I received an e-mail to my work address from a out of state college inviting me to serve on their industry panel. It also said the position would be compensated and any travel expenses would be covered.
I immediately thought spam since I have no affiliation or connections with this school and am not an industry titan or particularly well known in my field. Plus it was offering compensation.
But I was curious enough to google it. There were no hits for this being a scam. And it turns out this school (which I have heard of) does have an industry panel, and the e-mail sender’s name does match a LinkedIn profile of a person who works at the school. The last time I served on a schools industry advisory panel it came through a contact I already knew and was not a paying gig, other than a free lunch once per semester.
Has anyone ever encountered something like this? Did it turn out legit or scam?
Academics… is this “cold calling” method a real way that schools stock their industry panels?
If it’s something you’re interested in doing, you could contact the university/person directly. I assume their number is listed on the school’s website somewhere.
ETA: This is, call or email them using contact information you find independently. No different than getting an email from you bank about something, but going to the bank’s website by typing in the URL instead of clicking on a link in the email.
It looks like it may be what it says it is, there is no indication it is a phishing ploy or scam.
But it still seems a tad off to put together an industry panel based on who responds to a blind e-mail.
And I hardly seem like someone with enough impact to be sought out. I have one patent and a few papers but nothing that would catch academia’s eye.
Industry advisory boards/panels are often included as necessary or expected elements of workforce investment programs tied to funding for educational institutions. Yet, those institutions often have difficulty in establishing and maintaining membership for these boards and panels. It’s also one of those things that a school might have been dinged for not having during an accreditation, and they’re willing to pay someone from out-of-state even to put together a board. So it doesn’t surprise me that someone who once served in that capacity (albeit unpaid) might be cold-called. As Joey P says, just contact them and find out what it’s all about. No one on this message board is likely to get you any closer to facts behind this particular case.
I am in management, but not executive level. I hadn’t thought of it as a way to get me to hire their students. I do get lots of recruiters contacting me.
I agree with this. Look up the person on the university’s site and contact them directly.
Universities do have industry advisory panels, for a couple reasons. Yes, we want to build relationships with companies where our students might have internship or full time employment opportunities. Also, we want to engage with people in the industry to make sure our curriculum is aligned with current needs in the field. I’m an information security professor. My program has an industry panel that helps us review our classes to make sure we’re preparing our students with relevant skills. Members of the panel also speak to our students at various times.
As an aside, I’m not sure why it’s cynical to want to have relationships with industry to help our students find jobs. I want all my students to get jobs. That’s what they’re studying this field. I spend a lot of time engaging with companies and trying to get my students in front of them. They get good candidates, my students get opportunities. We both benefit.
I agree about contacting the person directly. If this is a low prestige college and the people organizing the panel don’t have a lot of contacts, they might send out this email in the hope of snagging someone. Not a scam, but not something many people are going to want to take the time to do. And don’t worry about “executive” - people use that term to make it seem bigger than it is.
I was in industry, and I spent a lot of time keeping up contacts with universities. I sat in on seminars, gave some guest lectures, and mentored some students. Really useful in ensuring that the students got a view of what was really going on, and also in recruiting.
Indeed, the whole point of these advisory boards is to inform schools as to industry standards and trends, so that they can better prepare students to get hired in the industries which participate in the the board.
Not necessarily an “industry panel” email, but an email from someone in the “purchasing department” that wanted me to approve an invoice for $2,500ish. My first red flag is that it was for materials I was not using (I wasn’t using 6262 aluminum), and the second red flag, on further inspection, is that it came from a xxxx.Com email address. I have a xxxx.gov email address, and anyone involved with ordering parts for me would have sent it from the XXXX.gov. I forwarded it to our Security folks, and sure enough, someone was trying to phish their way into our Organizations pocketbooks (dozens of others got a similar email).
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[ETA] Removed a recommendation; you’d already Googled the school and a similarly-named person on Linked in.
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Tripler
Our spam filters are pretty good, but sometimes they don’t catch everything.