Hi Kim
Great idea to draw on resources of professional organizations. In addition to gaining a rich source of speakers, you may be able to show students the value of joining such professional organizations. Career services departments are responsible for helping students get jobs and also to keep them. Being a member helps students feel like a professional and as employees keeps them up to date with their industry plus helps them network. So good point about the organizations. Best wishes, Susan
Guest speakers from our Advisory Committee, Human Resources contacts, Office Managers, etc. are a valuable resource and one that should be utilized more frequently. Graduates working in field are also a very valuable resource. We invite them to speak in our "Spirit Assembly" which occurs each phase and also "Orientation" for new students. Graduate speakers are highly inspirational and motivational for students at any stage of their training. I'd like to bring both employer and graduate speakers into the classroom more frequently to reinforce and/or establish the connection between the curriculum/classroom and the students career goals.
HI Mitzie
Your comments show the value of outside community and industry resources. You also demonstrate the need for having a huge number of people to draw upon. You can never have enough advisors or industry representatives. It takes asking everyone to particpate in your career center programs. What are you doing to ensure you have a large population of industry experts to call upon? Best wishes, Susan
Hi Wendy
Tracking info and compiling results is a challenge but vital to department success. It's best to get away from manual data collection as soon as possible. You could use ACCESS as it is an easy database to use. I am at the Career College Association conference. I'll check for some suitable software among the exhibitors. Problem is most software for schools is very complex. That's why we suggest ACCESS or similiar. Best wishes, Susan
As Placement Coordinator for a business college, I have established a working relationship with various staffing agencies. Representatives from these agencies are more than happy to participate in our Network Programs. They give valuable insight on what employers need, look for and expect in a prospective employee. There is also input on our curriculum from this, as to what skills we need to teach. This becomes a win-win relationship. We graduate well prepared students and our staffing agencies utilize our graduates to fulfill their clients' needs.
Christine Jimenez
We use several different sources for obtaining guest speakers, advisory board members, job fair exhibitors,etc. One on my favorite is to invite a former graduate that I helped find a job several years ago to speak with classes,serve on our advisory boards etc. Some of these graduates are now the ones doing the interviewing and hiring our graduates. They always want someone just like they were when they graduated, someone that can grow within their company! We are very active in several organizations including Birmingham Society for Human Resources, Birmingham Metro Chamber of Commerce, Homewood Chamber of Commerce, Alabama Association of Colleges and Employers. We also have different program directors, staff members and others active in the different organizations for each major we teach. All help with making sure we are training for what the industry needs now and in the future.
HI Christine
Thanks for sharing information about your relationships with staffing agencies. Can you tell us how you developed the relationships in the first place? How to retain them? Record keeping? Pitfalls?
Thanks, Susan
Hi Betty Sue
What a perfect example of how to use resources in the community plus count on your alumni to improve your school and placement. Your comments also demonstrate how easy it is to network throughout the community. Faculty and staff need to be encouraged to maintain memberships and affiliations in professional and community organizations. Someone needs to track these memberships as well. In that way, if you want something to be announced about the school, you have great networking vehicles to make that happen.
Thanks, Susan
The majority of our programs are in allied health, our other programs are in business. Fortunately many of our employers offer their services as guest speaker. We also have an advisory board that meets twice a year. We've asked some of the members to serve as speakers or to recommend someone we can approach. Joining community organizations is a great way to network with professionals who would be glad to speak to the students. For example, we recently asked the President of our local chapter of the Society for Human Resource Managers to speak to our Career Development class. We also asked some Paralegals from a large law firm to speak to our Legal Assisting class. Some guest speakers are able to obtain CEUs from speaking--so everyne benefits.
Hi Carol
Sounds like you have a forumla for getting speakers from your local community and health care and business communities. I know that for some school placement departments that is a problem. What do you account for your success in getting a steady supply of volunteers? It sounds like someone is on top of this and is doing some great networking. Can you share with us what information is most valuable for students to hear from people in the field? Do any of the speakers become mentors?
Thanks
Susan
Chambers of Commerce networking events and Business Expos are good sources of contacts with employers. These are more relaxed settings than other networking events like Career Fairs, and allow for longer relationship-building conversations.
Hi Harrison
Good point about networking events where you can have time to build relationships. What kind of follow up do you do after these events? Could you invite people to visit the school and talk about job interviews, review resumes, provide a picture of what life is like on the job, how to gain a promotion? Another way to network is to contact employers of your grads (with their permission). Find out what employers think about your training. Did they have to provide additional training for your grad or do your programs prepare job ready employees.
Lots of ways to maximize the contact with people in the industry.
Best wishes
Susan
Susan,
A local professional organization (for the industry in which we train) recently conducted a "Career Day" event--inviting students from area colleges to attend for a minimal fee. Seminars were held on topics such as job search, entry level positions, and how to negotiate salary. I'd like to suggest that contacting professional organizations for speakers may be advantgeous, since it benefits both the organization, through its promotion, and the students, through networking and professional development opportunities.
Sharon
Hi Sharon
This sounds great. Gives students lessons first hand from the people already in the industry. Interesting that the organization charged. Maybe they wanted to be sure the students who attended were serious. You could probably also organize career days at your campus and invite people from the industry to give specific presentations. Also invite senior students and alumni to attend.Brings alumni back to learn about any new programs and offerings you might have.
Best wishes
Susan
We have an Advisory Board for our school as well. The director of career services is the person who sets up the meetings and also asks people from the community to be members of the Board. Our Advisory Board meets once a year as a full board. This is the meeting where an annual report of the school's progress is given. We also discuss curriculum changes at this time. Proposals are presented both by the program directors and the board members.
Each member of our board is designated for one particular program, although most of them can speak for other programs as well. At other times of the year, we have program specific meetings with just those members of the board related to that program.
Hi Alison
Sounds like you have a great Advisory Board and are using its members' talents effectively.Meeting once a year keeps the pressure off the board members. And it sounds like periodic meetings with certain individuals gets you the feedback you want. If you don't already, you might want to have email meetings. Pose a question or challenge to everyone via email and start a dialog. Or a web log.
Best wishes
Susan
It was thrown around at a meeting here just a while ago that the school should offer a free class (most likely just for one Saturday) to various employers who have hired our students. It would give them an opportunity to see the instruction first hand, as well as give the employers up-to-date information on what we're teaching.
Hi Mathew
Interesting idea to offer a free class to employers. How do you plan to structure the class? Will it be a demonstration of an actual learning session? Will you provide information that will be of use to employers? What about using the time to get their feedback about your learning materials, curriculum, equipment, etc. You could find out what learning objectives are missing from your training to ensure your graduates are work ready.
Best wishes
Susan
We work a lot with vocational rehab students, and train in computer technology. We actually find that many of the counselors don't know that much about computers even though they are constantly using them day in and day out. And as for employers, sometimes they have technical demands, and the reason they are hireing is becuase no one currently at the company knows much about computers.
The idea would be to structure it around what is already being taught, just condense it into a one or two-day workshop. If the counselors enjoy the class, no doubt they will want to send more students to us as well as gaining some tips and tricks they can use at their job. And if employers enjoy the session they'll want to hire our students because they'll realize the quality of education our students recieve. Of course it would have to be concluded with some sort of survey. I can imagine if it didn't go over that well and they feel they have just wasted their saturday they'll want to tell us about it.
Hi Mathew
What a great marketing strategy. Give counselors something of value and also let them see first hand what your school does. Getting something useful for nothing certainly gets people's attention. They will better understand how your offerings can benefit their clients. And yes, surveys are essential. You want to know what is working and where improvement is needed.
Great idea,
Susan
