A college career service office professional emailed me earlier this morning to ask my opinion about whether colleges and universities should allow multi-level marketing (MLM) organizations to post jobs to the career service office websites and interview students on-campus. My answer:

I wish that I had an easy answer for you, but MLM employment is a tricky one.

On the one hand, we’re talking about educated adults, some of which could thrive in that environment. Not everyone wants to go the traditional routes and I don’t think that we should pass judgment or dissuade them from doing so, even if the work isn’t our idea of attractive. There are some very legitimate MLM’s such as Avon and so, to me, the issue isn’t whether MLM’s are inherently bad or immoral. The issue is whether the specific employer is and that could apply to many government, corporate, and non-profit jobs. Is it the role of career services to evaluate every employer and put up roadblocks to students who disagree? Even if we said it is, how feasible is that?
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Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads

By Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads

In another sign that job seekers and employers are disconnected from one another, the Wall Street Journal noted in the article Giant Resumes Fail to Impress that “more universities are pushing their graduates to complete e-portfolios: web based dossiers that showcase writing samples, class presentations and other evidence of skills…”

According to Educause, (a non-profit, that we guess does the due diligence on subjects like this) over half of US college students, many of them MBAs, are using the expanded resume approach up from 7% in 2010…and it is only expected to increase this year.

Eventually the article quoted a few employers like Marie Artim, TA VP from Enterprise Holdings who simply told the truth about the subject [paraphrasing]: we don’t see it much and if we did we wouldn’t use it. (more…)