Why doesn’t my job posting go up automatically? (FAQs 9.1 & 9.2)

Today’s FAQ is broken down into two parts that address the umbrella question, Why doesn’t my job posting go up automatically? Without further ado…

FAQ 9.1 : Why does it take a few hours and/or a few days for my posting to go up?

Answer:  Good question! When you submit your posting, it’s actually added to a queue that includes all of the other pending positions awaiting approval on our end. Depending on the day and our staff availability, that queue may have just a handful of postings in it, or it may have 100+ postings in it. And while we try to move them as quickly as possible (many are cleared within hours of posting), on occasion there is heavy traffic on ZotLink, or other internal Career Center demands (events, university holidays, etc.) that may contribute to a delay of a few business days. When this happens, we’ll often pull additional team members off their duties and ask for their help with approving jobs, to ensure that your position is posted as quickly as possible.

FAQ 9.2: Well, why do I/my job postings even have to go through an approval process before I can use ZotLink?

Answer: It’s in our students’ best interest for us to screen and verify employers and the opportunities they present. We do our best to ensure that each employer registration is legitimate, and that each posting meets our qualifications. By giving us the time to do that, we can trust that you agree our mission to make our students’ needs a priority. 

Hopefully this sheds some light on things! 

Until next time,
DBO

Spring event wrap-up

Whew! It’s been a whirlwind here for the past few weeks. I finally wanted to take some time and share pictures from our recent Health Professions Graduate School Fair, and from last week’s Spring Career Fair.

The basics, to help students navigate

A tiny sample of our Marketing Team’s extensive efforts

Concert? Sporting event? One of our UCI Dance Teams? Nope, it’s the Health Professions Graduate School Fair!

View from the inside of the Health Profesions Graduate School Fair

The calm before the storm of the Career Fair

Career Fair check-in (note the photo booth in the back, which offers free professional headshots for LinkedIn profiles)

Career Fair, in action – so many good conversations happening that no one could stop to pose!

Coming up, we’ll be sharing some data about the population of students that attended the fairs this year. Stay tuned!

Anatomy of a Career Center

This post could also be known as “The Many Employer-friendly Spaces Under our Roof.”

Those who’ve visited our blog before may have picked up in previous posts that there are people at the Career Center who are here solely to work with employers. Though, for today’s post I wanted to discuss the spaces in our center dedicated to employers. Some of these areas are here only for employer use, while others have double-duty and help both recruiters and students. Here’s a visual (take note of the blue shady areas!):

Let me offer some details on the less-obvious ones…

• Interview Rooms: Can be reserved (for free) by employers hiring for full-time jobs or  internships
• Library: Can be reserved by employers looking to host “drop-in” hours (much like a professor’s office hours). 
• Training Room: Can be reserved (for a charge) for employers looking to host info sessions and networking events. Employers who volunteer to host workshops will also find themselves using this space.

Hopefully offering this as a visual really shows just how much of our center is available for you. The good news? Anytime an employer is coming to recruit on campus and to use one of these areas, we will help get the word out about your visit.

 Interested in a tour?  Let me know!

-DBO

Top 5 Posts & BRB

[Update 4/13/12: new posts will resume next week, April 16-20. See you then!]

Employer Relating will be on a *brief* hiatus beginning tomorrow, March 23, and will resume again during the week of April 9. It’s not a huge gap in activity, however just long enough that some of you may have started to wonder.

In the meantime, I wanted to offer you to our Top 5* posts of all time for your reading pleasure. Judging by these dates, you’d think the blog didn’t exist until December but I promise you it dates back to May 2011, when it was previously named Live from OC. Enjoy!

5 – Jumping into action (originally posted on January 6, 2012)

4 – MPACE pictures, part 2 – Everything BUT the social (originally posted on December 14, 2011)

3 – Can you email out my job description for me? (originally posted on February 16, 2012)

2 – If I tell you what I’m looking for, can you send over a student to work for me? (originally posted on February 27 2012)

1 – Building your internship Series* (I’m lumping all of these together so there is at least some variety to this list. Originally posted January-February 2012)

See you in April!

Will you refer me to a faculty member who can recommend their best and brightest? (FAQ 8.0)

Answer:  Well…that’s actually not as easy as it sounds. There are thousands of faculty members on UCI’s campus. While it’s possible that some of them are open to responding to employers in between their teaching, research and other academic commitments, others may simply not have the time to help. Some will even refer you right back to the Career Center, which is really the hub of campus recruiting. There are many that have great relationships with the Career Center, and we trust that they use their own professional judgment when it comes to supporting their students’ career efforts. We don’t ask them to dip into job placement on top of that.

You can also look at it this way – is a professor’s opinion of “best and brightest” the same as your HR Office’s? What about classroom culture vs. office culture? Even when they do have the credentials that our faculty members do, they are still strangers to you. How do you know that you will agree on what is best for your organization? So, unless you already have a relationship with a specific faculty member, we recommend that you not spend the time researching and reaching out to folks you haven’t met for hiring recommendations. Their responses will likely vary, and you’ll be putting in a lot of time with no guarantee of results.

All things considered, can we stop you from contacting faculty members? Well, no. But for the reasons outlined above, we recommend that you work with the Career Center and conduct traditional recruitment on campus. Trust me, we have plenty of options for you!

Is a Facebook profile the new Resume?

We’re noticing a new trend here in the college recruiting world, and it’s the idea of social media replacing traditional job applications. In the past month, we’ve been approached by two rather reputable organizations (one very large, and one more local) who are conducting their intern searches via Facebook. I am torn between two responses to this idea:

• GenY reponse: How interesting! And new! And exciting! Wait…all of my friends will see that I’ve applied. What if I don’t want them to know? What if all of them apply too and then weaken my chances? Or, what if my current co-workers that are Facebook friends see that I’ve applied?  Hmm. I’m not sure how I feel about this.
• Professional Career Services response: How interesting! And new! Wait…applicants will be revealing pictures and personal information? That’s not supposed to happen during the pre-employment process. This could get messy…the EEOC doesn’t like it when that stuff comes up. Hmm. I’m not sure how I feel about this.

I think it’s a bit too early to know where this trend will head but my guess is that we’ll see more companies trying it before the laws catch up.  In the meantime, as always, the UCI Career Center will not be endorsing any recruiting efforts that ask for a picture or prohibited personal information from applicants. Let us know if you have questions!

If I tell you what I’m looking for, can you send over a student to work for me? (FAQ 7.0)

Let me start out by saying that we love helping employers. Love, love, love it. In fact, we have a team of folks whose duties include supporting employer recruiting efforts. However, as much as our roles involve helping off-campus folks, we ultimately have to keep what’s best for the students and for the university in mind. Which brings us to a question that we get fairly often…

Question: If I tell you what I’m looking for, can you send me a student employee?

Answer: I’m afraid not. The size of our student body makes it impossible for us to know the skills and qualifications of each student, so we are not able to recommend individuals. It’s simply not fair for us to only recommend from the small (in comparison) pool of students we know individually on a campus that has tens of thousands of people. On top of that, we don’t know your office culture well, so we are unable to discern what kind of person would be a good personality fit for your team. Lastly, most students that we encounter want to know what they are getting into before they begin a job.  Ultimately, we want to see students happy with their career choices, but as you can imagine, the chances of that would likely go down if we were to pick jobs for them.

This is what we are trying to help you avoid.

That said, we can give you some suggested recruiting strategies to help you find your desired candidates, and we’ll do our best to support you along the way. Hopefully you agree that this is the best of both worlds!

For those that are ready to learn about what services and resources are available, feel free to reach me via email at dena.o [at] uci.edu

Can you email out my job description for me? (FAQs 6.0)

Answer: Ooh. Probably not. First, this is may not be as effective as you think. Email is fluid – inboxes fill, messages go to junkmail, things get deleted on accident (or on purpose), subject lines are skimmed, important messages are missed. However, ZotLink is a (semi) permanent home for the opportunity that students can know and trust. We recommend that you put your posting in a secure place, like ZotLink, so that students know how to find it. On top of that, it’s rare that a student will search for jobs in their inbox. They go to ZotLink for that. Wouldn’t you want your opportunity to be in the mix?

Something else to consider – what would happen if all 1,899 jobs that are currently active in ZotLink were sent out via email? Or even if 10% were sent? Students would block all Career Center emails and they’d likely stop paying attention – I know I would!  Simply put, we do want Career Center services to be confused for spambots.

More often than not, instead of sending a message through the Career Center, I’ll encourage the employer to target particular student organizations. Contact information for most is available via UCI’s Campus Organization homepage, so employers can send emails themselves. Side note – if an employer wants to reach one of our Club Affiliates, we can help with that, too (logos of current Club Affiliates are on the employer homepage of ZotLink). On the rare occasion that the Career Center helps send out a bulk email, it’s handled on a case by case basis, with a targeted audience in mind.

This is what we are trying to help you avoid.

 Hopefully this sheds some light on things! 

Until next time,

DBO

How about letting the schools visit you?

Last week, a media and entertainment company invited me and a number of other representatives from local schools up to their campus for an afternoon of introductions and discussions about their internship programs. They certainly weren’t the first organization to do something like this (I’ve attended half a dozen or so other similar events in my year here at UCI), but they were the most recent, so I wanted to bring it up to all of you. The reason? I’ve found that these events can be a great use of time.

The agenda looked something like this:

• Started with a few minutes of chatting & networking. A few trays of snacks were set out.
• HR team introduced themselves and played a short video about their organization
• Other Intern Supervisors in the room introduced themselves
• School representatives introduced ourselves
• HR team gave a short informational presentation about their internship opportunities
• The HR team then facilitated a short discussion about how we can work together and help interns succeed.

Bam! 90 minutes, done. In that short window of time, their organization successfully informed multiple universities about their internship opportunities, and made us aware of their policies, procedures, and recommendations for students who apply. We also saw their space, met a number of employees, and got a sense of their culture. I am sure that all of us went back to our campuses discussing what we learned (I know I did), which I think would make it a successful event in their eyes.

Admittedly, I don’t know about all the planning that went into it. The particular company I visited last week was organized (right down to pre-printed nametags) so I’m assuming that they put some time into. That said, my guess is that is was still more efficient than visiting all of our schools individually.  For those organizations that are recruiting a heavy (or steady) volume of interns/recent grads from a number of schools in their region, I think this type of event could work well.

As always, I‘m open to brainstorming or hearing more ideas – just let me know! You can find me at dena.o [at] uci.edu

-DBO

Building your Internship – Summary and Resources (Part 6 of 6)

We’ve made it, friends!  Six posts later, here we are. As promised, below is a summary of posts, along with some resources to help you down the road.

Part 1 – Laying the Foundation

• Organizational goals for hosting interns?
• Departmental goals for hosting interns?
• Intern duties and learning objectives?
• Required Intern qualifications?
• Mentors/supervisors in each department hosting interns, and their goals?

Part 2 – Structure & Compensation

• Where will the intern(s) work?
• When will the intern(s) work?
• How are we compensating the interns?

Part 3 – Recruiting your Superstar Interns

• Job description
• Where to post
• What else can be done

Part 4 – Getting Started on the Right Foot

• Prepare the Team
• Prepare the Space
• Welcome!
• Help them get connected

Part 5 – Evaluating Performance & Concluding the Internship

• Let them know measures for success
• Ask for their feedback throughout the program
• Hold an exit interview
• Stay in touch with former interns

Resources

It is my sincere hope that this collection of posts has been helpful for you and your organization. But you definitely won’t want to stop here! Below are suggested resources I’ve shared:

• US Department of Labor’s Fact Sheet #71: Internship Programs Under The Fair Labor Standards Act – self-explanatory. Every employer hosting interns needs to read it, and those who are thinking about unpaid positions need to memorize it and recite it back 50 times. Okay, maybe not 50, but at least until you get the idea!
• NACE  – the National Association of Colleges & Employers, the big daddy when it comes to guidelines, policies, and procedures. A wealth of information. Don’t miss their Postion Statement on US Internships, or their 15 Best Practices for Internship Programs.
• MPACE – the Mountain Pacific Association of Colleges & Employers, a regional arm of NACE with mostly West Coast & Rocky Mountain members. There are multiple chapters of NACE, MPACE happens to be where I belong.
• Intern Bridge – self-described as “the nation’s premier recruiting consulting and research firm.” I haven’t had as much exposure to InternBridge as the other organizations above, but the information & research I have seen from them has been helpful. They have eye-opening data on paid vs. unpaid internships and how the differences affect both employers and students.
• Your local Career Center – Many universities have someone in a position like mine, handling employer relations. You may also see someone in an “internship coordinator” role. These people are a wealth of knowledge and can often share specifics about  your region, your industry, and even the major or student population on their particular campus. Don’t be shy! 
• Small Business Trend’s “How to Make the Most of an Intern”, which has been my favorite article on this topic so far.

I’ll continue to keep you updated as I come across new resources. In the meantime, happy planning and keep in touch if I can be of further help!

-DBO