In March, Rho chapter at California-Berkeley was fortunate to host a representative from Paycom, a payroll and human resources cloud software as a service (SaaS) company. The rep held an information session about career opportunities at Paycom and a workshop on dealing with failure.

The roots of this event started at the Western LEAD Provincial Conference when brothers from Rho Chapter met Paycom representatives who expressed interest in hosting an event with the chapter. Rho Chapter and Paycom decided to host the event  on campus as a private event for only Delta Sigma Pi brothers. The exclusivity of the event drove a huge turnout from Rho Chapter.

Paycom's representative first introduced their company’s value proposition and positioning in the marketplace. Brothers learned that Paycom is a recently public technology company that offers payroll and human resources software to businesses of any size. They compete with companies like Workday and Automatic Data Processing, but differentiate themselves as a single database solution that is completely cloud based and all software developments are done in house at Paycom. This value proposition is one factor leading to its share price having almost doubled since the company’s IPO in March 2014.

After introducing the company’s value proposition and positioning, the representative also discussed their sales representative internship and full-time opportunities. Sales representatives at Paycom work in zip code protected territories and are responsible for the full sales cycle, from prospecting potential clients to closing deals. Paycom sales reps work in the office for business case and presentation development and most of the week in the field meeting with future clients or prospects. These characteristics of the job make it both challenging and rewarding, and require an inner drive that doesn’t falter when presented with failure.

Following the discussion of the sales position and how sales requires a tenacious attitude, the Paycom representative spoke to us about strategies on how to deal with failure. She summarized that failure can paralyze a person if they approach it with the wrong mindset. She emphasized that we need to see failure as an opportunity to grow and improve, and not let failure deter us from moving forward. She structured her presentation with a PowerPoint presentation and periodically asked questions to the audience to keep us engaged and thinking about the topic. Overall, it was a very thought-provoking discussion, and our members left the presentation with a changed mindset on how to approach failure, especially in the context of internship recruiting.

Although Paycom’s internship recruiting season is over, this information session and presentation are the start of a relationship between the brothers of Rho Chapter and Paycom. Sophomore and junior brothers now have a recruiting point of contact at Paycom, and will utilize her as a resource moving forward for the next internship and full-time recruiting cycles. Rho Chapter is thankful that Paycom agreed to host this event and hopes to continue hosting events with Paycom in the future!