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hey
this is Joshua waldman author of the bestselling book
job searching with social media for dummies and creator of the award-winning
career blog
career enlightenment dot com I train career professionals
on integrated social media job search tactics and speak with students
around the world to help them get ahead if you're a career advisor
working with college students then you've probably had
a hard time getting students to show up to lectures
about LinkedIn or personal branding unless they're required to
or maybe you're serving pizza and
to make things even more difficult the LinkedIn class you've probably been
teaching these last few years
is probably outdated due to recent platform changes
with LinkedIn yet you know that students use social media
but getting them to use it for their career feels like herding cats
keeping up today
with social seems like impossible task
for a lot of career advisor after all you didn't get into this job to be a technologist
you got into this to help students make the most of their lives
in their careers you probably just fell into the technology teaching
because you had to or maybe you think LinkedIn is pretty cool
which it if you can relate to
these feelings then you're not alone after speaking with students
and their career advisors around the country these are the very same
frustrations
everyone is feeling right now so
I put together these three tips that you can use to make
your job showing students the right path for social media in their careers
even easier. first your students
don't need another clicky class. Sure. social media might be
relatively new thing for you but let me tell you it's
not new for them they've been facebooking and tweeting and texting
since they learned how to write
my daughter had her first
email battle in fifth-grade so the last thing students are interested in is
attending a seminar
with LinkedIn features on the screen using the features
for virtually any software is second nature to them
we might struggle finding where to find the Advanced search
but they probably know where to find it intuitively
and they just google it if they don't know
which is really it's true so here's what they're really concerned
about when they come to a seminar first they're worried
that many years have social media use not always mature years
might land them into trouble. those drunk Halloween beerbonging photos
now might and out for have a bad experience
when looking for a job so not knowing how
deep those all pictures are going to affect their employment prospects
concerns and the last thing they need to hear
from their coach is more fear so how can you show them
what employers are actually looking for and then how students can be sure that
their name is on solid
seconds they might be tech-savvy
but they're not professional yet think about it
how can a 21-year-old person
know what to put in a LinkedIn headline or summary
without having gone through the process I've introspection
and research what they want to do when they graduate
this uncertainty is very unsettling so when you say
here's where you put your headline they're thinking I have no idea what to talk
about here
so your job should be here's what you put in your headline and how you craft it
the way to overcome these challenges
to stop focusing on the technology class and instead focus on what the technology
can
do for them is the way to solve this problem frame the technology as
strategy professionalism thats with the really
really need to hear rather than offering a LinkedIn class
offer a class like how to get recruiters more excited to hire you online or
maybe don't make these 3 online job search mistakes
a little pushed like this can really help boost attendance
when you're running LinkedIn and social media classes to help students get ahead
second tip sometimes they see US mom or dad
the schools that i've seen with the most successful adoption of social media for
job search
have leverage their alumni network or brought in outside experts and otherwise
stepped back from the role of parent and let someone else
preach I know it's not your intention but
for many career advisers they really do struggle with this one
luckily there's an easy fix you just need to identify a few outside experts
paid or alumni willing to come in consistently
and deliver the message that you need when I speak with school that always ask
the Career Center Director
what is that one thing that you've been trying to get your students to do
a good presenter will always try to reinforce your message
and your Voice
finally social media is part of your students
daily experience just like your career center is part of
the total campus experience find ways to integrate
with other on campus channels. particularly media channels
I recently interviewed a school for a blog article I wrote about their use of
social media and was so excited to learn how well
they've integrated with the messaging with the rest to the campus
for example they have a Pinterest board showing
great dorm room furnishings from the Career Center
every Friday they run funny friday contests in the whole campus takes part
and enjoys that
so by coordinating with other social media channels on campus
like the tweets from the athletic Center attacks
from Student Activities they're setup in a system
cross promotion that something you can take advantage of too
they've seen an increase in foot traffic a 30 percent by adopting this
integrated communications approach it's definitely something that every school
should take advantage of so this here it is again just to recap
number one focus on teaching job search strategy first
and how to use second I social media as a tool second
strategy first. bring bring in outside voices to encourage participation and
finally
adopted integrated social media communication strategy to reinforce the
idea
that the career center is simply part to everyone's campus experience
if you resonate with any of these tips and you think
you might adopt them for yourself I'd love to hear from you when you sign up
here
I'll send you the first chapter of my book job searching with social media for
dummies
each week I share valuable tips like these
that you can use to help navigate the often tumultuous world
social media job search I've also developed
a comprehensive curriculum that you can't plug and play with slides
and syllabus and lecture notes so that you don't have to recreate them
the wheel every time you start to teach a
social media oriented job search class
or a workshop these are two to our seminars
with timings in lecture notes in class exercises with an accompanying
workbook call the social media job search work which is available on Amazon
if you want to take a look at it
so all these resources are available for you
just by signing up here and get in touch with me
more than happy to talk to you about the challenges that you're facing
teaching the students how do you the little bit mature
when it comes to their career think you are so much for your time
again this is Joshua waldman and authorities said