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Engagement with Career Services can have the potential to have a huge impact on student experience. The frequent perception of incoming students is that career programming is more geared toward students ready to launch their job search, not begin their campus life. As career educators, you know how monumental the influence of career programming and resources can be - especially when it happens early in the college journey - and yet transactional activities like interview prep, resume review, and preparing actual applications can seem irrelevant, and even anxiety provoking, for students who don’t yet identify as 'career ready.'  

Almost nothing makes us cheer more loudly than career services scaling their impact on student success.  Check out this piece written by our friend Braden Lanham at BYU on how the Marriott School of Business has achieved 90% (!!!) placement employing a student-led service delivery model under the guidance of Career Center Director Mike Roberts and Director of Operations Melinda Maughan.

Last week, uConnect founder David Kozhuk was asked to take part in a panel on education technology at Southern New Hampshire University's (SNHU) Sandbox ColLABorative. The panel brought together regional entrepreneurs and thoughtleaders working to impact how students, educators, and administrators utilize technology to improve outcomes. 

Late last week, we had the opportunity to attend the Career Leadership Collective's Boston Think Tank, a meeting-of-the-minds focused on 'intentionally scaling' career services. When Jeremy Podany, former Executive Director of Career and Corporate Services at Colorado State University, and also the Founder and CEO of the Collective asked us to take part, we immediately answered with a resounding 'Yes please!' For us, there's almost nothing better than spending the day with a tremendous group of thought leaders who work in Career Services - except maybe if it also includes lunch...

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 opportunity.