Corporate eagle scout recruiting program (CESRP)

The purpose of the Corporate Eagle Scout Recruiting Program (CESRP) is as follows:

• Provide companies like YOURS with access to Eagle Scouts who can become high-impact, high-value employees in the future
• Provide young Eagle Scouts with invaluable mentoring which can help them with future employment opportunities, as well college and career advice from the Eagle Scouts currently employed by your company

To show our appreciation for participating in the Corporate Eagle Scout Program, NESA Pittsburgh will give participating companies, unlimited access to our Eagles Hiring Eagles Jobs Board. The Jobs Board will allow you to post job opening for older Eagle Scouts as well as reviewing resumes posted by Eagle Scouts looking for new employment opportunities.

Participating in the CESRP is a simple 5 step process:

1. Identify either one Eagle Scout volunteer or one Sr. Executive in your organization who is actively involved in Scouting to lead the Eagles Seeking Eagles program
2. Identify Eagle Scouts, or active Scouting participants, within your organization who can help sponsor and mentor new Eagle Scouts.
3. Sponsor a table at the Eagle Scout Awards Dinner, and recruit Eagle Scouts within your company to participate. This is probably the step that will evolve over time. I know at MSA, we have transitioned from interested parents, to a majority of our sponsors being Eagle Scouts themselves. Many of whom we recruited since the beginning of the program.
4. Each participant in the Eagle Dinner, sponsors an Eagle Scout with related Career Interests. Some work is required here by the sponsors. We expect them to reach out to the Eagle and introduce themselves and what they do.
5. Following the Eagle Scout Dinner, the company or organization, organizes an Eagle Day at your company. This typically occurs during the Winter Break, due to college and High School conflicts. At MSA, this involved about a half day, including lunch. Each sponsor, and sometimes other participants, would provide a background of what they did for a career and how they prepared themselves for their chosen career.

Click on the titles below to see how you can participate. Click on the MSA Program Template to see exactly how this program was run for several years at MSA.

For Executives

The Corporate Eagle Scout Recruiting Program will be beneficial to your company by identifying high potential associates through mentoring.  It will help Eagle Scouts by guiding them along a career path and increasing their employment opportunities with companies like yours.

We’re asking companies to sponsor at least 1 table at the Eagle Scout Recognition Dinner this November.  This will allow you to have 5 of your employees, who are Eagle Scouts or are involved in Scouting at the troop level, sponsor 5 newly minted Eagle Scouts whose career interests align with your employees’ backgrounds and career responsibilities.
About a month after the dinner, we’d like your company to host these Eagle Scouts at a Career Day at your facility, so they can continue their dialogue with their sponsors and learn more about the great work being done by your company.

All the information your head of Human Resources will need to make this program a success is included in the Human Resources tab. There is also information the HR head can provide to the Eagle Scout who will lead the program for [Company name].

As a thank you for participating in the Corporate Eagle Scout Program, NESA Pittsburgh will give your company unlimited access to our Eagles Hiring Eagles Jobs Board. The Jobs Board will allow your company to post job opening for older Eagle Scouts as well as reviewing resumes posted by Eagle scouts looking for new employment opportunities.

For Human Resources

The Corporate Eagle Scout Recruiting Program needs your assistance to complete the following steps:

1. Identify the Eagle Scouts, or others involved in scouting, employed by your company name and prepare a list of their educational and business backgrounds.
2. Determine which employee would be best suited to coordinate and lead  your company’s CESRP program.
3. Introduce the program to the Eagle Scouts you identify and ask them to commit to sponsoring/mentoring an Eagle Scout at the Eagle Scout Recognition Dinner in late November.
4. Call Alex Stavros to confirm your company’s participation in this program, and tell Alex how many tables of 10 (5 Eagle Scouts and 5 mentors to a table) your company can sponsor at the dinner.
5. Determine a date in late December when your company can hold an Eagle Career Day at your facility, reuniting the Eagle Scouts with their mentors from the dinner and introducing them to your company with on-site tours, activities and presentations.
   
   This program has been in place at MSA (Mine Safety Appliances) for 10 years
   If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call Alex Stavros at 412-325-7967 or by email Alex.Stavros@scouting.org. Alex will be happy to assist you in any way he can.
   
   We appreciate your involvement in the Corporate Eagle Scout Program. We believe it will be beneficial to your company, the Eagle Scouts you employ and the Eagle Scouts mentored by your company's employees for many years to come.
   
   Sincerely,
   
   Joe Salvucci                                     Ron Herring
   Chairman NESA Pittsburgh             Corporate Eagle Scout Recruiting Program Chair

For Eagle Leaders

On behalf of all of your fellow Eagle Scouts at NESA Pittsburgh, thank you for agreeing to participate in the Corporate Eagle Scout Recruiting Program. As a token of our appreciation, we’d like to offer you a free year of membership in NESA Pittsburgh or we’ll extend your membership by a year if you’re already a member.  

Your Human Resources department has identified all of the Eagle Scouts employed by your company  That list should be attached.  As a first step, we’d like you and the HR manager to convene a meeting of these Eagles, outline the program and ask them to participate.

The program is pretty simple. First, your company has agreed to sponsor a table or tables at the annual Eagle Scout Recognition Dinner in late November.  We’d like you and the other Eagles to act as a mentor/sponsor for a newly minted Eagle Scout at this dinner. The Boy Scout office in Pittsburgh will match sponsors and scouts, based on current careers and backgrounds of the sponsors and the career interests expressed by the new Eagle Scouts.

The next activity is an Eagle Career Day at your company’s facility, reuniting the Eagle Scouts with their mentors from the dinner and introducing them to your company with on-site tours, activities and presentations.  

MSA has been conducting its own Corporate Eagle Scout program for several years now. A description of their program is included below to give you a better idea of what is involved

As a fellow Eagle Scout, we know you appreciate the benefits an Eagle Scout can bring to a company like yours. The benefit to young Eagle Scouts of having a mentor who is not only an Eagle but is successful in the career they are interested in pursuing is invaluable. This also gives you an opportunity to give back to scouting. Bottom line, this is really a win-win situation for all concerned. 

MSA Program Template

MSA (Mine Safety Appliances) has been running a Corporate Eagle Scout Program for the past 10 years.  Here is an overview of what they have done.

MSA compiles the educational and business background for each of their sponsors and provide that information to Bill Park at Laurel Highlands Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Bill matches each MSA sponsor with an Eagle Scout who is interested in that career area.  Here is an email template that can be used:

Bill:

Here is the list of this year's 20 MSA attendees for the Eagle Dinner program.  13 of them are Eagle Scouts and 17 of them have engineering degrees.

I will be the initial contact for all the Eagle Scouts.  Please send all the Eagle Scout biographical information to my office, and I will distribute it to the MSA’s participating associates.  Please call me if you have any questions.

MSA determines a date within a month after the Eagle dinner when they can host all the Eagle scouts for a Career Day.  Since the LHC Eagle dinner is usually the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, MSA schedules their Career Day just before Christmas.  Preferably this is in late Dec. after school (both college and high school) is done so that as many Eagle scouts as possible can attend.  The high school students are allowed to miss school to attend educational functions like this, but sometimes you run into issues with finals just before Christmas.

Each MSA Sponsor contacts his Eagle Scout and arranges to meet him during the reception just before the Eagle dinner.  Everyone sits together at MSA’s table(s).  At the dinner, the MSA Sponsors inform the Eagle scouts about the Career Day and during the week after the Eagle dinner, each sponsor contacts his Eagle Scout to personally invite him to the Career Day and confirm whether he can attend.

At MSA, for example, they run the Career Day from 9 am-3 pm.  They have about 10 speakers who each talk for about 20 minutes about what they do for MSA.  They also describe their Scouting background, their educational background, and the path that they followed to get them to where they are today. 

As each sponsor talks about what they do for MSA, it gives them a chance to explain to the Eagle scouts what they do at MSA and tell them about the Company.  MSA choses speakers from all areas of the company and from each major product line regardless of whether they are involved with scouting or not. 

MSA also provides a free lunch for the Eagle scouts and their sponsors.  It is a nice way of saying thank you to their employees for serving as sponsors/mentors.  At the end of the day each Eagle Scout is presented with an actual product from MSA as a thank you gift. 

Here is a template email that could be used:

All:

Thanks to everyone who is helping with the MSA Career Day for the Eagle Scouts this coming Thursday.  The following 13 Eagle Scouts are coming:

(Names of New Eagles Deleted)

Below is the final schedule.  The plan is to have the Eagles arrive at the Ryan Lab around 8:50 am so that we can begin promptly at 9am.  We will have presentations from 9-11:30am in the Cranberry Woods Conf. Room, followed by a tour of the Ryan Lab.  Around 12:15pm we will walk down to the MSA Corp. Center to have lunch.  We will put our coats in Conf. Rm E171 (the conference room across the hall from the CB plant HR offices, near the cafeteria; we have it from noon-3pm). 

Before lunch, we will view the exhibits/history in the main hallway.  At 1:30pm we will convene in E171 to have a couple of presentations and then head out back to the flame building for a hands on demonstration by Kelly Rollick.  We will then do a quick tour of the CB plant (circuit board mfg.) before we walk back to the Ryan Lab and wrap things up by 3pm.  Everyone is invited to join the Eagle Scouts for lunch in the Cafe in the Woods, courtesy of the MSA Law Dept.  You are welcome to stay for as little or as much of the day as you want.   

Please contact me if you have any questions, otherwise I will see you on Thursday.

          9:00-   9:20                   (Intro)

          9:20-   9:40                   Speaker 2

          9:40- 10:00                   Speaker 3

        10:00- 10:20                   Speaker 4   

        10:20- 10:30                   Break  

        10:30- 10:50                   Speaker 5

        10:50- 11:10                   Speaker 6

        11:10- 11:30                   Speaker 7 

        11:30- 12:15                   Tour of Ryan Lab (John G.)

        12:15- 12:30                   Walk to MSA Corp Center

        12:30- 12:45                   See MSA History exhibits in hallway

        12:45-   1:30                   Lunch at Cafe in the Woods

          1:30-    1 50                  Speaker 8

          1:50-    2:10                  Speaker 9

          2:10-    2:30                  Speaker 10

          2:30-    2:45                  Brief Tour of CB plant and Corp HQ

          2:45-    2:55                  Walk back to the Ryan Lab

          2:55-    3:00                  Wrap-up

Ron Herring's Remarks to the Corporate Eagle Scout Recruiting Program Round Table Breakfast

Let me give you a little background about myself.

For another 5 days, I serve as the Sr. Vice-President of MSA Safety and President of MSA International.  In this role, I have full P&L responsibility for all MSA businesses outside of the Americas.  I’ve lived in 3 countries, done business on six continents, and can order a beer and apologize in at least 5 languages.

Prior to this role, I was President of MSA Europe and the Middle East, living in both Berlin, Germany and Zurich Switzerland.  And prior to that role, I ran engineering and marketing on a global basis, with our largest R&D centers being here in Pittsburgh, Berlin, and in Suzhou China, where we opened a new engineering center, from Scratch.

I mentioned the 5 days, since I am retiring, effective October 1st after almost 35 years of service with MSA.  I feel blessed to have found MSA so early in my career.  The value structures I found at MSA were similar to mine.  As I enter the next chapter in my life and career, I will always be seeking similar attributes in any organization I choose.  You see,  my values came from a combination of those I learned from my grandparents and parents, as well as those I learned in Scouts.

I gave a talk to a business class once, and the question was asked: Who was the greatest influence in your life?  I encourage of you to think about that yourselves.  That person should be real, tangible, and demonstrative.  For me, it was my Grandmother.

Anna Svensson, was born in 1902 in southern Sweden.  When she reached the age of 18, and was not married, her parents encouraged her out of the house.  And as an 18 year old, in 1920, she immigrated, by herself to the United States, to work on a farm in the grand metropolis of North Dakota.  There she raised the children of her sponsors, the Nielsson family (hence,  my middle name Nelson).  Somewhere, in the long hours that she worked on the farm, she educated herself at a business school, which in time allowed her the opportunity to move to Washington DC to work for the Census Bureau.  

She married a US Marine, and they had one child, my father.  He was not much of a husband or father, so at a time when it did not happen much, this 5ft 3 in Swedish woman divorced him and raised my father as a single mother.  

Scouts were a lifeline to both her and my Father, as they are to many families today. And they both internalized the Scout values as defined in the Scout Law.  Don’t get me wrong, she was a very strong woman.  She had worked hard her whole life, and expected the same from us.  When we went to visit her, my brother and I would stay at her house, and my sisters would go to our other grandparents.  In the eyes of an 8 year old, I was sent to hard labor, and they went to the land of  Oz.  My brother and I mended fences, fixed roofs, replaced hot water heaters while my sisters seemed to go to toy stores and candy shops.  (remember, this is from the eyes of an 8 year old.)

My grandmother also had a very strong value structure.  I remember once when we went to a diner in the area.  You see, I have a sweet tooth.  So during breakfast, I pocketed one of the packages of sugar that were at the table, thinking that later I would do some good finger dipping.  Well later, as I took  it out of my pocket, my Grandmother saw it and asked me ‘where did you get that?”
I said, I took it from the diner.
She asked: “did some one give it to you?’
No
Did you pay for it?
No
Did you do something to earn it?
No
Then it is not yours.  

She dragged me to the diner, where I had to apologize for taking the sugar.  But the lesson learned was: If you have not earned it, it is not yours.

Interestingly, in my 35 years at MSA, we have gone through 2 or 3 exercises of identifying the core values of our company.    It is not that they had changed, it was more about clarity.  I am sure many of your organizations have had similar experiences.  In fact, I am sure that on a global level, countless hours and dollars are spent every year doing the same.

I took the liberty of researching some of the value statements of the organizations in this room.  Here are some of the ones I found:

• Performance, Customer Focus, Respect, Integrity, Diversity, Teamwork, Quality of Life Integrity, Outstanding value to markets and clients, Commitment to each other, strength from cultural diversity.
• Integrity, Customer Focus, Speed and Agility, Innovation and Change, Diversity and Inclusion, Team work, and Engagement
• Lead by example, work together, respect the individual , seek the facts and provide insight, open and honest communication and above all act with integrity
• People, service innovation, integrity, responsibility, loyalty, safety
• Quality and Safety, dignity and respect, caring and listening, responsibility and integrity, excellence and innovation
• People matter, stewardship, trust integrity, customer focused collaboration, courage, innovation and excellence

Now, I have the answer key, but without it, it would be difficult to determine whether these are consultants, banks, manufacturers, health care organizations, or sports teams. 

These stated values are fantastic, though.  And in today’s world, our ability to fulfill them is more important every day. 

  Recently, we recognized the 16th anniversary of 9-11.  It is a particularly sad day for me, since I lost my very first neighbor that day, Dan Marher.  It is also very personal, since I am a registered recovery worker.  I spent several weeks on site, helping to set up a training center for the construction workers on site.  One of the outcomes of events such as 9-11 is that for a brief period of time, we are all family, and we all live by a common set of values that define us as good citizens of the world. 

More recently, we saw it during Hurricane Harvey, Irma, and Jose.  Where people from all walks of life, banded together to help, assist and protect those in need.  They all became good citizens of the world. 

We are all seeking value structures that assure that we are good citizens of the world.  And in today’s job market, we are all competing for good citizens of the world to fill our ranks. 

And that is why the values of Eagles can be so important to your organizations.  As I stated, in my 35 years at MSA, we have updated the values 2-3 times.  But in the 40 years, that I have been an Eagle Scout, the Scout values have never changed.  Being trusty, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, brave, clean and reverent is time tested and as relevant today as it was 4 decades ago.  And quite honestly, could easily be cut and pasted into any of our organizations and be as effective as the values we spent so much time defining.

I’ll tell you, when we moved to Pittsburgh, from New Jersey, and my wife and I decided to get our boys involved in Scouts.  It was not because I was an Eagle Scout.  Quite honestly, the Scouting culture was very foreign to my wife, Nancy.  It wasn’t because my father was a Scout, or that my nephews were scouts.  It was because I felt it was the one organization, that taught boys and young men, how to be good citizens of the world.

It is these characteristics, the characteristics defined in the scout law, that make good citizens,  that diverse candidates seek to work with.  It is these characteristics that the millennials seek to attach to, and it is the Value of Eagle Scout Values, the values that have been earned and are owned by Eagle Scouts, that we at NESA feel can help take your organizations to the next level.