Get Your Students Hired
This is a general discussion forum for the following learning topic:
Advising Students on Using Digital Career-Marketing Strategies --> Understanding the Web
Post what you've learned about this topic and how you intend to apply it. Feel free to post questions and comments too.
I learned that it is important to manage your online presence. It is also important to use other tools along with your resume when searching for employment.
I believe we are seeing the same 'forced change' as we saw in the early 2000's with the increase of home internet and cell phones. Some parents/grand-parents at the time refused to accomodate their lives to the change and a decade+ later, are the ones slowed down tremendously in their efforts to book Dr's appointment, airlines tickets and program their cable/smart tv's.
We are seeing the same force change now with 'old resumes' vs new. We HAVE to accept that the old way is just that; old! The public is forced to be digitally available & capable to be able to compete with the increased competition the job's have created, enhanced by the birth of the 'stay-at-home' workforce that COVID provided.
Employers are depleting HR positions and replacing them with 3rd party AI companies to digitally sift through resumes prior to a human every looking at it. 80% of these resumes were created using old teachings from a general high school class x amount of years ago and have been terribly added to again and again over the years.
Very interesting read. The presence of; and value in; an active social media presence and digital footprint is a valued asset in todays career market.
Understanding the functions that technological tools, fulfill will further help the institution, and the students to create and expose their talents and skills, to make them known in the world of work.
From this module, I learned about some of the more recent trends in employers' consideration of candidates, such as requesting them to complete challenges rather than focusing on their resume. While this is an interesting approach and definitely provides more focus on a candidate's aptitude in certain domains, especially adaptability and analytical skills, it removes the focus on past performance as a predictor of future performance. In the right setting, this may be useful and I will share the information with students to be aware of such trends.
The most valueable information that I learn was about SEO. I am currently taking an SEO cert through the Hubspot Academy to help me better understand how it works.
While I'm not a huge fan of what we are calling "Social Currency", I can see why it would be beneficial for companies to recruit and hire employees that have a positive and beneficial presence (or brand) on social media. Rather than looking at past achievements on a static resume, being able to determine in real-time how a potential candidate would work to solve problems would be a great way for a company to find the best candidates for their positions. As a career counselor, it is important to understand how recruitment is changing in this new digital environment and be able to counsel students to have intention with their social media presence and know how to use it to be noticed.
The downside to social currency is that it can also cause false "judgements" on individuals if they don't have enough followers, or enough subscriptions, etc. Some of this kind of rating system is based on subjective assumptions that can be extremely damaging.
The web portal or online presence is the "entrance door" for anyone in the job search and often the first filter is the Human Resources Department that prevents talent from reaching the final part of any job process, today is the assessment testing
I learned that companies are already tracking things like candidate influence, sentiment, and career scores based on data collected from online activity and engagement. This was eye-opening because it can lead to companies making early judgments about candidate fit. Advising clients about how they interact with social media and teaching them how to analyze potential interpretations of those interactions will be my next step.
I learned that as Career Counselors we have to stay current on trends in hiring so we can best meet the needs of our students and put them in the best possible hiring position. Reminding students to be mindful of their social media footprint is always going to be key and part of the coaching conversation. It’s interesting that there is a way for businesses to aggregate data from the web to find candidates and predict fit.
Social media and social networking are two different things. There are other meand of social networking that do not involve the social media. Although you can use social media to social network it doesn't have to be so. If you do not know how to mix the two, stay away from social media.
A social media presence can help or hurt you depending on how you craft your exposure. I also learned about the idea of looking at skill abilities and not resumes.
Companies are having candidates complete a practical application over the web to guage abilities and knowledge. Also, the electronic media age is here and we have to change with the times, be aware of our brand and what it says to potential employers.
Applicants need to preferably maintain social media presence that they would not need to change if a future employer was looking at it.
Social currency is incredibly relevant today. Who are you and what do you do. I'm sure potential employers look through the web to find out who this person is that they are potentially hiring. I agree with the articles that resumes are going to change and they'll be much more dynamic and have embedded material. Sites like Linked-in will connect with more and more third-party sites to easily send your information over in a much more intuitive way than now.
Already students want to know where they stand in the process. Did they get my resume, is it in the hands of the hiring manager? Have I made it past the first wave? With the information in pockets, people want to know how they fare in the thick of the competition.
It is improtant for students and graduates to understand the significance of creating their own brand. This will help them stand out to employers and recruiters
I had not heard that Resumes could be replaced by professional social media pages such as linkedin, but after reading this I could see how this could happen. I know people visit my pages on my professional media pages often.
Companies check websites to look for potential employees. Some people have lost opportunities for jobs because of negative information on their profile pages. The internet is an excellent tool to brand oneself.
Discovered new sites & different philosophy when advising students about getting hired. Resumes look at past accomplishments rather than the present and websites like MindSumo focus on real life skills.