Social Media Use
How have you used social media in your career center?
Hello,
Since working with medical students I’ve found that many of them take to FB over LinkedIn. The earlier that our CS team is able to get into classes we are learning early on that many of our students are not as familiar with LinkedIn and what it can do for them. We take to FB to find out what our not get placed graduates are up to but are promoting LinkedIn with our current students (as well as keeping their personal FB, etc. clean!). We have had trial runs with LinkedIn workshops for those who were interested in attending and have since been able to develop a plan to get into classes where the information is relevant to the course. This will in turn allow us to help our students begin to familiarize with the importance of self-branding on social media while utilizing options other than FB.
@Jessica - Like Jeanine, we use social media in similar ways. I liked that the course also discussed the ability to do data mining as folks often forget how valuable that can be!
They call us “super sleuths†at our campus. One time, we had a graduate and knew she was working but couldn’t get her to communicate. We found her Facebook profile using the reverse email search feature. As you know, many users don't use their official "school names" on Facebook. When we saw her profile photo, we recognized another one of our students in it. Long story short, we were able to gather employment information and have it verified by using this relationship lead.
We've also found that posting photos of us in the community (ie at employer functions) builds a sense of transparency with our student population and post them to our campus Facebook group. We also create career services-themed memes to build rapport with students using humor while conveying important messages.
Have you guys ever gone to a meme generator? (just google meme generator) You can get carried away playing if you're not careful!
Yes, I have used social media in my career center. I currently have a Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn account that I use to connect with students. I have found that a student/graduate is more likely to respond to a message through social media when they are able to, rather than, return a phone call. I also think being visible on social media and posting about job openings/job trends helps to build a relationship with the students and gain their trust.
Our campus is using social media in similar ways as some of the others in this course have commented on. I think the biggest approach we have taken in career services is to educate them on LinkedIn and how it can be of benefit. Prior to this module, I didn't realize that by educating students to join groups, follow news trends, industries, companies, etc.. you were helping them develop their PLN. LinkedIn serves as more than just a social network that fosters and builds connections but is a research tool to give them industry knowledge so they can best position themselves in the market. Facebook has not been pushed as much but the school does have an online profile, however it is used for all departments to disseminate information. though through this profile, I have been able to keep track of students interviewing as they post updates. Which as mentioned earlier can be a great tool for connecting with not yet placed grads.
On our campus, we are also utilizing the same tools. I have had great succes with Facebook as a tool to communicate with both responsive and unresponsive graduates, as well as current students. Graduates have become far more responsive to Facebook for job postings than the "traditional" emails I used to send. Graduates who are not actively engaged are able to see the activity and occasionally reach out to reconnect. It has also allowed me to have much faster communication since everyone is ALWAYS on Facebook and responds immediately to most messages. I am open to tools like Twitter, but have been reluctant to take on another "communication system", but am hoping to learn more from this course that will encourage me to do so.
Robert, over the last several years we have incorporated social media at our campuses. However, I feel we should have trained our career services staff BEFORE trying to roll out social media strategies. Many were just posting on their campus FB pages - because they were told to. Others had a hard time "getting on board" since social media was knew to them. Even though I would have rather taken a pro-active approach, we have reacted to the challenge well. Our interactions from an "online" perspective have increased - mia graduates have decreased - and success has followed. Not only to we engage on FB, we also are in the process of onboarding an online career orientation course, which is very much interactive. We have also launched a new alumni community platform, which partners with FB and Linkedin. We have a long way to go, but see the true value.
I manage our school's FB page.
I also have a personal FB page as well as a business FB page
I have a private group on FB just for unplaced graduates, where I post job leads for them. They must maintain contact with CS in order to stay in the group.
Here at our campus we use social media in various ways. We use Facebook to try to track where are grads are working as well as messaging them to gain information about their employment. We also use Linkedin to connect with our grads and to see where they are working. We also post tips for resume building, interviewing techniques, etc on Linkedin. We are currently working on obtaining a Twitter account to reach out to our grads and employers. We would also like to obtain our own campus Facebook page to inform grads and employers of various things going on at our campus. As a University, we have a website called alumni360 which we use to reach out to our grads and post job orders and community and school events .
My social media experience is somewhat limited but we encourage all students to create a LinkedIn account and connect with us in Career Services. We use it as a way to teach our students how to create a professional social media presence, to distinguish from the more personal Facebook accounts they may have. We also share certain events and useful tips on LinkedIn only, to give them an idea of what they might miss out on, if they don't have a profile.
We used to have FB pages and Twitter accounts just for our career services center. Then all of our Career services centers starting getting one and then all the departments starting getting one and it became overwhelming when a students searched for us amid all the other pages. We finally just kept it to one page for our Campus. However, I have two FB accounts. One for personal use and one for professional use. I use FB and LinkedIn all the time to find employers and to find unresponsive students. I feel that using the friend of a friend search tool in FB helps out temendously. LinkedIn is used mostly to see if that unresponsive student is working in his/her field. I also used LinkedIn to connect with my clients/employers on a regular basis. I have not used Twitter as much for searches but do use it to follow mentors in my field.
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for sharing your experience. Sounds like your marketing is paying off as evidenced by the adoption of the platform from your alumni. The strategy of exclusivity, tailored content, and a primary focus on career opportunities shared on the platform specifically for your alumni is a good strategy. Thanks for providing this "case study" example of your particular findings with your alumni. Keep up the excellent work!
Robert Starks Jr.
Hi Mr. Starks,
360 Alumni has been well received by our alumni community. For our university as a whole (we have campuses between Virginia and South Carolina) we are up to 1300 active members. (this is really good for us as our student body is very small)
It took over seven years for our Linkedin Alumni page to reach this amount, and 360 Alumni has done so in five months. I think our alumni community has been using it over LinkedIn and other available networks because we have personalized it and updated it with jobs daily in our students' fields of study. We also post community job events on 360 Alumni.
Some students have not enrolled in 360 Alumni and if that is the case we reach out to them again by phone and by email and invite them to register. In an effort to encourage the students to enroll right after they graduate, we give them cards with the 360 Alumni registration information on there before they leave school. Fortunately our Career Services department does a great job placing our students for employment so it is a small amount of students from our campus who are unemployed more than 3 months after they graduate.
The pros of using a commercial software like 360 Alumni is that it engages alumni to apply for positions in their field without having to search for the positions themselves. The con of the software is that obviously we can't promise the students they are going to find a job through 360 Alumni job postings it is more of a platform to assist them in their job search.
Since I have a small amount of graduates that are not working, there haven't been too many challenges other than not being able to get a hold of some of the students. I would say at least half of the 10 or so people I have not working are using 360 Alumni.
Thanks,
Sarah A.
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for sharing. It seems more institutions are considering using a commercial platform like 360 Alumni. I know this particular platform appeals to institutions looking to engage alumni for crowd-sourced fundraising efforts and of course for continued brand affinity but I was wondering what your experience has been with alumni adoption. I've seen other institutions attempt to use commercial tools and have a very challenging time getting their alumni to actually use the technology because they seem to be most active on other available networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Although some institutions do data cleanses and batch register alumni based on emails, usage levels can be low. Do you have any information to share for others' benefit who may be considering a commercial software for their strategy? What have been the pros and cons? How have you addressed some of the typical challenges others face and what seems to be working?
Robert Starks Jr.
Hi Mr. Starks,
As far as active student engagement, we have a main campus online dashboard that every student, faculty, and staff member at my university has access to where we post event information and marketing efforts. I also send job lead and career fair emails out to my students. I have created email lists for all of my students divided by program of study.
We actually utilize a web based program called 360 alumni for alumni engagement where we post job leads, job fair announcements, job events at particular companies, etc. There is also a feature in 360 alumni where we can email our alumni directly based on their program of study.
Internally, we do utilize social networks to promote our campus-wide events, workshops, etc. I use LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook the most when promoting events and workshops.
Sarah Ailsworth
Hi Sarah,
It's great that you are teaching students to use social media as a career marketing tool - this is absolutely necessary. I'm curious if (and how) your department uses social media for issues such as student/alumni engagement, marketing & student awareness, event participation, etc. Does your department use the same branding/online presence strategies it teaches students to brand the CS department and market the department to achieve goals such as engage in employer outreach, recruit guest speakers or PAC members, increase office visits, workshop participation, etc. etc.? Because this course is less focused on teaching students to use digital strategies for career marketing (Which is what CS103 covers), I'm curious to hear more about your department's strategy and how you may be integrating social tools into your traditional marketing activities. Having relationships with industry experts helps so I'm glad to hear your friend is willing to present and contribute her expertise - it's so valuable when students hear from "outsiders."
Robert Starks Jr.
Mr. Starks,
I have used social media in my Career Services curriculum in a number of ways. The first thing I did was present a social media seminar on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and the proper ways to use these networks to current students at my university.
In addition, I had one of my friends who works in community management and social media strategy for a local advertising agency come in and speak to my students about leveraging social media in the workplace and to find a career.
These seminars were very beneficial to the students and in fact, sparked our Academics Team to have my director and I present a LinkedIn seminar to the day and evening freshman seminar classes each term.
In our LinkedIn classroom seminars, we teach the students how to build their LinkedIn profile in its entirety and we pass out a checklist of all of the sections they need to complete. The checklist offers suggestions on what to put in those fields within their LinkedIn profile that they may be uncertain about.
Another thing I have added to the classroom LinkedIn seminar is instructing the students how to search for jobs on LinkedIn based on their location. The students enjoy having another job search outlet that is linked to their professional profile and picture.
I also showed the students how to follow companies on LinkedIn so that they are updated on any jobs their company of interest has available and any news the company has of recent.
Another interesting thing I showed them is connecting to people in their network. I explained to them that often times the more connections one has, the better chance there will be that the connection will be linked to a company of interest. I showed the students a certain company and friend I had that works there. I explained to them that if I was interested in working at that company I could reach out to my friend and see if he or she could help me get in contact with the hiring manager directly. This would in turn streamline the job search process and help a candidate get their foot in the door quicker than just submitting an application through the standard job search medium.
Last term, I began teaching a LinkedIn tutorial class for new students in one of their first classes at our school. If the student does not have a current LinkedIn page I help them build it. I have an outline that I pass out to each student that helps them complete their profile without missing any sections. I used my profile as an example since it is thorough. I also teach the students to use the job tab within LinkedIn to search for jobs. I also show them how to follow companies so they can see job openings and news articles about the companies for which they would one day like to work. The students and teachers find this tutorial very beneficial to their job search process. I will continue to teach this LinkedIn tutorial each term to new students.
we do have a career services page, as well as an interactive alumni website. I have created a FB page for work only, this has allowed me to connect with students/graduates on a personal level and find that avenue to "click" or "connect" on a personal level, which engages more conversations and prevents me from having to "find" them later.
I straddle the fence in my career services office -- I'm not really a career services advisor per se; rather, I wear the primary hat of an instructor.
One of my responsibilities is as coordinator to our student externs; this means the Career Service Advisors and I provide an orientation to the students before they begin their externship. The students may have had me as an in-seat instructor, but sometimes the first time they meet me is in orientation, where we establish the goals and ground rules of this class.
Once the students are at their externship sites, I monitor and keep them engaged in discussion boards; I meet with those students for whom I'm advisor; I conduct site visits; and I read the essays that are also part of the class requirement.
I know that we have a Facebook page -- and I've navigated around it -- and now we're using 360 Alumni to post employment opportunities to our alumni. However, I have not used the 360 Alumni yet. Additionally, if an employer calls me with a job lead, I can either take down the information, or I can direct them to our page on the web.
That's about the extent of my exposure for now.
KBryant
