Welcome to our Blog!

Our lives are becoming increasingly intertwined with the internet. We use it at work, we use it at home, and, thanks to smart phones and tablets, we use it on the go. What’s left behind is a mound of unorganized information. It’s no surprise then that innovative companies everywhere have begun to organize this data and put it to good use. 

This week we’re talking about another social media tool: Twitter. We’ll be discussing what it is, why it’s important for career service professionals everywhere and some best practices to engage students in fun and creative ways.

Employer recruiting on college campuses has been a part of the higher education experience for years. Now, however, with new-found pressure to improve career preparation and student outcomes, recruiting plays a bigger role than ever.

Creating content is hard. You've accumulated all of this insight, but how do you share it with students so that they will listen? This is the hardest part. 

In the Beginning

When asked what inspired me to start uConnect, I usually tell a story about an underutilized career center. While I was an undergrad at UMass Amherst, I frequently visited the career center. So after graduation, when tasked with hiring junior analysts for the private equity firm where I was working, my first instinct was to call the Director of Career Services at my alma mater to coordinate an info session.

Greetings and salutations from England. I’m writing from a little cafe sandwiched between a book store and a hotel on High Street in Oxford. The architecture is stunning, as you might expect, and Harry Potter was filmed just around the corner. Thought you’d want to know.  

Anyway, enough about me. This week I want to discuss the importance of underclassmen involvement in career programming. Recently an article was written by Janet Lorin, a higher education columnist for Bloomberg, on this very topic. The purpose of this blog is to discuss both why and how schools have started moving to this model. 

Hey there. This year we had a tremendous holiday weekend. Pie was eaten, and a merry time had by all. But, as wonderful as it all was, we’re excited to be back in the office. Especially because of the scrumptious leftovers. New diet. I’m eating pie all week.

Ok, let’s get to it. Lately we’ve been blogging a lot about tools like Snapchat, LinkedIn, and about.me. Continuing this tradition, this week we’re talking about Tumblr.

As the Community Manager at uConnect, I think I speak for everyone when I say, Thanksgiving is one of our favorite holidays. It is, at least, my favorite, and I hope my co-workers can agree. If not, we’ll have to seriously rethink our priorities as a company.

On the last Thursday of every November, I usually make the trek home to Indianola, IA. If you haven’t heard of it, don’t feel bad. No one has. Even though it is home to a national treasure: the one and only National Balloon Museum. But, this year, in a change of tradition, I will be accompanying my girlfriend, Izzy, to Larchmont, NY.

As you probably already know, job listings and recruiters are going online. More generally, the whole employment experience is transitioning to the web. Part of this shift is that professional social media sites have begun to replace static application materials; the omnipotent paper resume of years past is dying.

The Conversation 

This past week David and I took a call from a group of budding entrepreneurs at the University of New Hampshire. After attending the local TechOut competition in Manchester, the professor of their entrepreneurship class gave them an assignment: critique uConnect’s business.

They called around midday, just after lunch. Perfect timing. We introduced ourselves and dove headfirst into a discussion of career services. David led off with a couple of questions: have you ever used the career center? If so, in what way? And how does the career center engage with students on campus?