One of the areas that I need to work on more is interacting with employers. If they come to the school to visit I'm fine, but I would like to go in the field more and visit them and introduce myself, however I'm a bit on the shy side and find this a hard thing to do.....any advice?

At our college I have an excellent repor with our students and graduates. I have an open door policy and they come to me for all different sorts of things from just wanting to chat to information on placement. I also teach a 12 week course called Professional Development where the students and I get to know each other and spend time on all aspects of jobs-resumes, cover letters, references, interviewing, thank yous,and everything and anything else you can think of. Our placement rate continues to thrive at 90% or above and I think it's due to the closeness of the students and I. But I am careful not to cross the administration/student line at all times.

Our college does not/is not able to offer these, we survey area businesses and we can not get enough businesses to commit to them. There are several large universities in the area that seem to cover all of the internship possibilities around us. I always tell our students that it's not a problem, to do some volunteering and speak of other jobs that relate to what they will be doing. Do you feel that not having internships harms our students? Do you have any other suggestions?

Some students no matter how many mock interviews or how much prep I give them it just doesn't seem to help them in an interview. Do you have any other suggestions or tips?

What is your best advice to spruce up a resume for a student that does not have any work or volunteering experience at all?

How many employers do you suggest to students?

When is the best time to prepare students for a career?

How many students to each career service Member?

Placement services are up and running to a successful path. Many responses to our placement services, workshops, and assistance for our students. But only a small amount is not attending due to school, and working hours. And had many one on one session workshops. How else can we reach out to our student and help them to a successful career path? Is there a percentage that we will not reach out too?

When students are getting ready to graduate I have them all fill out forms, these forms help us understand what the students are looking for in a job. Such as, how far they are willing to travel to find a job, what days and hours, the different shifts, etc. Most of them are putting 9am-5pm Monday-Fridays. I work at a nursing college, nursing jobs are not a typical '9-5', and trying to get them to realize this, it is a fight in itself sometimes, they get upset because they have kids, lives, etc. They usually just say that they will still want us to help them locate these 'dream' job schedules.

Is it wise to take on ideas/suggestions from current enrolled students in regards to alumni association process?

What is the best approach in facilitating that all involved are doing their part to make an alumni association progressive?

What is the best way to recruit students who have not graduate to become part of this alumni association project?

Our school incorporates externships into many of our programs. It definitely helps with placement. We have a program that when brought in didn't have an externship and placement was difficult at times. When they changed it to include an externship our placements increased incredibly. I have worked for schools that chose to discontinue externships in certain programs because externship coordinators complained about the difficulty finding sites. In my opinion it was never a good idea. We lost the externship to placement side and when they students did get jobs their skill level was much lower. When employers hire graduates from a specific school and their skills are not very good they will quit contacting the school with their open positions. I absolutely love externships. The externship coordinator I work with now is wonderful. She knows the significance of externship sites and hiring. She keeps track of the externship to placement and prides herself on the conversion rate. I am very lucky to have her.

I would like to implement Job Skills Olympics as an event programming idea to facilitate framework for students' to showcase academic prowess, and to demonstrate use of professionalism in their soft-skills.

Identify at least one new event programming idea you learned in the course that you would like to see your institution implement (Job Skills Olympics, Job Fairs, Networking Mixers, Industry/Alumni Speakers, Intern/Extern/Volunteer Fairs). How do you believe this would improve graduate employment outcomes?

Which of the following experiential learning opportunities mentioned in the course does your institution implement (Service Learning, Internships, Externships, Co-ops, Interdisciplinary Projects, Work-Study), and how would you evaluate the success of each?

My Institution works closely with Career Services for input regarding enrollment trends, market forecasts, and employment outlook. Career Services is also involved in the campus tour with prospective students. Our corporate Marketing Department also includes Career Services placement data and staff's opinions on advertising, each year.

Upon reading the last chapter I believe my department can do more to improve the student's employability skills and I am going to implement some stratagies right away. I try to work with students one-on-one now but I don't feel it has been as effective as I would like. As you know student's can have so many obstacles in their way when applying for jobs and addressing them more effectively will be my priority. My school has a class specific to teaching soft skills and I must say it has been a very effective class. It teaches professionalism and how to get along with people in the office just to name a few. It is a very good class and overall the students' soft skills have improved quite a bit.

Does your institution’s career services department assess student employability skills and barriers to success prior to offering interventions? If so, what assessment is used and how are interventions applied? If not, how does the staff personalize interventions to ensure that the best approach is applied to each student?