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A version of this interview originally appeared on Ideometry. Special thanks to Camden Gaspar.

Fintech, foodtech, martech — there’s no lack of shorthand names for the booming tech sectors that are upending the inefficiencies in almost every industry imaginable. Yet, there’s one that has been somewhat overlooked so far: edtech.

Not for long though. The education and learning sector is undergoing some transformational changes, and edtech companies are leading the charge with innovative solutions that are helping schools at all levels better serve their students and run their operations more efficiently. With investments in edtech set to reach $252 billion globally by 2020, it’s clear that the potential of this industry is being recognized in a big way.

In our latest interview series — The Era of Exceptional Edtech — we’ve spoken with some of the most prominent and groundbreaking founders in Boston’s edtech space to learn how they’re helping universities adapt to the rapid technological changes happening today.

To start things off, we interviewed David Kozhuk, cofounder of uConnect. David and his team are working to better connect career services to the rest of the university with the goal of preparing students for the jump to a career as early as possible. Read on to learn how uConnect is doing it.

uConnect @ NACE 2017: Las Vegas

We’re still glowing from our incredible time at last week's NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) conference in Las Vegas. A midst the ubiquitous buffets and roulette tables, thousands of attendees from the higher education industry and some of their biggest and best employer partners came together with their ideas and enthusiasm to forge new partnerships while supporting career readiness.

The uConnect team flew in late Monday evening from Boston (after multiple delayed flights) and set up shop in the Paris Casino & Conference Center, with the goal of connecting with, and learning from, some of the most forward-thinking career center professionals and partner vendors in the field.

What we learned…

This post was originally published on careerleadershipcollective.com 

What if, instead of pushing out largely transactional, event and job related promotions, career service professionals embraced a news feed format and focused on offering career education content that encourages career exploration ahead of recruiting? Fortunately, it’s starting to happen, and when done well, positively influences how students are attracted to concepts, services, and learning

Snapchat and Instagram are a huge part of college campus life these days. An overwhelming number of students use these social media tools; a recent survey done by New York-based advertising company Sumpto found that 77% of college students are using Snapchat daily, and similarly, an ever-increasing number of teenagers and young adults are on Instagram, where almost 90% of users are under 35. The fact is: college-age kids engage and connect largely through social media and this means that career services and other higher ed professionals can leverage these channels to communicate their messages to students.

Here, we want to discuss two specific, largely visual tools, Snapchat and Instagram, and why career service professionals should use them .

When talking to schools, our Founder often says “your ability to serve your students is predicated on your ability to effectively communicate with them.”

Today’s students communicate in fundamentally different ways than their non-millennial predecessors. They use their smartphone’s keyboard, camera and microphone to express themselves, they spend 3.1 hours a day consuming social media, and they almost never read emails not directly targeted to their immediate and personal interests. We are all witness to the biggest shift in communication since the move from radio to television - and the students right outside your office window are the ones leading this revolution.

I’ve been with uConnect for over a year now. Watching the company change has been illuminating and exciting, and having my own responsibilities evolve has been an extraordinary advantage.

Every Sunday (okay, sometimes Monday if it's a three-day weekend) we review and send all of our partner schools a 'Weekly Usage Update'. While users can always find these stats in their uConnect admin dashboard, we email clients key datapoints so they can better understand how their community is engaging with their career resources. In doing this, we hope to support clients in reaching their utilization goals.

So partners can benchmark and improve usage of their uConnect portal, we wanted to create a 'Readership Primer' or essential, brass tacks, list of practices to provide a foundation that ensures career constituents are paying attention to all the wonderful news and information shared through the uConnect portal.

Back to basics for increased utilization in 3, 2, 1...

There are more online resources, third-party apps, and services for career centers than ever. Your career center probably has a library of fantastic online resources scattered across various websites, portals and apps, which means they're most likely hard to find and potentially underutilized. Adding more resources might even confuse your audience base and set you up to compete with your current offerings, decreasing overall utilization.

Before you bring on another resource, whether it be for mentoring, interview prep, or even a whole new career services management system, we encourage you to consider two things...

All clients provide value, but there are some, the 'super client' who change the way we do business for the better. Finding those super clients isn't as straightforward as it might seem, they might be the ones quietly and consistently using your product, and other times, they’re the ones pushing your support team to the limits with custom requests. For an early stage start-up, identifying high-value clients can mean the difference between boom or bust.  

We want this article to serve as a resource for other B2B entrepreneurs who may be potentially overlooking clients that, with a little TLC, could positively transform business.

How can university career centers reach and engage students?

For the second year running, Boston University’s Center for Career Development played host to a unique conference designed to help answer this overarching question. There seem to be a lot of unique ways through which attendees are reaching their students and approaching career center marketing, from emails to social media to tabling and handing out fliers. Below are some of the most popular ideas of the conference.