Ask the Experts: Answering Great Questions from Job Seekers

One of the pleasures of managing a team of talented, dedicated employees is seeing one of their ideas take root and flourish. Case in point: content coordinator Candice Arnold recommended that we resurrect our Ask the Experts questions and answers feature using our blogging software and integrating it with our customer relationship management software, Salesforce.com.
Candice’s vision was quite an upgrade over how we used to do it: email the questions to the couple of dozen experts, receive their answers back in the bodies of their emails and sometimes attachments, copy and paste their answers into html templates, and upload the web pages. The entire process took hours for our staff and the experts. The new process has saved everyone a ton of time and led to a ton of great answers by the experts who choose to address the questions being asked by students searching for internships, recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs, alumni, and employers.
Each week, Candice sends out an email through Salesforce to the experts who have agreed to answer questions. None answer all of them. Some answer a lot and others answer a few. The choice is theirs. Here’s the email that Candice sent earlier today:

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Jobless Grad Sues College for $70k – Claims Career Office Didn’t Help Enough

Now I’ve heard just about everything.Trina Thompson, who may win the award for making the stupidest career move ever, has sued her alma mater, Monroe College, for $70,000. Her claim? She’s been unable to find a job since she graduated with an information technology degree in April and she blames the school’s Office of Career Advancement (a/k/a career service office) for not trying hard enough to find her a job.
Trina’s mother — surprise, surprise — is pretty vocal in all of this and completely backs up her precious daughter and completely slams the college. Pathetic.

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University at Buffalo Hiring New Director of Career Services

Yesterday’s blog article about Black & Veatch Corporation hiring a new college relations leader struck a cord with some of my followers so I thought that I’d follow-up with a similar blog article about another job opening but this time on the other side of the fence. I just saw a posting on LinkedIn from Dan Ryan that University at Buffalo is hiring a new career services director.
Interested? Contact Dan. For those who have not yet had the pleasure of communicating with him, Dan is one of those people who everyone in the industry seems to know or at least be acquainted with. At least as important is that I’ve always heard only good things about Dan and the work that his team does. It is so critical to work with good people. Those who work with Dan get that.

Webinar: Everything Internships For College Career Services Professionals

Wednesday I wrote about our new webinar series for employers and college career service office professionals and discussed in some detail the first of what will be hundreds and perhaps thousands of webinars that we’ll deliver over the coming months to:

• Recruiters, hiring managers, and other employer professionals;
• College career service office professionals;
• Admissions office professionals;
• Consumer marketing professionals;
• Job seekers / candidates; and
• Parents.

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Check Out the Insights by Career Services Experts Blog!

For college students and recent graduates who are looking for expert advice and relevant information on their paths to success in the real world, they should visit CollegeRecruiter.com’s Insights By Career Services Experts Blog. On our blog, readers will find blogs written by college career service office professionals. This blog was created because CollegeRecruiter.com wants students and graduates, as well as employers and contributors, to know that there is a place where career services experts share their knowledge. So, how does the blog benefit you, the college students and recent graduates?

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New Webinar Service Warmly Greeted at #SHRM09

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 2009 annual conference opened yesterday afternoon with a keynote by legendary CEO, Jack Welch. Most of the 10,000+ paid attendees then made their way from the main presentation room at the mile long New Orleans Convention Center over to the massive exhibit hall to begin their discussions with the hundreds of exhibitors as well as snack on catfish fingers, gumbo, mushroom caps, beer, wine, soda, and more.
The exhibit hall was open from 4 until 7pm yesterday and traffic to the CollegeRecruiter.com booth was pretty good from 4 until about 6:15pm and then dropped off a cliff. By 6:45pm it was much harder to spot attendees than exhibitors but that’s pretty normal for these types of events as the reality is that most of the attendees come into the exhibit hall for the free food and drink and then leave to enjoy their evenings at local restaurants and bars. And given that this year’s conference is in New Orleans, there’s no shortage of either.

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Attendance Way Down at #NACE09

I’ve been hearing rumblings from a number of college career service office professionals, employer representatives, and vendors that this week’s National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) 2009 annual conference should be a great learning experience for all but there will be far fewer in attendance than in previous years. The reason? The economy has crushed the travel budgets for many organizations.
One career service office director told me that she lost her entire travel budget for the 2009-10 school year and expects to have nothing in her travel budget for 2010-11 either. Nevertheless, I will see her on Wednesday as she is flying in for the day and attending at her own expense. That’s the kind of dedication to your craft that you don’t see often enough in any profession.

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See You at NACE09

Caddy Rowland, Paul Bell, Lauren Berger, and I will be in Las Vegas from Tuesday through Thursday next week to attend the National Association of Colleges and Employers 2009 annual conference. I’ll be doing a presentation Thursday morning on the future of on-line recruiting and CollegeRecruiter.com will unveil our brand new booth in the exhibition room.
Will you be there? If so, drop by and say hello. We’ll be making a few heads turn with an announcement and it would be fun to discuss it with career service office professionals, hiring managers, human resource professionals, business partners, and others face-to-face.

Get the inside track with your college career center

Article provided by Brand-Yourself.com
College career centers represent a wealth of opportunity, knowledge, and experience in regards to the job search process. Unfortunately, these offices are also highly underutilized by the college student population. When I was in college, I visited my school’s Career Development Center a grand total of two times during my four years. Now as a staff member in Career Services, I can see how utterly stupid I was to squander such a valuable campus resource.
Think about it: career counselors work with students and employers all day every day. They live and breathe the job search; they know the ins and outs of resume writing, interviewing, negotiating salaries, and finding job opportunities. Many of them have been doing this work all their adult lives. (The most senior member of my office has been in his role for the last 25 years.) Doesn’t it make sense to use the considerable expertise of these folks instead of embarking on the job search alone?
In addition, Career Services staff members have a number of personal and professional connections in a variety of industries. They usually hear about job openings before the general public, and they keep up to date with the latest trends in hiring. These are the people you want on your side during the job search, so that when they hear about that special job opportunity in your niche field, they immediately think of you and drop you an e-mail.

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Best Blogs Written by College Career Service Office Professionals

One of the best bloggers to emerge over the past year or two is Willy Franzen of One Day, One Job. Last June he posted a blog article that listed the 10 blogs which, in his opinion, are the best written by college career service office professionals.
Like Willy, we here at CollegeRecruiter.com want to see more blogs written by those in career services because we know that they have tremendous wisdom to share with their students but also with students, recent graduates, and alumni from all schools. In an effort to make it easier to follow what is being written about at all of the career service office blogs, staff writer William Frierson compiled and recently updated our blog of blogs: the CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Career Services Experts Blog.
Is your school’s blog on our list? If not, let William know. We’ll be happy to add them right away!