How is Social Media Relevant to you personally in your role?
Social media isn't simply technology that facilitates human interaction. The technology has changed human interaction and relationship-building. Consider social networks for dating and group activities and that people are now getting married after having met online.
If social networks influence how we build rapport, trust, and form strong relationships, social media has a great impact on career advising. It doesn't stop at relationship-building however. Career Advisors have much more data at their disposal to identify behavior patterns, circles of influence, and common interests from the information constituents disclose on social media platforms. This information offers insight that can be transformed to strategic engagement in one's approach to relationship-building and communication.
If we identify some of the ways social media has altered human behavior and practices in career development, we see social media background checks as a trend, social job search, social recruiting, enhanced personal online branding, social media used for interviewing candidates, and emerging forms of career marketing collateral from infographic resumes to video resumes and QR codes on resumes. Social media has altered the way recruiters source and review resumes from mobile applications to social media platforms.
These are but a few of the relevant ways social media has changed the profession. Just a few years ago, career advisors did not have to coach students on cleaning up their social profiles, how to respond if an employer asks them for their Facebook password, how to draft a keyword-rich LinkedIn profile for search optimization, or how to look for jobs and research companies on Twitter. These are but a few more ways social media has influenced the career advising profession and has more relevance than many realize.
Given this background, in what ways is social media most relevant to you personally in your role?
Social Media is something that has taken the world by storm in a very short period of time. Nowadays there are more iphones and tablets needed to be left off of the table rather than elbows.
Social Media to me is an excellent way of reaching out to a wide group of people and helping me find the number of students that may be interested in attending a particular event, a job order or an upcoming workshop. Social media gets Career Services in the door where as a normal phone call or email may not have that much appeal, when the little red flag pops up on facebook or the little bird from Twitter, it immediately grabs the student's attention.
Social media is a wonderful way for me to mass communicate initially and then direct my attention to those who are truly interested in what Career Services is offering.
I am a Career Advisor in a culinary school and have found that I use social media mostly for data mining, discovering whether or not my non-responsive students/graduates are employed or still doing something related to their field. I have also connected with employers via social media, which has enriched my professional relationship with them, by seeing pictures of staff, their dishes, the site itself, all of which helps me understand the culture of that company better. Ultimately, this assists me in having a better idea as to which of my students/graduates would be great candidates. I use it as a tool and don't only rely on it, but social media in my role as a Career Advisor, helps with research and relationship-building.
My role is as a Director in a campus of 600 students and 2 other Career Advisors. We serve healthcare, criminal justice, and technology students.
I can see how student engagement and trust can be built by having a more accessible Social Media presence. Being available for both sharing knowledge, job leads, and best practices for success will lead to more trust and information sharing on the part of the students and graduates.
While we depend on exchanging a lot of information, social media is also convenient, quick and mobile, so between larger conversations, quick encouragement and checkups are possible as well.
Susan,
When you share snippets of information to move grads forward with their careers, can you share how you measure if this tactic is effective? How are you able to determine if your tactics are producing the desired result? What is the result you are seeking? The ultimate objective is to use social media as a tool to drive desired outcomes. Sharing your response can help others who participate in this forum discussion understand how others are doing in this area. I have found that many career services professionals struggle in this regard. What has been your experience?
Robert Starks Jr.
I use social media to get the pulse of what is going on with my graduates. Some share their excitement over their interviews and job offers, some express discouragement, others ask questions. I post regularly to offer my support and give snippets of helpful information to help move grads forward with their careers. Sometimes an encouraging statement or job tip is all that is needed.
I definitely use data to gleen information to best connect with my grads and to learn more about what they need for support.
Aside from advising students/grads to have a professional page, I haven't ventured into coaching students on how to draft a keyword-rich LinkedIn profile. I'm still getting the hang of LinkedIn myself!
Amy,
Well said! I couldn't agree with you more and love your philosophy! Thank you for sharing your perspective.
Robert Starks Jr.
I would say that social media is relevant to me personally in many different ways. First and foremost, in my role as a Career Services professional, it is my number one goal to have the tools that I need to help my students achieve career success. My own personal knowledge and understanding of social media is essential to my ability to be successful with that goal. For me, social media can't be something that I "teach" or "counsel." Responsible and strategic uses of leveraging social media as a professional is imperative. I have to "live it and breath it" in order to have a full comprehension of how I can guide my students to do the same.
Additionally, I have to ensure that I am a living example of how to utilize social media in its many forms so that I can lead by example for my students.
Finally, social media is relevant to me personally because it can certainly increase the visibility of our institution in the eyes of the many professionals and employers who can/will potentially hire our graduates in the future. Our school prides itself on staying on the cutting edge of technology. For us to stay on point with that goal, all of us who are a part of this staff and faculty - must keep our departments on the same track.
Hello Stacey,
I love the vision you have for a scalable solution to building affinity with your population as a means to encourage the outcomes you want. I see your challenge having oversight of multiple departments. I think you'll appreciate the tools available to help you not only use social media platforms as tools to scale your relationship-building efforts, but also to automate and manage your activities more efficiently. If you plan on using multiple platforms, the course discusses tools that can help you manage your activities.
Thanks.
Robert Starks Jr.
Overseeing career services makes it extremely important for us all to build relationships with all of our students. They need to be able to trust us, depend on us and ultimately like and respect us, otherwise they will see no need to keep in contact with us after they graduate. It can be hard to establish a relationship with every student that walks through the door especially when you have a large school, I believe social media will assist with getting to know everyone. I do not have a as much time as I would like to spend with students since I oversee multiple departments I can get extremly busy, so I hoping I will be able to reach many more students through social media.
