We use facebook to communicate with graduates. Some of our grads have created other pages that they link into ours so they can keep in contact with their classmates. I haven't really gotten into too many more things like Twitter and linkedin because I really don't know how to use them properly and we have to make sure it is in standards with what corporate wants.
Social Media has played a big role for our career services department. It has been an essential element in helping our graduates get placed in there field of study.
We utilize the following social media sites: facebook, twitter, and constant contact.
For facebook and twitter, it has been a great way to inform our students (audience) of positions that have become available. It is a quick and easy way to get the word out there and also to communicate potential opportunities for job placement for our students.
Constant contact is a great way to inform companies about our graduates. A lot of times, these companies will communicate with us to post job openings for there company. This is a win win situation for the company and our students.
Hello Kathryn,
Constant Contact has great software tools to manage your email and social campaigns - it's great your school has invested in this resource for you to use. I noticed you say you use social media to inform students of job openings and that it has been essential in helping graduates get placed. This raises 3 questions for me:
1. Does your use of social media differ in any ways from how you use email? Why or why not?
2. How have you been able to correlate success in graduate placement to your social media activities?
3. In what ways other than information dissemination can you possibly use social media to enhance your career center objectives according to the course?
Robert Starks Jr.
we use social media as a avenue to put out job leads as well as staing in contact and locating grads.
We also use social media to promote events on campus and it usually a great response.
we use social media as a tool to contact alumni who are not responsive and also to post job opportunities and event in the campus community. It is a great success
Robert:
We just started an Facebook page for the school last year. Now we were thinking of hooking into Twitter. Since I now have some new ideas from this course, I can not wait to get started. I personally have just gotten a Linked In acct. Hopefully we will be able to built relationships with the students this new way of communicating. We do have past graduates that stop in from time to time and let us know what is going on with the MIA graduates. Love this new info!
Hi Theresa,
Some people struggle with what type of Facebook account they decide to use. I'm curious, can you share the variables you considered that led you to choose a Facebook page vs. group or profile account? What goal(s) will you focus on having your Facebook page help you achieve for your department and why did you feel the Facebook platform was particularly strategic in your efforts?
Thanks for sharing.
As a film and television school, we have found that social media is an integral part to our student's success in reaching career objectives. We have realized that it is not enough for students to just explore one social media platform such as Youtube. We encourage and reinforce the use of as many as possible. There are everyday people on YouTube who understand this and have more subscribers than some of the large billion dollar corporations. This encourages students and gives them the outlet to display their work. Because in our field it is not enough to have a diploma, you have to demonstrate what you have done.
Hi Daniel,
One of my experiences working with film students in particular was the challenge of helping students understand the value of a network like YouTube as a portfolio tool to show the world their work vs. a repository for ALL of their work. In other words, students loved sharing even if the work was not their best and this was a challenge for career services trying to help students put their best foot forward. Have you had these challenges? How do you manage them? Beyond showing work and building audience (subscribers, followers, etc.), for what other specific purposes are you encouraging students to use social media? What is your message to them, how is it delivered and....are they getting it?
Thanks for contributing to the discussion!
Robert Starks Jr.
1. We have a CS facebook page used to share events, career resources and encourage student/grad accomplishments.
2. We train some grads/students to use social media to research and contact potential networking contacts/mentors.
3. We use social media for data mining.
Having just opened our Career Services Department at the College, we are currently exploring options for utilizing social media. Although the College itself utilizes a social media page, it would be helpful for Career Services to become more engaged with this type of media.
Hi Shawn,
It's good that you are starting early! Many people dive into using social media accounts without clearly defined goals, strategies, or ideas of how to measure results. Additionally, there are often unrealistic expectations and many things overlooked and not considered. I recommend taking your time in the course and of course, ask questions as you have them. Many career services departments use social media for different things so there are a variety of ways you can use the tools to help you accomplish your goals - you just have to decide what those will be and strategize from there!
Robert Starks Jr.
We are currently learning about social media for our career services department. I completely agree with everything we just learned, we need to be come experts. This is going to be the new way that people engage with each other, and being that we are here to help people, we need to be able to build relationships with our graduates, personally and through social media.
Hi Karina,
Excited to hear your enthusiasm for this topic. One of my favorite social media experts, Jay Baer, said people need to realize that social media has transformed to a skill. We don't think about it now but the telephone, fax machine, and computer were seen as simple "tools" when they were first introduced to us and they became skills when they became an integral part of our daily work environments. Using phone communication effectively to quickly develop rapport, sell products/services, and provide customer service are examples that we see all the time. Social media is now used in every-day business environments whether formal or informal and whether or not individuals are skilled or not. Thus, understanding the nuances of social media and having a different mindset that aligns with the culture of social communities, the expectations of users, and the communication styles/patterns of targeted audiences has now become a skill in its own right.
Robert Starks Jr.
Hello to all... I am just beginning this course and can say I have already realized that I can gain new information and most certainly can improve the usage of social media as a departmental resource.
I must say that I, as well as my staff, use/ have used, social media as a way to both link with student graduates and to try to track those graduates that are difficult to communicate with after they have graduated. The social media sites most often used have been Linkedin and Facebook; resulting in moderate successes.
I am most definitely enthused to become more informed, via this coursework, and to improve our strategic approach to student/graduate engagement.
Happy Thanksgiving to All...
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
