I am the Career Advisor for Medical and Dental Assistants, however, the main University is a technology school. My challenges are that my graduates are not technologically educated so it is very difficult to convince them to join social media when some of them do not even know how to attach a document to an email. Unfortunately, our graduates already find it difficult to do their job search online and then get even more discouraged when they realize each application can takes hours and their entire job search can take longer than a full time job. Many students don't realize that they have to apply to hundreds of jobs to get one phone call. Bottomline is that job search skills and expectations need to be implemented throughout their education so when the time comes to do the actual job search they know how to proceed.
In reviewing the thread responses, which are very much appreciated as I jump into this discussion, I tired to assess the broader topics we all seem to share are challenges related to professional development, relationship management, verification processes, and developing linkage for placement opportunities.
Overall, I feel our biggest challenge area is related to overall networking. It seems to include all of these other categories and requires us as advisement professionals to be vigilant in our individual and shared efforts to continually build and maintain strong foundations in these areas so in the end we achieve outcomes.
Sometimes our biggest challenge is in our own campus environment. When I came on board almost 4 years ago, I certainly knew that our department was highly valued however, we had to make a stronger effort to become more visible, and our processes better understood by the campus community as a whole. This has been highly effective and helpful over time as we sought to build a bridge to the classroom for the professional readiness of our student body as well as building the bridge to our business community for candidacy preferences.
Our biggest challenge is always keeping our own department mission and vision fresh and evolving as needed to consistently meet our KPIs.
One of the top challenges my career center faces is getting into contact with students who are MIA. I have found that they are more likely to respond to a Facebook message, however, rather than return a phone call. I think this is because Facebook is an easy way to communicate with people at your leisure. They also are able to see my picture and gather some information about me, if I had never spoken to them before. They are able to see what friends of theirs I have "connected" with, which could also build my credibility in their eyes.
