How to Use LinkedIn University Pages to Recruit

How to Use LinkedIn University Pages to Recruit LinkedIn is expanding their relevance to new demographics day by day. Most recently they launched their University Pages alongside allowing students from the age of 13 and older to make use of the LinkedIn Platform. This is all part of its goal to entice prospective graduates and students in the tremendous career benefits in using this platform. University Pages [are] college specific profiles that offer features tailored to a schools community. With these Pages LinkedIn aims to help education institutions woo new students and stay connected with their alumni â€" Sprout Social Accuracy of People Data There are of course numerous job boards, portals and other sites which are useful for jobseekers, but not all of them are as accurate or trustworthy as one might think. The trouble with generalist job boards can be that employers have to sift through thousands or irrelevant application and assume that what these applicants are stating is the truth. A great benefit of using LinkedIn instead is the credibility of the professional profile through inclusion of the University in question (as well as work experience and other bits). What are Students and Graduates Doing on LinkedIn? Studies showed that students and graduates are actively using LinkedIn to research companies, check out career paths, prepare for interviews, get introductions and referrals, make business contacts, extend their resumes, collaborate with college alumni for advice and opportunities and to find internships and jobs (Higher Education Marketing Blog). LinkedIn Education and Why Companies Should Get Involved “35 % of LinkedIns students plan to use LinkedIn as a primary source for their job hunt, up 700% from two years ago’. â€" Achievers 2012 Study The above mentioned statistic showcases the growth potential of LinkedIn campus recruiting in the years to come. The education tool has established relevance and accreditation to these online professional profiles. By viewing it as a three-sided ecosystem LinkedIn understands that it is a relationship between the Students, Employers and Universities. As a student or recent graduate you might not have adequate work place experience. In that case what is most important is your credibility as a student.  LinkedIn Education gives that stamp of approval in convincing prospective employers that you are in fact qualified. In subscribing for a Premium LinkedIn membership graduates will be able to get enhanced exposure to employers. By not getting involved and creating a company profile on LinkedIn, companies are missing out on hundreds of qualified applicants ready to become employed. Through creating a company profile and staying active on the LinkedIn platform you give students the chance to consider your company and job listings as a prospective career path. Company profiles also help jobseekers to establish a relationship or connection long before the application process. Allow these graduates to get to know your company culture; what you are looking for and your vision for the future. Tips for Recruiting Graduates on LinkedIn Assure that your companys page is complete and accurate. This will show prospective employees that you are transparent and approachable. Have a content strategy for your company page, be sure to put out regular updates about the business, your industry and other useful information.. Do create showcase pages for specific parts of your company, especially if your organisation is large and has many different offerings. Target students and graduates via advanced searches or straight from University pages, be aware that they will both check out the recruiters profile and your company page(s). If you have LinkedIn Recruiter, make use of LinkedIns new CheckIn  feature at campus events to connect with the right individuals and draw attention to the happenings. Track and engage with individuals as you would do when networking. Get to know possible candidates and offer them guidance and assistance in their job search endeavours. Got any other ideas? Please let us know in the comments below!

5 Easy Ways To Increase Your Efficiency

5 Easy Ways To Increase Your Efficiency Increasing the quality and quantity of your work can be a long, hard process, requiring training and perseverance. Increasing your efficiency, however, can be achieved through lifestyle changes, anticipating the day ahead, and learning to work smartly. Follow these five steps to cut out wasted time, focus on what’s important to you and leave more time to pursue the things you enjoy. Plan the night before Whilst you don’t need to schedule in time slots for everything you want to achieve, having a comprehensive plan for the day ahead not only makes you feel on top of tasks and less likely to forget things, but will focus your mind. Creating a visual list that you can tick off throughout the day can be incredibly satisfying, and motivate you to move straight from one task on to the next. Ordering the list in terms of when you’ll complete the tasks, alternating grueling tasks with more enjoyable things that need to be done can provide further motivation, and will ensure that you don’t leave everything arduous to the end of the day. Do anything that can be done immediately When looking through all the tasks you’ve yet to complete, there will always be the odd email that you need to send, note you need to write or small accessible task that needs doing. Instead of scheduling them in for later in the day and having multiple small tasks clogging up your mind and short term memory, complete these tasks immediately. Whilst this may feel like an unnecessary effort at the time, your future self will be thankful when you’re half way through a larger project that you don’t have lots of little things to worry about. Keep organised Organising your time and mentally sorting the day ahead is one thing, but it’s often difficult to feel efficient and focused if your physical workspace is cluttered and dirty. Take the time to tidy and sort the space where you work â€" be this your bedroom, kitchen, or just your desk. If you want to be particularly efficient and your work is complex, create a filing system, and use a colour code to keep things visual and keep yourself motivated. The time that you spend on organising your surroundings and properly sorting through and allocating space for everything will save you immeasurable time in the long run. Recognise what’s important and don’t stress about what isn’t Worry and stress not only saps your energy and is likely to leave you exhausted, it also saps your time, and can lead to a debilitating sense of fear where you are overwhelmed by your work. Try to separate out your tasks and day into what absolutely needs doing and is important, and what can wait or, if necessary, be forgotten about altogether. If a mountain of small things are starting to get on top of you, try to contextualise them by considering a bigger current issue or dilemma, be this in your own life or the wider world.  Cut out wasted time So much of our time is spent staring at screens and sitting motionless at work.  Many office jobs consist solely of sitting and staring. There is no need to add to this amount of time by watching excessive amounts of TV and scrolling through endless social media feeds on your phone. By reducing the number of times you check Facebook each day, and choosing just 2 or 3 TV programmes to watch per week, you could save yourself hours of needlessly wasted time. Alexandra Jane  is the writer and editor of  graduate careers advice  for Inspiring Interns, a  graduate recruitment  agency. Check out their website to see which  internships  and  graduate marketing jobs  are currently available, as well as their graduate jobs Manchester page for further opportunities.

How to Get Top Dollar When Selling Your House

How to Get Top Dollar When Selling Your House If you’re like most Americans, your house is your most valuable financial asset. It may amount to as much as 50 to 75 percent of your net worth possibly more. Thus, when it comes time to sell it, that will also be one of the most substantial transactions in your financial life. In order to get top dollar, you need to be intentional and strategic with your decisions. Four Tips for Boosting Home Value Home values are, for better or worse, directly tied to location. A house with the same age, square footage, features, and lot size might be worth $90,000 in rural Mississippi, but $1.5 million in San Francisco. Although location may set the upper and lower limits on your home’s value, you have more control over other factors. By doing the following, you can boost your property’s value and enjoy more return on your investment. Improve Curb Appeal First impressions are significant in real estate and that goes both ways. If a prospective buyer pulls up to the house and is totally turned off by the sight of weeds, overgrown shrubs, rotting wood on the front porch, and trash in the yard, it’s going to be a challenge to get a full-price offer (even if the visitor likes the rest of the property). On other hand, if that same potential buyer pulls up and is blown away by how neat, clean, and beautiful the yard and front porch are, you’ll have some margin of error to work with. Your visitor will be much more likely to overlook small issues and still put up a competitive offer. So spend some time and money pulling weeds, trimming shrubs, mulching beds, planting flowers, pressure-washing hardscapes, and repainting shutters, doors, and trim work. You’ll get your money back and then some. Modernize Dated Features “While most design issues are cosmetic and can be fixed, the average buyer has a hard time seeing through things they don’t like,” Green Residential points out. “In today’s market, dated design trends like wallpaper, popcorn ceilings, wooden paneled walls, glass blocks in the bathroom, vertical blinds, and shag carpet will keep you from getting top dollar.” Walk around your house and do a critical search for design elements that no longer look contemporary. You may need a fresh set of eyes to do this, so feel free to ask your real estate agent to come along. In most cases, you’ll see a positive ROI if you address these problem areas. De-Clutter and De-Personalize According to a survey by the National Association of Realtors, sellers can take a number of simple steps to increase the sale of their home just before listing. “One agent surveyed recommended that you prepare your house as if your boss were coming for dinner,” 415 Group explains. “It’s also important, they say, to depersonalize the house of family photos so that potential buyers can imagine themselves living in the home. If you don’t have time to do it yourself, professional organizers can be hired to help.” Know When to List Certain times of year are better for selling than others. Though every individual market may have its own particular peaks and valleys, Zillow points out that the first half of May is generally the best month to sell, and Saturday the best day of the week to list. “Nationally, homes listed for sale in this window sold almost two weeks faster than average, and for $2,500 more, compared to average points in the year,” Zillow goes on to say. Get More Bang for Your Buck Be careful not to settle during the process of negotiating a final price. You may be in a hurry to move and buy another property, but it would be unwise to rush at this critical point. These tips should provide you with a better idea of what it looks like to be intentional about selling your home.

The new post-college prestige job is retail

The new post-college prestige job is retail It used to be that the best post-college jobs were the ones that gave you a sense of security (law, medicine) or financial windfall (banking). But the finance industry and grad-school route are both dead ends at this point. The New York Times reports that were experiencing a sea change in the career department because the former favorites are no longer prestigious, and new choices, like teaching and government service, are rising in popularity. But, as college grads contemplate their options for June, and twenty-somethings watch pink slips fly, heres something to consider: The prestige job of the new millennium is waiting tables and folding shirts. Thats right. If you are in your 20s, you should try retail. Heres why. Retail enables an honest approach to adulthood Emerging adulthood makes life in ones 20s more difficult than ever before in history. Being lost is important in terms of navigating to adulthood. And the most dangerous thing you can do in your 20s is try to get around the discomfort of being lost by over-committing to a career. You will change careers five times in your life. You will depend solely on yourself to build your own skill set and forge your own path. So give yourself time to figure out whats best for you. Going to grad school burdens you with an amount of debt that severely limits your career choices. And its a way to prolong childhood by continuing to have someone tell you what to learn and reward you for doing it. Posturing as someone who makes only perfect choices means youll probably end up lying to yourself: Only 12% of people make a good career choice for themselves right out of college. The best way to figure out what you should be doing with your life is to give yourself time to explore yourself and the world. Which means you need time to think. Retail is flexible, and it doesnt take a lot of brain power. This leaves a lot of time and energy to do what you really need to be doing: Trying a lot of things on for size. So the people who are honest with themselves about where they are in life also are brave enough to admit they are lost and should take a retail job to give themselves space to figure things out. Retail gets you the American dream The American Dream is no longer about money and things. Its about self-knowledge. The ultimate achievement is not a huge house and an expensive car. Its a solid family life and self-knowledge to steer clear of a quarterlife crisis or financial meltdown. Kurt Anderson captures this shift in his essay in Time magazine: [Too many of us have been] operating, consciously or not, with a dreamy gold-rush vision of getting rich the day after tomorrow and then cruising along as members of an impossibly large leisure class. (That was always the yuppie dream: an aristocratic life achieved meritocratically.) Now that our age of self-enchantment has ended, however, each of us gobsmacked and reality-checked by the new circumstances, is recalibrating expectations of the timing and scale of our particular version of the Good Life. The best way to give yourself that knowledge is to give yourself time in your 20s. Its difficult to explore who you are after you have kids. And its difficult to focus on yourself once your career is in full swing. So you need to establish a foundation for personal exploration by practicing in your 20s. Practicing a lot. Retail enables this. The new dream job is a combination of jobs retail is usually a part of this, at least to start. Its clear that the age of job security is gone. And the best way to get security is to have multiple revenue streams, so that if one fails, you have a backup. In her book, Marci Alboher labels this the slash life where you have more than one profession and a slash between them. In a nod to this trend, PayScale created a list of a new type of dream job one that affords a slasher life, and also enables the type of control and flexibility in life that accommodates the values of the new American Dream. The dream jobs Payscale cites are freelance, hourly, and generally creative on some level. They validate the idea that the American Dream is not about money but instead about personal growth and control over ones life. It would be great to be able to support yourself in one of these jobs, but its tough going. Especially if you need health insurance. So retail is a stepping stone to the dream jobs of the new millennium. Retail gives you a safety net, a financial cushion, and the flexibility to build a dream career. Retail gives camaraderie something you really need in your 20s One of the most jarring aspects of emerging adulthood is that in college we are surrounded by friends, and after college, our friends disperse. This means that at the time in life where we are separating from our parents, learning to support ourselves, and trying to figure out where we fit in the world, were doing it alone. This is why depression is such a huge risk for people in their twenties, and why a support system is so important. For everyone in the workforce, having two friends in the office can save a worker and a job. But this is especially true for people in their 20s because while other people probably go home to a significant other and maybe even kids, many people in their twenties go home to no one. In an office full of people in their 20s which is most retail and not most offices the shift from college to adult life is not so drastic and lonely.

This chatbot CV is basically the future of job applications - Debut

This chatbot CV is basically the future of job applications - Debut Applying for jobs is stressful. Its impossible to show off your personality in full on a CV. Cover letters are an absolute pain to write. Plus, theres absolutely no guarantee that a recruiter will even read your application all the way to the bottom. After all of that hard work, too. Which is why when I discovered you could create a chatbot CV that can talk to a potential recruiter, I knew I had to try it. ConvBot, created by  Tars, is a tool that can help you create a chatbot for just about anything.  ConvBot is set up like a general business tool. You can create an ordering/booking bot, a feedback bot, and even a customer support bot. However, since were all about careers here at Debut, we put our own little spin on it. How we set up ConvBot to become a chatbot CV There are several different options to choose from when you click on Create a Bot on the dashboard. We decided to go for the Lead Generation Bot because it looked like it would be the simplest to edit. Your ConvBot is made up of something called gambits. A gambit is one single back and forth conversation between the bot, and the person talking to the bot. You can customise each gambit with your own personal messages. If you want, you can add images and emojis too. The only issue is, youd have to copy and paste emojis from an external source, and upload your images to a public service like Imgur. Building your chatbot CVs structure Once I got used to the dashboard, it was time to build my chatbot CV. Im sure if you really dive deep into it, you could create a pretty smart bot. However, as I was pressed for time, I kept it simple. I chose to highlight three key achievements from my career, and set up six different gambits to show them off. Why six gambits for three achievements, you ask? Well, to add interactivity, I gave users the choice of hearing more detail (which will lead them into a sub-gambit), or move forward to the next achievement. As you can see in the GIF, all of the gambits are connected. Looks complicated, but its literally just a drag-and-drop tool to connect all the bits together. Pretty neat. The pros and cons of having a chatbot CV The pros: Its really unique. Jumping on this trend now will make you look super in-the-know. Plus, artificial intelligence is such a hot topic these days. You can control what the person reads, and when. It has tons of personality! It provides a little more insight as to who you are and how you speak. The chatbot CV can automatically redirect to a page of your choice, like your LinkedIn, a permanently hosted version of your CV, or your Twitter profile. The cons: You cant really customise the design in any way. Its such a new tool that any formatting is basic at best. It looks monstrously techy at first, so if you arent particularly digitally savvy, it might put you off. Its not possible to put in a ton of detail (there are no links in this bot), so youll have to use the bot as a supplement to your job hunt, rather than rely on it completely. Overall, the chatbot CV was a fun thing to build. Having said that, its not the best tool to show off  all of what you can do. It can, however, act as a great little extra tool for your personal brand. It could be something you can place in your Twitter bio as a great way for you to introduce yourself, though! Dare to try building your own ConvBot? Take a look at the one we built at this link, and tweet us yours @DebutCareers! Connect with Debut on Facebook and Twitter

Are You Invisible Online Fix It!

Are You Invisible Online Fix It! How do you begin owning digital terrain? It starts by creating the right digital dirt! What am I talking about? Online visibility. You dont want to be invisible online! If you dont appear on page one of Google, you should. And, with a little work, you can create stuff that can get you found. That is, if you care what your future employer sees when they search for you online. In todays On Careers post, I talk about some of the tools that are available to create an online visual impression of who you are and what you do. Some of them are pretty cool. I am not suggesting that they replace your resume, but with the growing consumption of information over mobile devices, more and more people are responding positively to well-crafted images over text. Head on over to On Careers and see what tools you can use to build digital terrain. It is a slideshow a bit like Prezi. And in case you are familiar with Prezi, you can see an example done by a job seeker here. And dont forget video! Make your own slideshow at Animoto.

Human Resources Resumes Writing Style - Learns The Harvard HR Resume Writing Style

Human Resources Resumes Writing Style - Learns The Harvard HR Resume Writing StyleHarvard HR offers one of the most advanced resumes out there today. You may think that resumes are pretty simple to write, but a resume writing style for Harvard is very different than a resume style for any other business school. It's designed specifically to be as professional as possible and you can expect that your resume will be impressive enough to stand out among the other more generic resumes out there. This article will go over some of the basic resume writing tips that will help you become a Harvard student recruiter in no time.Your resume writing style at Harvard is very different from that of any other business school. When you apply for a job in any of the other schools, they will usually ask you to list the names of each of your four references. These are people who work with you regularly or were recommended by your college. At Harvard, you won't have to list the names of these people. In stead, you'll be asked for two pieces of information.You'll be asked for the name of the person responsible for your employee's job description. The same person will be listed as the 'responsible for my assignment' but it will be replaced with 'responsible for my position.' In general, this is a requirement for all job listings at Harvard. You're not even required to list your responsibilities or salary, because the job posting asks for them. The job posting at Harvard lists the responsibilities of your assigned job but doesn't provide you with the salary for that job.You'll also be asked for the name of the person you want to speak to when you submit your resume at Harvard. The person will be listed under the person responsible for your assignment. Again, the same person will be listed as the 'responsible for my assignment,' but it will be replaced with 'responsible for my position.'A very important component of Harvard HR resume writing style is that the job posting will ask you t o submit a letter of reference. The letter should be lengthy and direct, and is free to hire you. There's no reason to include any other letters or other information on your resume. You'll be asked to submit three letters that should each be no more than one page long.If you haven't had much success in your prior jobs, you shouldn't need to mention this information, but you should include your education and work experience. It's important to include all of these because they are what make you unique and different from everyone else. By including all of these parts of your resume, you can dramatically improve your chances of being hired.The employer at Harvard is looking for a good HR professional, so the hiring process is fast and easy. You can send in your resume in less than five minutes. Most companies want a resume in as little as one hour. This is a phenomenal advantage for Harvard students that want to join a company quickly. You will find that you don't have to wait to be int erviewed, so you can work much faster and easier.If you have many resumes to submit, it's important to consider the fact that you should only include your curriculum vitae (CV) in your resume. Your CV will list all of your accomplishments and how much time you spent working at your current job. It will tell the hiring manager how you fit their organization and how you will be able to fit into their job, your next employer. They won't need to see any other documents other than the CV.