The Post-9/11 GI Bill has paid for nearly 1 million veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to go to school at a cost of about $30 billion since 2009. With an influx of over one million more veterans projected to enter higher education in the next several years, institutions should be prepared to serve veteran students. Military veterans represent a unique type of non-traditional student who must overcome distinctive challenges to reintegrate into the civilian workforce yet many employees never have special training to serve this population.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) Executive Director and… >>>

What steps do you take to make sure each day is a successful one for you?  

Prospective students, parents and policy makers want to know if their investment in higher education will produce a return and they are looking at graduate employment outcomes (placement) for the answer. As institutions consider how to continuously improve graduate employment outcomes, 3 key ideas to keep in mind are shared below:

1. Rethink Career Services – Rather than thinking of Career Services as a department or the “back-end” of a process for preparing students to enter the workforce, rethink career services as a systemic set of strategically designed interventions woven into the fabric of the institution.  How might “career services”

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Intuitively, career professionals knew that volunteering offered a path to employment but until now, there hasn't been comprehensive research to demonstrate the correlation between volunteering and finding employment.  

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Check out this video from the Corporation for National and Community Service 

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Economist Andrew McAfee suggests that, yes, probably, droids will take our jobs -- or at least the kinds of jobs we know now. In this far-seeing talk, he thinks through what future jobs might look like, and how to educate coming generations to hold them.

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This research report provides useful data on social media use among college career services professionals in support of their professional efforts.

Highlights of the Report:

• Career Services still tend to use social media platforms for one-way communication despite the fact that they provide two-way communication opportunities
• Facebook was indicated as the top platform used (88% of those surveyed used it to support their professional efforts)
• 32% of survey respondents indicated a concern of privacy as a barrier to using social media as an effective means of two-way communication when counseling students on their job search
• Lack of knowledge about social

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There is a rising belief from employers that the traditional resume isn't the best way to determine talent.  Many employers, particularly in the tech fields and in programming specifically, are using different means to source, recruit and hire talent.  These employers say there are other ways to determine the best indicators of talent and they are using other means to find talent - mainly the internet.  This brief conversation discusses this growing practice with an example and makes us all reconsider how recruiting, hiring, and consequently, career marketing will change in the future.  

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This is a presentation I have delivered to different audiences.  I am sharing it to help others learn and spread the information among their networks.  I hope you find it helpful and that it sparks your curiosity to learn more. 

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Improving Employment Outcomes and Community Integration for Veterans with Disabilities

MDRC (formerly known as Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation) has published research that discusses the Early Implementation of the Progressive Goal Attainment Program (PGAP) for Veterans as an effective method for improving employment outcomes and community integration.  As most educators know, veterans have unique challenges for integrating into the community (college and civilian) and can struggle with their transition to civilian life and work.  Many of the obstacles are not only physical but emotional and psychological.  Veterans represent a student niche that must be better understood so that institutions can better… >>>

Everyone is guilty of saying something in haste that they wish would have never came out of their mouths.  However, on social media, what is said in discussion threads is searchable and indexed by Google.  Facebook recently announced Graph Search which enhances one’s search ability on the Facebook platform allowing users to conduct more advanced search queries using the data from Facebook’s entire social ecosystem.  One of the implications of this new feature is enhanced people search for the purpose of recruiting.  If there wasn’t already good enough reason for jobseekers to clean up their Facebook (and all other)… >>>

Is it fesable to establish a Career Center within a university library setting?

Great Podcast that highlights why employers are not happy with how prepared recent college graduates are for the job market.  

This is an older podcast series that is still highly relevant.  Social media is a major part of the conversation as a tool to use in a modern job search strategy for today's jobseekers.  How is your career services office using social media and teaching students to effectively use social media?

New Ideas for the Job Hunt Part 1

 New Ideas for the Job Hunt Part 2

As the workplace becomes increasingly fractured, short-term jobs have become a mainstay, meaning that no-benefit, no-strings attached unemployment is no longer the domain of starving artists.  This podcast discusses the "Gig" economy.

43 Million workers are independent and the independent workforce is expanding.  Tracking this type of employment is an enormous challenge yet this type of work is growing for everyone - not just starving artists.  

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You've Got Some Competition, Honey!

• 1 in 4 HR managers receive 50 resumes/job listing
• 1 in 10 receive 100/job listing 

What are HR managers looking for in candidates

• 77% say: relevant experience
• 48% say: specific accomplishments
• 41% say: whether or not the resume was customized to the open position

HR managers also look for keywords in resumes

• Problem solving/decision making (56%)
• Leadership (44%)
• Oral/written communications (40%)
• Team-building (33%)
• Performance and productivity improvement (31%)

Writing a great resume does not mean you should follow all the rules you hear.  Every resume is a one-of-a-kind marketing communication.  It should be… >>>

Our Vice President of Learning Initiatives, Robert Starks Jr., was interviewed by Career Education Magazine on the opportunity for Career Centers to use Social Media to help achieve their goals. Here is the article:

Career education-review-robert-starks-jr-social-media-strategies-max knowledge from MaxKnowledge

You may also want to read:

• Does Your Career Center Speak #Hashtag: How To Leverage Social Media
• A Beginner's Guide to Social Media for the Job Seeker
• Social Score: Will it Determine Your Employment?
• 2012 Veterans Talent Index: Veterans Lack Confidence in Preparation to Transfer to Civilian Workforce

Social media is all the buzz these days but equally fascinating as the explosion in technology we are witnessing is the explosion of innovation.  In the book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, author Clay Shirky says, “We are living through the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.”  Whereas this means there is an abundance of worthless content being created, there is also an explosion of creative ideas and social media is allowing those ideas to spread faster than ever.  Business ideas are no exception as we have seen many technology start-ups, each… >>>

The 2012 Veterans Talent Index from Monster includes important data on the veteran student population and reveals this is a student population in need of particular attention. Veterans lack confidence in their preparation to transfer to the civilian workforce. In what ways can career services and institutions in general intervene? Leave your thoughts and comments regarding this insightful report.

Recently, 60 Minutes did a special on the skills gap in America.  An employer describes the skills gap and says there is a lack of basic communication skills and critical thinking even from those with degrees.  The problem seems systemic so what are the ways in which career schools can respond to help prepare today's college students succeed in the workforce?