Placement Assistance
What are some of your biggest challenges with placement assistance and meeting the placement rates, and how have you overcome these?
What I have noticed from some institutions is that they guarantee job placement to graduate students. I feel that this not only takes away from vital interviewing and interpersonal skills as well as relationship building with employers, but I have not seen these practices in action to know if they are legitimate.
Always remind students they need to give 100 percent to their career goals!!
Our biggest challenge has consistently been graduates who decide to take time "off" to get married, have a family, or for other reasons. Though these graduates may intend to work at some point in the future, they often do not seek placement prior to the reporting deadline. We are alleviating this issue by requiring new students to meet with the Career Services Director to discuss their career path and plans/goals PRIOR to beginning classes.
The biggest challange is actually getting the student to successfully complete their externship. In order to overcome this problem, we have a placement workshop, where we discuss the importance of completing their externship, because this could lead to their future job.
Successfully meeting placement rates requires having the right Career Services team in place. At our campus there are 2 individuals responsible: one for the direct "placement" of students and the other for securing and placing students at externship sites. We have set focus groups that graduates attend to help them learn a self directed job search so that they can use these skills throughout their careers.
As a school offering a Massage Therapy Diploma, students are usually not all that willing to let a school know their "real" income. Often in conjunction they do not even wish to disclose employment. It is an ongoing battle but we stress we need to provide the many agencies we report to accurate statistics and this helps a little. This is done along the way in the Program not after they graduate and it is too late. This shall become even more important with Gainful Employment new regulations.
I believe that is a flavor of the month question. The challenge with meeting our placement rates is market driven. If the market is satuated at the time our students graduate placement is difficult. Additionally, we have found although students learn a skill their customer service (soft skills) were lacking. To overcome these issues we spoke with our externship partners to get a grasp on what they were looking for in an employee. We familiarized our partners (potential employers) with our programs and school via of guest lecture. We also beefed up our soft skils module and incorporated soft skills training from the beginning of the courses. Finally, we taught the students to think out side of the box and seek employment related to their training.
A key component in successfully meeting placement rates is establishing strong and on-going relationships with employers. Additionally, we strive to maintain contact with former students as many of our graduates move into hiring positions.
We have had a very difficult time getting students to respond to our communications about job placement. Some decide they really don't want to be in this field after all and just ignore our requests for information about how they are doing and how we can help. Others are just very relaxed about replying to us and it takes many, many requests to get any information. There are a few who stay in close contact and respond to us immediately.
The hardest part of placement assistance, is getting communication back once they graduate.
With the world wide web, many students look to themselves to find employment on Craigslist or other job boards.
Students who do not have transportation to get to a job interview or once offered a job a way of getting to work everyday. Students who decide they don't want to go to work in the career field they have just earned a degree in.
I agree with all the above. But in addition, there are always the students who get cold feet and feel intimidated by the enormety of the Licensure test. They keep coming up with excuses as to why they are not yet ready. Time flies by and their eventual employment falls outside the cohort. All we can do is keep encourage them and offer review sessions.
The biggest areas in which placement rates can be challenging is in programs with licensure. Students who must pass a licensure exam before they can work in the field (Massage, Cosmetology, Esthetics, Nail, etc) impact placement when they do not pass their licensure exam.
To assist with this, our programs offer review courses to prepare students for these exams. Instructors also work on making sure classroom tests are of similar formats to help prepare students for the types of testing they will encounter in their licensure exams.
My school also requires a state board license. The last day of class, I offer 8 hours of review prior to state boards. I understand not all schools can do this but I take it upon myself to offer this review. It gives the students a chance to ask any questions, fill out and complete any paper work that needs to be submitted and be clear on what to take to boards.
Most students prior to graduating are already clear on where they will be setting up their practice.
Our biggest roadblock is getting our students employed after completion of their externship. Some the students are luck enough to be hired right from their externships. Other students have difficult finding jobs because employers only are hiring students with experience. At times, when a student on their externship shows initiative, willingness to learn, and becomes part of the team the doctor will give them an opportunity to be hired. Some of our student struggle getting hired due to poor interviewing skills. If this is the case our Placement department will bring the student back in and help them build their confidence in how to interview.
I think one of the biggest challenges we face is when licensure is required for employment. We have other additional reviews or tutoring sessions to help students out while they are waiting to take their licensure exams.
The biggest challenge in placement is when the students must pass a state exam first, i.e. massage therapy and cosmetology. We are overcoming these challenges by offering more review classes to the students.
Some of our biggest challenges include graduates of the program never getting back to us regarding their placement in the field. We must really track and "stay on" graduates to get back to us with the information that we need for verification. Once a student has graduated, passed their boards and is working in the field, sometimes they forget that we need that information.
Our biggest challenges with placement rates are the economically depressed area we are located in (not true when the school was founded over 40 years ago), and the willingness or ability of graduates to travel to work.
