(This post was updated on 6/22/2020)

The summer months typically offer a quiet time for career counselors to tie up loose ends from the previous school year, check in with students working summer internships, and prepare for the fall semester career fair. Even with the world operating virtually this summer, it’s still a valuable time for networking and sparking new relationships with employers. 

Career counselors are the bridge to building lasting connections as students transition from academics to the business world. No doubt, you’ve witnessed firsthand the positive impact networking has on your students’ careers. It allows students to connect with mentors, find internship opportunities, and even land jobs before graduation. This year is no different.

Of course, you’ve already guided students toward building a strong network, but times are changing. Share some of these networking ideas with your students to help them make new connections this summer:

(This post was updated on 6/22/2020)

College graduates are quickly learning the high expectations for their first job out of college aren’t exactly going to be met the way they pictured. There are many perks they hope to find at their first job that end up missing.

It’s important for career counselors to fully understand the anxieties of college students and the extent of their expectations surrounding that all-important first job.

Once you know what those lofty expectations are, here are a few ways to handle them as their career counselor:

As the experts job seekers turn to during the job search, we all have go-to pieces of advice we dish out when they need support. But with so many changes happening in the way people find jobs, are some of our traditional job search tips becoming outdated?

Just as we no longer encourage job seekers to send out their resumes through snail mail, there is other advice we need to take out of our repertoire.  Here are four common job search tips we need to stop telling our job seekers:

This post was updated to bring you the most up-to-date tips, October 2020.

More employers than ever are using video to interview candidates from across the country. Students and job seekers are tweeting links to their portfolios to employers. The modern digital world is moving fast, and it’s changing the rules for employers and job seekers. The same goes for those who give career advice to professional and student job seekers, too.

Whether it’s news, the latest music video or an answer to a burning question, most of today’s information is accessed online. People search for answers 5.8 billion times each day on Google alone.

It seems fit that career counselors should also hang out in this space to help do what they do best — advise others. One of the best ways to do this is to use blogs and social media to build a personal brand and become online thought leaders.

Use your online presence to relate to those whom you advise. Chances are, they are on social media trying to establish a following, too. If not, they may need to get out there for the sake of networking for a career.

Here are some tips for building your personal brand through today’s online tools:

Career counselors, you’re probably wondering, “How can a newsfeed of gifs and memes possibly make me better at giving career advice?” Well, if you use your professional blog that way, it probably won’t.

Sixty percent of businesses use a business or company blog to communicate with the information-seekers of the world, and these blogs receive 528,000,000 page views each month. That’s a lot of exposure for a brand. Why aren’t all career counselors doing the same?

Blogging offers professionals and students a unique way to network with others on a global scale. Here are a few reasons you should blog to connect with your job-seeking audience: