close a deal. And by the end of the summer, he helped them close three deals. And this is only a rising senior. So he had another year of school. They made an offer and brought him back after he graduated. He's now been there for two years. He's like he's now. He interviews our clients to bring our interns back into that firm. So we work with really talented students from across the country. And we're able to bring these students to companies that they wouldn't miss or have access to in their local markets.
[00:10:48] How do you find the companies that end up using the program or bringing someone on end up bringing more people on? Just because once they once they realize or once they figure it out works and the benefit and the access to skills, that it ends up becoming a real talent pipeline for them.
[00:11:01] Absolutely. And that's sort of how well we call touchdown. So when we place a student and later on they turn that student into a full time position and come back to us and ask for more. That's from our perspective. It is a touchdown. So that's what we always are looking for. And we are building those two companies up each year. So every year we're adding more and more companies that we call repeat visit repeat customers because we're able to bring them things that really benefit the firm. And we don't charge anything. We're not charging the company anything to introduce us down to them.
[00:11:33] And how do you get paid? Like, what's your what's your business model in all this?
[00:11:36] Well, when we started the business 15 years ago, it was a consulting business. So the clients would pay us a consulting fee upfront and that would pay for all the different services that we provided them. So when we set up the career business, which was an extension of our application business as we set up the same way. So the students will pay us a consulting fee. And for that, we're helping them get clear about their goals. We're helping them through their resumés. We're helping them be able to better share what they can offer to companies in their interviews and then all the other touchpoints throughout the service. And then at the end, we're trying to introduce them to companies that see the value of bringing on international talent. Now, students have already paid us at the very beginning of the service.
[00:12:15] Got it. So talk me through a little bit about how this works for companies that bring on international.
[00:12:21] I guess I start with the internship side. You know, from a I guess from a legal point of view, like what actually happens to be able to authorize an intern to work for you?
[00:12:30] That's not a U.S. citizen. And then how does it work from you if you do want to go move into a full time position and at some point just talk us through a little bit about how that works
[00:12:40] Like what? What the process looks like. How complicated is it? You know, fees, things like that.
[00:12:44] Sure. So about 10 percent, since we work with our other green card holders are citizens. And for the other 90 percent, they're students or just recent graduates of U.S. universities. So they're all legally in the United States. So if it's a student whose are is still in university. So he's doing it during the summer between his junior and senior year, that student would be on a C T T visa. So curricular practical training, which allows him to work in the summer for 40 hours a week, when the student graduates from this from any university in America, they automatically get 12 months of OPD occupational practical training. And in addition to that, the students can have a STEM extension, which is an additional two years. So more and more programs in the United States are offering well, they become Stemm designated, which allows the students to get those additional two years. So most of our students are in programs that give them three full years to work in the US. And after those three years, then companies have the option if they want to sponsor those students. And the sponsorship ranges between six to ten thousand dollars for all the legal fees involved in sponsoring that student. Our suits have had great success from every student that companies want to sponsor. They've been able to keep that student for longer. So that's been great. And when you consider how much going to a real headhunter where a special headhunter. So we we work for free, which is unusual. But a real help is going to charge a lot more. And you already know this person. This person is worked for you for three years. You already know the asset, the talent that this asset brings to your firm. Whereas when you are a headhunter, you never know what you're going to get. So we find companies after they've had an employee from us for one or two years. They're very happy to sponsor them because this person is doing great work for them.
[00:14:33] And how, I guess, how do companies sort of see the difference between doing an international intern through a program like those versus, you know, regular intern, a U.S. intern, you know, someone, you know, in the U.S. market? Guess what? What are the kind of considerations? What are the differences that you've seen or differences that companies you've worked with have noticed in terms of, you know, looking at the different internship options they have out there?
[00:14:54] Well, one thing is, you know, they're working with us and we're trying to make the process as efficient and as easy for them as possible. So, you know, they're not just doing it themselves. They have a partner who works with them. And the students that we work with tend to be more quantitative. They're not afraid of numbers. So whether there are men or or women, they tend to be very advanced levels of mathematics when it comes to learning languages. They're they're quick to learn a new language, whether they ramp up in Python or R. Or any of the different statistical software out there so they can quickly learn those those skills. Three years ago placed an intern in Internet company that does a lot of SCMP and during the summer she got six certifications and she wrote macros in Excel that were able to go out for all their customers, gather all the information and create reports. So what would usually take one or two hours each week? She automated for the company. And I know I recently talked with the owner of that company. They're still using that tool. So I'm that kind of gives you an idea that these students there, they're willing to work really hard and not to beat up on Gen Z and millennials. They're not always, you know, as committed to the companies as they should be. Whereas these students really want to earn an opportunity to work longer for your company. And when they're there, they work really hard to do a good job.
[00:16:16] And then how, from a pay point of view, how do companies set up, you know, paying for the internships?
[00:16:21] Do you do advise them on compensation and things like that? Is it predefined?
[00:16:25] What how do you deal with that side of the equation for the students that are in school? There's opportunities to just give them credit and they don't have to be paid for. The students that have already graduated. We always recommend to companies that they should pay minimum wage or whatever is the rate that they typically pay for interns. So we see our interns getting paid typically between ten and fifteen dollars an hour. And then if they turn on to full time, then that's, you know, within the company they have their own pay rates. Yeah, but Mark, I mean, the students are willing to work at no cost for a month or two to prove themselves. So they're willing to show that they're valuable to the firm before asking to get paid. So that's a lot of different options.
[00:17:04] And in terms of being able to really leverage an intern, what does a company need to put in place in terms either process or training or, you know, really kind of making sure that the person is going to be successful, they're going to be able to contribute.
[00:17:16] And I think it's I remember some of my earliest internships is a little you're going to get thrown to the wolves and there really wasn't much of a process.
[00:17:23] What do you advise? Are there any recommendations or best practices that you give to folks in terms of how they can make sure that once they have this intern and they had this talent, they really not only make it work for the intern, but make it work for the company and they get the benefit they're hoping to get out of this.
[00:17:37] Yeah. Every time we place an intern with a new company, we always make ourselves available to help them, to give them some thinking on how to best maximize the value of the intern. One of the things that we recommend is take a junior staff member at the company and make that person a mentor or actually directly the manager over that intern. It's great for the Full-Time person to get managerial experience. So they're there managing one or two resources, but also gives the intern someone that they can turn to and ask a lot of questions, someone who is a little bit younger. So they may feel more comfortable and especially at the beginning helps them to get acclimated to the company. We also encourage companies to invite out the interns in the beginning, let it make them feel welcome in the company. You know, sometimes they don't know that they're welcome and everyone is makes assumptions that everyone's just so busy. But by taking them out to lunch that first week, they get to know the people. They open up and they you begin to see the real person out of the interview feel more comfortable. So spending a little bit more time in the beginning makes a big difference to get them acclimated and then start to get the most out of the interns.
[00:18:36] So you mentioned a couple of you mentioned the accounting scenario, the investment banking scenario.
[00:18:41] Any other good case studies or examples wins that you've seen in terms of clients you've helped, in terms that you've placed? You know, it's kind of curious about some of the results you've been able to generate for folks.
[00:18:51] Well, one thing that that always to me is very interesting is, you know, we since we place a lot of interns in New York area and fashion is obviously big in New York. Yeah, we placed an intern in a local New York fashion firm to help with procurement, to help the company get more materials products from China. And she volunteered because she's want to get experience. She volunteered to work in the showroom in Manhattan on the weekends. And she found that there were zero Chinese customers in the showroom. So she went out and lost her marketing campaign. There's an app called We Chat. So she created a week campaign. And all of a sudden, all these Chinese customers started coming. And within one month, she became the top salesperson in there. So the manager figured out she was much better at helping Brand the company, then procure new products for the company. So they switched her role. And over the next three months, she helped the company to get well known in the Chinese community and help them increase sales. And then they extended her internship for another three months. So she stayed there for a total of six months and that company got a whole new branding with Chinese customers. They began to export to China thanks to this interns willingness to step up and take initiative.
[00:20:02] Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I think that's a great one, because it's not just about kind of figuring out what skill do they have, but really what kind of access to a whole nother culture, a whole nother market, you know, figuring out how to communicate.
[00:20:14] And, you know, what's the what's the connection? Great story.
[00:20:18] Another way be you know, this is a. A financial services firm. So it may be more like a financial advisory firm. So they had to make a lot of calls. So they brought out one of our interns. And for the first week, all he was doing was cold calling and it was very tedious. So on the weekend, he created an application using his python skills that would go out and gather all the information from different databases. It would gather the person's information from LinkedIn so that when they would call, they would have all the information front of them, which makes it more efficient. Phone calling in the manager that next week found out what he did and was kind of shocked that this intern, without even even telling him in on it, created something of value. And here's another example where the manager switched his role from cold calling to building out this app. And so for the rest of the summer, it intern built out this sort of sales development tool that the company continues to use. So, you know, here's someone with programming skills helping the company in a way that the company never realized that they could do.
[00:21:17] I love it. Work smarter, not harder. Kind of example. Good.
[00:21:21] Any examples? I'm just kind of curious about companies that, you know, maybe are not as well positioned or, you know, may not want to consider the internship.
[00:21:30] I mean, any stories of things that you've learned, you know, companies that weren't able to do it too well or or that didn't do it right. And, you know, if you're thinking about it, you may want to sort of take some time to ponder, you know? You know that. Are you really able to kind of do what it needs, what needs to be done to make to make it a successful program? Any learning experiences or things that you learn don't make a good fit for a company as interns?
[00:21:51] Well, I mean, when a company is talking more about the intern doing business development or sales, then we take a step back. That's not a good fit for these interns. No, they are not native English speakers. They can be fantastic in sales in their own culture. But American culture is different. So we we don't encourage that because we want to. We want the relationship to be successful. We want the students outcome to be successful. So sales roles are not a good fit. The other thing that we encourage companies that we've seen is that they need to have very clear expectations for the students and at least in the beginning, help them get off to a strong start. So give them a very small, clear project. Help them to get the momentum going. If it's too broad, if it's just doing just general research, then the company misses out because these are really smart kids. They just need time to get clear about what the expectations are. So working on specific projects that have a beginning, middle and end allows the students to be very successful. And then you can then build on the sophistication of the projects, you know, each each week, each month. And they will typically impress their coworkers with what they can add to the company.
[00:23:01] Yeah, I can imagine just a little bit of structure goes a long ways.
[00:23:04] I mean, like I said, I certainly remember some of my early internships where it was it was a little amorphous and you were kind of lost at sea for a while.
[00:23:11] And yeah, they can. Giving just a little bit of giving them work to do. That's reasonably well laid out. Giving them some parameters, you know, giving them flexibility by giving them some kind of constraints to work with them and objectives, some resources at any.
[00:23:24] I'm curious about these students to say that could be anybody else, any direction, but any job is once they know the organization, then they can begin to take initiative.
[00:23:34] And then with an initiative, great things can happen for the company I'm cares about industry is I mean, is there any industry that you haven't been able to kind of get into that you're curious or that you think would be, you know, it's kind of on your radar for figuring out how you can kind of bring your business to or, you know, areas of the country or just kind of curious what's on your kind of expansion scaling strategy list here as you grow build the business?
[00:23:58] Well, I mean, we've been working on lots of different industries. So anything related to business. So industry wise, you know, we're pretty spread out because we work with a wide variety of companies. But the one market that is very popular for students, but we have the most difficult time finding companies that are open to international students is Boston. I don't know why Boston is so difficult. So I've talked to a lot of companies. It's always challenging to find companies in Boston. That's always a market we're trying to grow. We place lost interest in San Fran and L.A., Chicago, New York.
[00:24:29] But. So anyone listening that's in the Boston area that wants to try this out. Special focus.
[00:24:38] Very special focus up in the northeast. This has been great. If people want to get more information, learn more about the process, see if this is a potential fit for them, a potential source of talent for them.
[00:24:48] What's the best way to get more information?
[00:24:50] Well, one way is by e-mail, reaching out to by e-mail is very efficient. So my email is A.J. Warner, like Warner Brothers at Touchdown Hyphen International dot com. So AJ Warner at Touchdown Hyphen International dot com.
[00:25:06] You're welcome to give me a call. I can I can share my number. I enjoy getting calls from people except those people trying to sell me warranties. So, you know, my direct number is 6 1 4 2 8 6 1 8. 6 1, so happy to get your call and answer your questions directly.
[00:25:23] Excellent. I'll make sure that your e-mail addresses in the show notes as well so people can click through and contact you. Great opportunity for folks that are looking to add to their talent, looking for something a little different, looking for some folks that can probably add skills that are probably harder to get on the general market and the sort of the added benefit of some diversity and bringing in some different cultural perspective on things. I love the story about fashion. I think those are wonderful things. It can happen if you engage in programs like this and open to possibilities. So I encourage everyone to look into it. I encourage everyone to check out the information, consider it as a tool for you. We're coming into the kind of internship season here. So, yes, we are. Great time to look at it. It hasn't been a pleasure. I'm curious to see how the business develops. I'll look forward to kind of keeping in touch. I think it's a great program. I think that, you know, this whole world of talent is so dynamic these days that, you know, as we move into more of the kind of desert gig economy and, you know, people are gonna be looking more and more for different ways to find good, talented people, develop different nations with them from an employment point of view. So this is gonna be a great opportunity for folks. I really appreciate that.
[00:26:24] One quick thing. Is that not only are the onsite. You know me. The students are very happy throughout the year to work remote and they can work on a mission gig economy. You work on projects. So we have a lot of students that are very interested in remote opportunities. So that also might be a great fit for companies.
[00:26:41] Yeah, I know. You know, a lot of folks were recording this in the middle of Cauvin 19. So a lot of people are doing remote work these days. But yeah, it is. Well, it's it's just generally the trend that people go. I mean, I work with a lot of company. I coach a lot of companies with not only the general staff, but actually a leadership team are all diverse or distributed, you know, sets. I think it's just a model you're going to see more and more of. And companies need to get good at figuring out how to how to bring together teams virtually and work with Virtu organization. So, yeah, great opportunity is again, encourage everyone to check out it is information. Contact them if you're interested and learn more about the program. AJ, thank you so much for taking the time to do. I really appreciate it. Take it. Thanks so much, Bruce. About.
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