Placement Assistance
What are some of your biggest challenges with placement assistance and meeting the placement rates, and how have you overcome these?
When we were first starting out meeting the placement rates made me very nervous because we are unable to place most of our students. I have since learned how to properly calculate the students that are available for placement. Most of our students are enrolled by their employers, and therefore are already employed, and unavailable for placement. But, when our program was licensed, I initially thought these students would count towards are overall placement rate.
Currently, the biggest challenge with placement assistance and meeting the placement rates is student involvement. Many times students have chosen not to be contacted by prospective employers, which decreases our chances of being able to place them. Additionally, many students are hard to keep in contact with, i.e. not returning calls or responding to emails. During the course I try to overcome those barriers by explaining to the students the nature of our correspondence after they graduate with the hopes that they may be more likely to respond.
Many of our graduates are offered employment at their clinical externship site. For those who are not, the biggest challenge, I find, is finding employers who are willing to accept new or unexperienced graduates. Some of the graduates have a difficult time during the interview process. Our placement department is excellent at dealing with each student on an individual basis to determine how best we can help him/her.
In our case, the biggest challenge is helping students understand that placement occurs during non-traditional working situations (e.g. freelance work, contract work, overnight hours).
We overcome these challenges by communicating with students available opportunities. The use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) allow us to keep tabs on most students post graduation and allows us to see what they are doing work related.
Some challenges with placement include getting students to be consistent with their job search, and taking test to get certification. We have begun to offer tutoring for students preparing to take a certification exam. This has increased the number of students taking the exams and increased the number of students passing the exam. Also giving students who are job searching a set goal for the number of employers there are contacting for week helps with increasing thier conistency. Somethimes they have an unrealistic expectaion of how many employers they should be contacting. Although, we have not solved all the challenges related to placement, these minor changes have been helpful.
Most of the challenges we face in the Dayton area is finding the students stable employment and in a facility that will take them without experience. We have begun have the clinical sites that are willing to document the student's skills and experience they received at the clinical site to show some proof of experience. As for the stability issue, we have been trying to pre-screen some of the area facilities to determine their current status before sending an applicant there.
Finding employers who will hire our new graduates is sometimes challenging. Quite often they are told they do not have enough experience even after completing an externship. Our Placement Dept. works closely with our graduates in their job search.
Our biggest challenges with placement rates are the economically depressed area we are located in (not true when the school was founded over 40 years ago), and the willingness or ability of graduates to travel to work.
Some of our biggest challenges include graduates of the program never getting back to us regarding their placement in the field. We must really track and "stay on" graduates to get back to us with the information that we need for verification. Once a student has graduated, passed their boards and is working in the field, sometimes they forget that we need that information.
The biggest challenge in placement is when the students must pass a state exam first, i.e. massage therapy and cosmetology. We are overcoming these challenges by offering more review classes to the students.
I think one of the biggest challenges we face is when licensure is required for employment. We have other additional reviews or tutoring sessions to help students out while they are waiting to take their licensure exams.
Our biggest roadblock is getting our students employed after completion of their externship. Some the students are luck enough to be hired right from their externships. Other students have difficult finding jobs because employers only are hiring students with experience. At times, when a student on their externship shows initiative, willingness to learn, and becomes part of the team the doctor will give them an opportunity to be hired. Some of our student struggle getting hired due to poor interviewing skills. If this is the case our Placement department will bring the student back in and help them build their confidence in how to interview.
My school also requires a state board license. The last day of class, I offer 8 hours of review prior to state boards. I understand not all schools can do this but I take it upon myself to offer this review. It gives the students a chance to ask any questions, fill out and complete any paper work that needs to be submitted and be clear on what to take to boards.
Most students prior to graduating are already clear on where they will be setting up their practice.
The biggest areas in which placement rates can be challenging is in programs with licensure. Students who must pass a licensure exam before they can work in the field (Massage, Cosmetology, Esthetics, Nail, etc) impact placement when they do not pass their licensure exam.
To assist with this, our programs offer review courses to prepare students for these exams. Instructors also work on making sure classroom tests are of similar formats to help prepare students for the types of testing they will encounter in their licensure exams.
I agree with all the above. But in addition, there are always the students who get cold feet and feel intimidated by the enormety of the Licensure test. They keep coming up with excuses as to why they are not yet ready. Time flies by and their eventual employment falls outside the cohort. All we can do is keep encourage them and offer review sessions.
Students who do not have transportation to get to a job interview or once offered a job a way of getting to work everyday. Students who decide they don't want to go to work in the career field they have just earned a degree in.
The hardest part of placement assistance, is getting communication back once they graduate.
With the world wide web, many students look to themselves to find employment on Craigslist or other job boards.
We have had a very difficult time getting students to respond to our communications about job placement. Some decide they really don't want to be in this field after all and just ignore our requests for information about how they are doing and how we can help. Others are just very relaxed about replying to us and it takes many, many requests to get any information. There are a few who stay in close contact and respond to us immediately.
A key component in successfully meeting placement rates is establishing strong and on-going relationships with employers. Additionally, we strive to maintain contact with former students as many of our graduates move into hiring positions.
I believe that is a flavor of the month question. The challenge with meeting our placement rates is market driven. If the market is satuated at the time our students graduate placement is difficult. Additionally, we have found although students learn a skill their customer service (soft skills) were lacking. To overcome these issues we spoke with our externship partners to get a grasp on what they were looking for in an employee. We familiarized our partners (potential employers) with our programs and school via of guest lecture. We also beefed up our soft skils module and incorporated soft skills training from the beginning of the courses. Finally, we taught the students to think out side of the box and seek employment related to their training.
