Held earlier this fall, the Center for Student Professional Development’s (CSPD) 12Twenty Challenge combined two fantastic ideas: provide future, current and outgoing Fox School of Business specialized master’s students with invaluable financial and salary information to get them the best post-graduation job offers while also giving three MS students the chance to randomly win one of two Samsung Galaxy tablets or an iPad.
Henry Cammisa
Win-win. Well, for some, it was more like a win-win-win.
12Twenty is a career outcomes, salary research data and analytics tool that provides the latest market insights, salary data and employment trends. Graduating students can enter confidential salary data that will help current students and Fox graduate alumni successfully negotiate their future job offers. Basically, it’s all about helping your colleagues succeed with the information only you have.
The best part about the program is that accessible data isn’t just entered by Fox students. Students from many other universities use the tool, meaning that research and analysis from thousands of locations around the country is available for any graduate student at Fox.
Ariana Levinson
“If a student wanted to know, ‘Okay, who else went to Comcast with my MBA, what salary did they enter at,’ they could look at three years past of entry-level MBA or MS salaries,” says Janis Campbell, senior director of the CSPD. “The salary insights are tremendous. It’s helpful and credible data. It’s all in aggregate and confidential, and it’s extremely useful.”
Besides salary data, students can view insights about specific industries sorted by major, concentration, gender and more.
“You can slice and dice the data in so many ways, and it’s so helpful for students,” Campbell says.
The 12Twenty database program is included in Fox graduate students’ tuition, and access to the software doesn’t end at graduation or after they start their career. With the go-ahead from the Dean’s office, the CSPD graduate team hopes to continue giving out prizes to random individuals who input data into the program to encourage graduates to enter salary data. For this year’s 12Twenty challenge, Alamelu Mangai Sockalingam, MAcc ’19, and Ariana Levinson, MS ’20, won the Galaxy tablets while Henry Cammisa, MAcc ’19, won the iPad.
Alamelu Mangai Sockalingam
“The team said, ‘If we put some prizes on this, we might get some more traction with student input,’” says Campbell. “And when I say ‘if we get more traction,’ oh my goodness, the adoption rate we ended up with was more than 300% of what it was in the prior year.”
Again, wins are all around. The benefits of 12Twenty exist to assist students, and with the ever-growing 12Twenty database, it’ll become a stronger tool for future classes.