Hi Karina,
You may find it interesting that a report published by Devry's Career Advisory Board entitled, Career Services Use of Social Media Technologies, showed that Social media technologies were used in career centers as asynchronous communications devices, i.e., principally to transmit information in one direction (from the career center to students or employers or alumni) about events. I personally believe this is likely due to three primary reasons: 1) Unilateral communication is the simplest/most intuitive way to use social media because it's how we use all other traditional communication tools, thus career centers simply use it this way because of familiarity 2) The same survey indicates that lack of training in social media is the 2nd largest barrier to using social media technology effectively thus, lack of know-how to use social media differently might be the other reason career centers predominantly use social media tools to simply broadcast information. 3) Although no data in this same report indicates this, I think you perhaps touch upon a 3rd reason why career centers tend to only use social tools for information broadcasting - it is difficult to use any other way (building/engaging communities for example), and it has high costs (mainly opportunity costs for time invested). At the same time, it is difficult and a labor-intensive process to measure the specific ROI as this tends to be a correlation vs. a direct measurement. When you say there are "high costs," what do you mean? Can you explain what you see those being? Can you elaborate on the difficulty from your perspective? You raise excellent points to consider.
Robert Starks Jr.
I think our main challenge is seeing how to go about making our social media effective. It is hard for a school to do this, and it does have high costs.
Hi Christina,
I have found that students don't truly comprehend the concept of being a brand and that a resume is merely one way we have all been trained to promote our brand to an audience of employers who may potentially hire us. Have you tried an assignment where students do their own social media audit either on themselves or a classmate to see what they find? The process teaches them the basic research skills an employer might do but also has them audit their own online presence. They are some times surprised at what they find. What other ways have you tried (or will try) to help your students see themselves as brands vs. mere job seekers?
Robert Starks Jr.
A lot of our students, especially in the medical field, are hesitant to use social media professionally. They feel as if the outdated resume approach is still the way to go, instead of approaching social media as another way to network, not the only way.
The other challenge we face, is our students not taking full advantage of all of the certifications they can get in their field. I have had many students say that they will get certifications if employers tell them to, but fail to recognize that when a job posting says that those certifications are required, that is them asking you to have it. We really encourage and stress to our students the importance of getting the certifications, but still have some who choose not to go after any of them.
Hi Shawn,
This is a common challenge for institutions that have programs which prepare students for careers in fields that have licensure requirements. What are some of the ways your department and institution are addressing this challenge? Are there any "institutionalized" interventions being set in place? (e.g. exam prep courses prior to graduating, required exam preparation workshops, practice tests periodically administered throughout the student life cycle, etc.)
Robert Starks Jr.
Our career center's top challenges are posed by the fact that for the programs offered, all graduates must first be able to pass state licensing boards in order to work in the field. This challenge is met by ensuring that the program curriculum is appropriate in depth and breadth, helping make sure that graduates are properly prepared to not only pass the licensing examinations, but also to enter the field as competent providers. For the career center, this means that we not only have to help the students with their career choices, but also in referring them to the proper areas within the school when they need further assistance preparing them for these licensure examinations.
Prioritizing and staying focused. With everything happening In the industry today with gainful employment, increased scrutiny by the accrediting bodies, and decreased staff in many locations, Career Services Professionals have a lot to manage.
Meeting the needs of the students (for example, providing workshops and job skills), building relationships with students and employers, and staying compliant (making sure all employment verifications meet the new regulations) compete for the Career Services Advisors' time and energy. All of these things, among others, are necessary to prepare the student for employment and to help ensure successful placement outcomes.
Hi Faney,
Do your students use any niche social networks for 3D Animation such as Game Artisans (3D Game Art), DeviantArt, or Behance? The great things about networks like these are that artists can get inspiration from other artists and useful feedback/critique. Would love to hear what networks they are actively using from your experience.
Robert Starks Jr.
I would say that our top challenges would be making sure that the graduates keep their contact information up to date and mainly getting a variety of leads that we could present as options to our students. For a 3d animation school, our city is not locally suited for potential employers or animation studios so most of the students end up having to move out of state.
Hi Paola,
Are there any challenges you've faced using social media or teaching students to use it for career development?
Robert Starks Jr.
Social media it's a good way to help students to find a job, they interact with different people to help them find a job, what they can't to find by themselves they can do it by Social media.
Hi Robert,
In what ways do you currently address your biggest challenge? How are you incorporating social media currently or how do you plan on doing so? Have you found anything you're doing to be particularly effective in developing closer relationships with your students?
Robert Starks Jr.
The biggest challenge we have is developing a relationship and gathering information from our stuednt/graduates. They don't return our calls or emails.
Hello Jason,
Make sure to check out some of the people search engines listed in the resources section of the course and I encourage you to try some of them. As an executive of Facebook said, social media is the largest user-generated public database of people. As such, it offers more opportunity for us to use that data to not only find people (not in all cases) but also allows us to discover more about them and gain signals that help us modify our strategies to engage them. I would ask, how are you currently using social media as part of an overall strategy to grow student community and build relationships prior to students graduating to try to minimize losing contact?
Thanks.
Robert Starks Jr.
Our biggest challenge is contacting older graduates. a lot of times when they leave, we are never able to contactthem again. it makes it hard for follow up and placement
our major challenges are contacting older graduates and getting responses from them
our challenges are mainly keeping students/grads in contact with us. Always a challenge getting updated information or even responses.
To be honest, our career center's top challenges is staying in touch with our graduates. We strive to keep in touch and offer placement services after graduation. But, we find that it is a challenge to continue a relationship after graduation. This is one of the reasons that we have implemented a social media strategy. We feel like it would give us more opportunity to keep in touch with our graduates.
I work at a massage school and begin building relationship with students soon after their Orientation by; routinely visiting classes to talk about Career Services support and to encourage them to meet with me individually; scheduling sessions in our student massage clinic so I have a presence there; to sharing where our grads are getting jobs; to informal discussions in the hallways; to resume and cover letter reviews; to inviting employers and grads to their business classes; to supporting their sending their state license applications to the Massage Board half-way through their final term; to encouraging/supporting them to begin their job search weeks before graduation. Due to these efforts, most of our students are licensed two weeks after graduation and many (often most) of them have accepted job offers by that time as well. It's a win-win-win for our students, employers and our school.
Maintaining a quality network of professionals and staying in frequent and meaningful communication with them.
