Unconscious bias can creep in on hiring processes no matter how self-aware and educated your hiring team is. Unfortunately, one bias feels more like a ‘resource’ for many employers – looking at their college for new hires. 

Career counselors are an invaluable resource for guidance as you prepare to enter the workforce. As a college student, you have likely stopped in to pick up a few tips for your first college job interview or to grab an application for an internship. However, one thing you may not have considered is how you can use your school’s career service center to grow in your career long after graduation.

The counselors at your college or university can help you identify college alumni resources that will provide guidance as you map your post-college work life. Whether it’s professional mentorship, networking opportunities, or access to job postings, career counselors understand the needs of college graduates and how to connect them with the right people and organizations.

Better yet, they continuously look for ways to help alumni grow in their careers. Your college professors and supporting staff invested a lot of time preparing you for the working world. You better believe they care about your success.

Here are just three of the ways career services at your school can help you down the road:

When students come to the Career Center asking for help with an internship resume, you know you’re doing something right. Your reach should expand beyond just identifying the right major or starting the job search process. All those steps in between, including landing a great internship, should take up a significant part of your wheelhouse as well. 

Are you just managing your employees, or are you tending to their needs? Employees want to feel like more than cogs in a machine; they want to be able to bring their whole self to the job. Organizations that create opportunities for employees to thrive will be rewarded with increased productivity and decreased turnover. However, organizations that don’t tend to their employee experience will find their best people walking out the door. 

According to a recent article in Forbes, tending is “intentional relationship building that increases a sense of community and wellbeing.” Tending to your workforce increases engagement, improves employee productivity, and can even attract top talent to your organization. 

So how do you create a company culture that tends to employees and encourages them to thrive? These four methods are an excellent way to start tending to your team:

“Communication is key.” This well-worn statement remains ever true in today’s relationships, especially in the workplace. Unfortunately, even in our world of constant and instant communication, the key to effective employee communication is often misplaced.

When you lose sight of the importance of communication, it results in losing quality employees. This could be due to misunderstandings, feeling underappreciated, or the overwhelming frustrations of not fully being in the loop. 

To keep your team satisfied and engaged, don’t make these three employee communication errors that made rockstar employees begin packing their bags:

As workplace leaders, we all have so many tasks to accomplish in a 40-hour (or more) workweek that it’s easy to overlook the opportunities we have to improve someone else’s day. Whether it’s something as big as helping with research for a project or as small as picking up a piece of paper they dropped, little acts of kindness go a long way in boosting employee engagement, team collaboration, and morale. 

In celebration of World Kindness Day on November 13, here are 13 tips for inspiring everyday kindness by setting an example as a servant leader:

Let’s be honest, work is stressful. It’s up to you to create an environment where your employees can thrive and successfully navigate increasing workloads, distractions, negativity, and changes in the workplace. 

According to The American Institute of Stress, 75 percent of employees believe that workers have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago. Additionally, 80 percent of workers feel stress on the job, nearly half say they need help in learning how to manage stress, and 42 percent say their co-workers need such help. It’s up to employers to help employees handle everyday stress. 

Getting a handle on employee stress not only increases productivity and improves overall employee well-being, it also prepares your team to handle events that are even more stressful or worrisome. Tapping into your employees’ emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others.

Here are some emotionally intelligent tips to help your employees better manage stress: