Social Media Platforms
Which social media platforms are you using and why do you use them?
I have found that for employer engagement, twitter and LI are best (actually better than engaging with students). LinkedIn and Twitter can make great resources for securing job orders.
For instance, you may see a job listed on LinkedIn and look at a company to see who you know that currently works there. Or, message the poster. Also, if I find a job listing on another source, I may then go to LinkedIn to see if there's someone I know there so I can get a direct job order by either calling or messaging them on the site.
We also have employers that ask us to send a link to a particular student's LinkedIn profile in lieu of sending a resume (or make an introduction). For students with good profiles, I also suggest they customize their LinkedIn profile link and include that link on their resume.
We also engage with our employers by helping them build their brands up, as opposed to limiting communication to a sales message pushed at them. For example, promote them by retweeting their information, tweeting/posting positive news about them on Twitter/LI, taking photos when we do site visits, etc. This is beneficial because it builds engagement with that employer, but it also strengthens your brand as it shows that employer stands beside you. Tie your brand to theirs.
Competitors will then want to work with you. Never lose sight that businesses can be very competitive and want to make sure they're each being "shown the most love." Our goal is to build a personal brand as thought leaders in the workforce development space. Best of luck with your new twitter feed!
Currently I have a personal and professional Facebook account and also a LinkedIn account. I use my personal Facebook page to connect with friends and family many of whom I have not seen in years. I am not a huge poster however I do review my friends posts on a daily basis. It is a great way to keep abreast of people's lives that may live far away or as I said haven't seen in many years. My LinkedIn page is also for my own personal use though I have connected with previous students as well. I also have a professional Facebook page that I use to connect with current students and graduates to find out about employment or to disseminate information. My most recent post was encouraging Medical Assistants to get Certified because more employers are requiring it.
Currently using facebook and LinkedIN. We used a professional facebook page because we can friend the graduates and see all their updates such as job search activity and when they find employment they normaly updated their page quite quickly. We also post job leads and other activity that may happen in the area. We use LinkedIN as a way to reach out to our employers. Currently we are in the process of learning Twitter to help reach out to employers, students and graduates.
We use Facebook and LinkedIn. This provides an arena for our students that helps them grow professionally and yet maintains a social community outlet for students to converse. We stress the importance of social/political discipline when posting and encourage restricting their FB information to be informative, positive, and/or entertaining posts.
At this moment we are using FB and LinkedIn the most. LinkedIn more so than FB just because of job lead generation. I do, however, want to use Twitter more and will start a campaign including all three shortly after this training module ends. I'm excited to see how my strategy can affect the over all goal.
Thanks for this part of the course...I really enjoyed it.
I use Facebook to keep in touch with graduates and find out where they are working and if they have any openings at their places of work.
I expose the graduates to LinkedIn so that they can network socially and get ahead in their careers or education within their programs.
Our Alumni media is used to inform graduates of career fairs or job openings or topics of interest to them.
Primarily I am using LinkedIn for the career development aspect of things. It is also the most common social media outlet that most of our students are using. Some use twitter and Facebook but because LinkedIn is preached and encouraged, most of our students are using this outlet in addition to whatever else they have. Facebook is used but not for career services solely. I use LinkedIn so much for the direct connections and information you can access. It not only has helped me learn more about the industry I work in and the role I take on, but it gives me up to date information from a lot of people in HR who announce hiring initiatives.
Currently, we really focus on FB as a university for interaction. We used to have separate FB pages for each campus, but thought it best to have one page managed by a central team who would keep it fresh, comment or forward to proper people to engage. For career services, we recently implemented 360alumni, a newer alumni platform that really takes the best, most used aspects of something like FB or Linkedin. Very good for discussions, news, etc. However, after going through this training I feel like having a FB page specifically for career services might be something to look into. Also Twitter.
We use Facebook because that is the platform that most of our students and graduates use.
We currently use Facebook, LinkedIn, and Alumni360. We use Facebook and Alumni360 as a way to reach out to grads and alumni. We use LinkedIn as a way to reach out to recent grads, alumni, current students and employers. We are hoping to start using Twitter in the upcoming months to reach out to employers, students, grads, and alumni. These are the social media platforms that we have found our audience use the most. I will also occasionally use Instagram to post pics of what Career Services is up to or post images of messages that were sent on other social media outlets.
I use LinkedIn and Facebook for information and networking purposes.
I'm a user of facebook but more on a personal level. There are some groups regarding education and things that effect me that I'm very active with. I'm also on LinkedIn which is my business connections. I haven't used to any real advantage, but I am quickly learning how to from this course so Thank you.
Personally,
I have a professional FB page and LinkedIn.
Hi Mr. Starks,
Our department uses social media for employer outreach strategies by following companies on LinkedIn and Facebook and by always connecting with our contacts from those companies via LinkedIn.
We also utilize LinkedIn and Facebook when we are promoting our Career Services Department Events such as Career Fairs, Internship Fairs, and Speakers on Campus. I always post on LinkedIn when we have Career Fairs to engage more employers and to increase participation.
I also utilize LinkedIn to recruit employer guest speakers and advisory board members. I often utilize my network and reach out to these folks directly via LinkedIn or email if I have their email addresses. I was a recruiter for a staffing company before this so my network is rather large. (almost 1000 people)
Specifically I would say posting to my LinkedIn feed about career services events and sending direct messages to prospective Employers has helped me the most in leveraging social media efforts to establishing employer relationships.
Hi Sarah,
I'm sorry, I think perhaps there was a misunderstanding. I was asking about how you and your department use social media for your own employer outreach strategies vs. how you encourage students to connect with employers. For example, a Director of Career Services may establish formal goals for their career advisors to increase their LinkedIn network with individuals specifically in a certain industry and monitor/measure results using analytics data.
Another example might be the career services staff using LinkedIn to recruit employer guest speakers, program advisory members, or to develop other programs your school may have such as an employer webinar series, etc.
Yet another example might be to develop an employer group on a chosen platform of recruiters/employers who have hired students/grads and have a continuous engagement strategy with them sharing industry news relevant to them as well as occasionally promoting some of your top graduates who are available for employment. As a personal example, I used to share the portfolios of outstanding graduates and ask employers/recruiters if they had any feedback to share - this was a way to get useful feedback for the student but was also a subtle strategy to "softly" market the graduate to an employer audience without overtly saying "hire this person!"
I've even used social media to help the school recruit and hire hard-to-fill positions for instructors and/or program chairs with relationships in the industry that our department established. This not only helped the school, but it helped our department to have highly qualified industry professionals teaching/leading programs that prepared students for the workforce. These are merely a small sample of examples of how to use social media for employer engagement/outreach strategies to build and strengthen relationships.
There are many ways to use social media for your own employer engagement strategies - I'm wondering if you have any examples to add to the list from which others might benefit.
Robert Starks Jr.
Hi Mr. Starks,
Thank you for sharing that social media resource with me, I will certainly share it with my students!
As far as engagement strategies with employers, we encourage students to research the companies at which they would like to work and "follow" the employers' LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook pages. I also encourage the students to attend any events they see posted on the companies' LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook pages that engages the community; such as networking events.
The market our campus is in is quite small so networking events are KEY. It's all about knowing someone here. By connecting with certain companies of interest via social media mediums the student has a greater chance of hearing about these networking events to in turn grow their network!
Thanks,
Sarah
Hi Sarah,
Thank you for detailing your strategies - this is helpful for everyone to see. Yes, that's right - you exclusively use a third party platform for alumni - what about your employer engagement strategies? Any ideas to share on what works for you? Your students might find the following resource helpful since you are so active in teaching them how to use social media for their career goals - http://slidesha.re/1vZNEUJ.
Robert Starks Jr.
Mr. Starks,
As far as interview preparation, I always instruct students to research their interviewer's LinkedIn page to find out information about them. I also encourage them to follow the company on LinkedIn, Twitter, and "Like" them on Facebook and read the news and information about that company. As far as building a Personal Learning Network, I encourage students to follow industry leaders on Twitter who work in their field of study. I also encourage them to follow companies' Twitter and LinkedIn pages to conduct research about the company and their culture. "Liking" a company's Facebook page is also important because news about the company appears on the student's News Feed. Another important thing to do on LinkedIn that I advise my students to do is to join groups that share common professions, majors in school, or the same interests as the student. This is a great way to network within an industry and also in a common interest group, students can network casually through a common interest they have with another person to help get their foot in the door to a job.
I also encourage students to connect with as many people as they know on LinkedIn because they never know if a friend or acquaintance from some point in their life works at their dream company or may be connected on LinkedIn with a person from their dream company.
As far as building an Alumni network, I believe I mentioned in my last forum response post that we utilize 360 alumni to engage our alumni on a common networking site. We also have a general campus Facebook page that connects current students and alumni to our school on a daily basis.
Internally across our campuses we have a shared Career Services LinkedIn group where all of the advisors can share articles and information with each other to help better serve our students.
In the new year my campus plans to create our own Career Services Twitter account to Tweet job opportunities and department updates to our students.
Hi Sarah,
This is a great starting point as I think it is the easiest thing for students to do - create profiles, follow companies, find jobs. How are you addressing other powerful ways to use LinkedIn and other social tools for things such as company research, researching people for interview preparation, strategically building a Personal Learning Network, or engaging in groups to connect with industry, etc.? I'm curious if you are building any groups such as an Alumni LinkedIn group or perhaps on a different platform such as Facebook? Is your department using any platform to market the CS department?
Robert Starks Jr.
