Another Great Use for Facebook
Readers of this blog know that I love social networking sites in general and Facebook in particular. While they have their downsides, they make college campuses smaller and friendlier to students and that is a wonderful thing. But other than being used to meet friends on-campus, those who study Facebook are often stumped when it comes to listing tangible benefits.
The career service office at Sewanee: The University of the South recently came up with a wonderful program for using Facebook. Rather than the career service office fighting Facebook or trying to scare students away from it as some career service offices have done, Sewanee embraced Facebook by creating Facebook groups for Sewanee students who are interning in Washington, D.C.; Atlanta, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; Charlotte, North Carolina; New Orleans, Louisiana; New York, New York; Dallas, Texas; and Austin, Texas. The office staff then invited Sewanee students to join the groups and communicate with each other by emailing the students and posting messages on their Facebook site.
The result? "Students joined the groups almost immediately," said Lisa Howick, internship coordinator at Sewanee. The city with the most interns was Washington, D.C. According to Howick, 40 students joined that Washington, D.C. group. They built a community by sharing information about housing, job opportunities, and more. Students in New York were informed that a university alumnus wanted to be contacted by students who were interested in working for her publishing company. She received three calls the first day. Awesome.
Source: Campus Career Counselor
I'm glad to see that one University is actually embracing the idea of Facebook. It does get scary knowing that many companies will make judgements based one what is one an individual's page. Usually it's nothing bad, but things can be taken out of context (like inside jokes).
Hopefully when more companies and school hear about the successfulness of this they will soon follow suite. It's bound to happen since our world is full of leaders and followers.