More than 500 million learning-related videos are viewed on the platform every day. These videos are made and shared by a highly-motivated group of creators, such as Linda Raynier, whose videos teach job seekers how to nail an interview or write a resume that gets noticed; or Vanessa Van Edwards, who helps people master soft skills like how to use body language in an interview or communicate a great elevator pitch.
I just came across a job posting for a job in career services supporting online students. Online learning for higher education has grown significantly in the last few years. Inside Higher education reports that in 2017, “The proportion of all students who were enrolled exclusively online grew to 15.4 percent (up from 14.7 percent in 2016), or about one in six students.”
So it’s heartening to see a position that’s dedicated to supporting online learners. It was, however, disheartening to see the job description.
Results from an informal survey from the Career Leadership Collective which asked career services professionals: Which of the following do career teams spend way too much time and energy on?
Here’s a career coach confession: I hate resume critiques. This attitude was wildly inconvenient during my days as an MBA career coach in university career services. At the beginning of the school year my days were filled with helping students revise resumes. As the year progressed many coaching sessions slipped into tiny requests for additional reviews. Few people enjoyed the resume critique experience, me included.
Resume writing is a niche skill that few people master in the course of their career. The process is fraught with frustration. Students spend hours trying to get it right while career coaches spend hours telling them it’s not quite right. All of this so a recruiter can spend 6 seconds reviewing it. And now it’s no longer guaranteed that your resume will be reviewed by a human, as algorithms are increasingly being used to analyze candidate resumes.
The unpleasant experience of resume reviews is usually a student’s first exposure to career services. It’s a lame first impression for a department whose goal is to help students. Worse yet knowing how to write resumes does little to prepare students for a future in which 2.5 million new job types will be created. If career services exists to prepare students for future careers, resume reviews shouldn’t dominate staff’s time.
What if career services didn’t teach resume writing?
The resume of the near future will be a document with far more information—and information that is far more useful—than the ones we use now. Farther out, it may not be a resume at all, but rather a digital dossier, perhaps secured on the blockchain (paywall), and uploaded to a global job-pairing engine that is sorting you, and billions of other job seekers, against millions of openings to find the perfect match. – The Resume of the Future
Telling career services they should stop teaching resume writing and avoid resume reviews isn’t a popular opinion. I raised the idea once at the beginning of the year in my last job. My bosses both looked at me like I was crazy. They promptly ignored my question.I meant it as a thought exercise. I also meant it as a way to interrupt the autopilot that each MBA career office kicks into at the start of a new school year.
When I’ve raised the issue with colleagues respond, they often respond with “But who will teach resume writing?” A quick answer might be YouTube. Another option is VMOCK, Leap.ai and jobscan.co, two platforms which are using machine learning to give resume feedback and guidance at scale. Both platforms provide immediate, visual feedback, including language suggestions, at a scale no career coach can match.
Resume feedback by jobscan.co
Resumes aren’t dead. But in a world of resume reviews by algorithm, LinkedIn networks, and personal websites, they sure don’t hold the key to a successful job search and career like they used to. Career services should cut back on resume reviews now while focusing on the skills that better prepare students for the changing nature of work.
Below are a several focus areas to fill the space of resume reviews and better prepare our students for the future of work. These skills prepare students to adapt to the new workforce, succeed in the college job search, and every job search after.
Upskilling and lifelong learning
It’s something that has been a bit of a mantra in the educational field. Everyone is going to have to be a student for life and embark on lifelong learning. The fact is right now it’s still mainly a slogan. Even within jobs and companies there’s not lifelong training. In fact what we see in corporate training data at least in the United States, is that companies are spending less. As we know right now people expect that they get their education in the early 20s or late 20s and then they’re done. They’re going to go off and work for 40, 50 years. And that model of getting education up front and working for many decades, without ever going through formal or informal training again is clearly not going to be the reality for the next generation.” –How Will Automation Affect Jobs, Skills, and Wages?,
A bachelor’s degree is no guarantee for future job security. Students need to plan for lifelong learning beyond university. That includes understanding options for learning new skills. From online courses to bootcamps to nano-degrees, students need to training on how to identify skill gaps and match them with programs that close that gap. Whether it’s trying out virtual real-life projects, such as those at QLC, or pairing their studies with a coding bootcamp, students benefit from exploring these learning opportunities before they are on the open job market. This goes double for career services that serve alumni populations.
Strategic Research and Data Collection
From LinkedIn and Quora, to Glassdoor and AngelList, students are swimming in public data about companies. Students need to be taught methodologies for identifying and evaluating opportunities using a variety of sources. Let’s reframe informational interviews as a tool for learning and a method for collecting qualitative data through in-depth interviewing. Teach students how data helps them investigate a company to gain insights they can use to outsmart their competition, negotiate well, and plan their next career move.
Ability to Identify Emerging Jobs
Robots may be taking jobs but new jobs and career paths emerging in the chaos. As organizations change and experiment with new technology, so will the existing jobs inside those organizations. With an expected 133 million new jobs to be created from AI and automation comes an unquantifiable number of jobs that will have to change to support these new roles. We must teach students how to find these jobs.
For example the emerging field of conversation design is quite new. Job titles aren’t consistent. Jobs in conversation design include Voice Interaction Designer (VUI), Interaction Designer, User Experience Designer, Conversational Experience Designer, UX content Strategist, Conversation designer. The path into these roles is as varied as the job descriptions. While some job postings call for a background in linguistics, others prefer English majors, and for some a degree doesn’t even matter. A recent job posting for a Voice UI Designer for a virtual cooking assistant didn’t even require a degree. Instead they want someone who collaborates with visual design and software teams and has a love for foreign language. Career services must teach students how to identify and position themselves for emerging jobs.
Digital Marketing
Clean Google search results, LinkedIn profiles, and personal websites are must-haves in today’s job search. Newer HR technology, like Entelo, analyzes a job seekers’ digital footprints to determine if they’re a fit for a role. Students need to create an integrated online presencethat shows off their skills as they move throughout a lifetime of multiple career changes. Since the majority of a job search is done through email, students also need to be taught how to write concise, impactful messages to diverse people they’ll interact with in the job search. In a crowded world of emails, texts, and Slack messages, students must learn how to capture a contact’s attention and make the right ask to reach their goals.
Emotional intelligence and communication skills are top skills for the future of work. For the job search, they’re essential. Yet the ability to have face-to-face conversation is on the decline thanks to increasing use of digital technology in in our professional and personal lives. We must ensure students know how to have authentic conversations with all the people they’ll meet in the job search. Then we need to build on those skills to teach persuasion. Persuasion touches so many pieces of the job search, from informational interviews to negotiation. To persuade effectively, students must identify what they offer and choose the right message and method to communicate it to their audience.
Creative Storytelling
Ditch the elevator pitches. Elevator pitches imply that students will always be pitching in the same context each time (you’ve only got 20 seconds to impress the CEO who’s probably checking her phone in the elevator anyway). They were designed for a time when access to important people was limited – a time before Twitter and LinkedIn allowed anyone to reach out and be seen by executives and founders. Moreover, pitches are static. Today’s job seekers are multidimensional with changing interests and goals over the course of their career. By teaching storytelling, students learn creative tactics to adapt their message in any context and stage of their professional life.
Virtual Presence
Students interact in virtual spaces like Snapchat and YouTube regularly. Let’s teach them to polish their virtual presence so they can present and collaborate in remote environments. With virtual interviews and interest in remote work among college graduates on the rise, students need to learn the skills to succeed in virtual teams. Let’s teach them how to work and build relationships in remote environments, where often their only connection to the team is Slack gifs.
So, to all the career services staff who dream of spending less time on resume reviews, I challenge you. At your next staff meeting, ask the question:
What if we didn’t teach resume writing or conduct review resumes? How might we teach students instead?
You might just come up with a new model for the future of career education.
Nearly 30% of professionals believe their skills will be redundant in the next 1-2 years, if they aren’t already, with another 38% stating they believe their skills will be outdated within the next 4-5 years. – LinkedIn Economic Graph
“So what should we tell our children? That to stay ahead, you need to focus on your ability to continuously adapt, engage with others in that process, and most importantly retain your core sense of identity and values. For students, it’s not just about acquiring knowledge, but about how to learn. For the rest of us, we should remember that intellectual complacency is not our friend and that learning – not just new things but new ways of thinking – is a life-long endeavour.” Blair Sheppard Global Leader, Strategy and Leadership Development, PwC
60% think ‘few people will have stable, long-term employment in the future’. PwC survey of 10,029 members of the general population based in China, Germany, India, the UK and the US.
74% believe it’s their own responsibility to update their skills rather than relying on any employer.
Upward mobility and clear career progression are no longer guaranteed. So how does this shape what we teach students about their careers? Learning to write a resume and taking career assessments seem quite pointless in the face of type of change.
UPDATE: Thanks for your emails! If you’re interested in career services support for international students, check out Get Hired: The US Job Search for International Students. For $29/month, international students get access to online career training courses designed specifically for them.
I’m breaking from my usual posts on algorithms taking over our lives to share insights from the new report by WENR: Career Prospects and Outcomes of U.S.-Educated International Students: Improving Services, Bolstering Success.If you’re new to working with international students it’s worth the full read to better understand your international students’ career ambitions. If you’re a career services director the data can help you build out a stronger international student engagement strategy and support your training efforts. I work with international students through my company GlobalMe School. I’ve got recommendations aplenty to add to this report. So fair warning: #longread ahead (or at least longer than what I normally write. I’m a proponent of lazy blogging)
My Stitcher app is crowded. Week after week I watch all the podcasts that could be slip by, unheard. I have too many favorites and not enough time for all of them. But one episode regularly makes the weekly cut: Leading Lines. Here’s how the podcast for edtech in highered describes themselves:
“We explore creative, intentional, and effective uses of technology to enhance student learning, uses that point the way to the future of educational technology in college and university settings. Through interviews with educators, researchers, technologists, and others, we hope to amplify ideas and voices that are (or should be!) shaping how we think about digital learning and digital pedagogy.”
I’ve worked on both sides of the edtech sector: as a vendor and client. In 2010, I did business development for an international startup. I worked remotely for an international student recruiting platform which gave students all over the world direct access to universities. My days consisted of scouring websites for university contacts, pitching administrators on email, following up on leads, demoing the platform, and waiting. Lots and lots of waiting. I loved our product and was out to convince the world of higher education how we were going to solve their problems (or at least North and South America, my territory). The job was filled with equal parts rejection and learnings. I didn’t know the term edtech then; we positioned the company as a social tool as social media was all the new rage. Though the term wasn’t around, I embraced the edtech hype. I believed that technology could solve many issues in higher education (ignoring the fact I’d never actually worked in higher ed at that point). The startup eventually folded.
In 2014, when I started work in career services at Yale School of Management, I was on the other side of edtech as a potential client. I was on the receiving end of a lot of pitches in part because of the brand name. The thinking goes like this: if a company can claim Yale SOM as a client and post our public testimonial they can sway other schools to do the same. We did the same when I worked at a startup. I remember trying to close a Notre Dame deal to score a brand name to dangle in front of future clients. The strategy works. At Yale SOM my director always evaluated new tech starting with: Harvard/Booth/Wharton is using it, so we should take a look.
In the beginning I had much empathy for sales teams whose emails I regularly ignored. I was ridiculously busy. The emails and requests for time were competing with ambitious students and a department that loved emails and meetings with equal fervor. Occasionally an email would break through (the power of follow ups!) and I’d chat. But the empathy faded over time as I experienced the worst of edtech sales:
Vendors insisting that their dashboard would solve all my problems without actually listening to my problems
Vendors who insisted on following their script. Once a person launched into a lengthy explanation on the basic concepts of data collection, ignoring the fact we were an MBA career services office which collects and tracks data on every student for mandatory reporting purposes.
Vendors insisting on demos when the product had no fit in our department
Vendors pushing to move forward despite my statements that I made zero decisions and didn’t control the budget – I was merely an internal lobbyist and would advocate where possible.
Vendors casually ignoring my questions at conference booths until they saw Yale on my badge; then it was all ears and smiles. (I know it happens and I know how boring booth work is but the frequency in which it happened was so disappointing).
Vendors ignoring the platform fatigue issue in our department (at one point I had students using 6 platforms and even I was tired of platforms).
Vendors with no understanding of UX, a particularly large red flag considering we’re dealing with learning outcomes. If you don’t understand users, how can you support their learning outcomes? Grad Leaders is the worst offender in this case, despite their prominence in the market.
These are the worst offenders of course. To be fair, edtech sales is rough . Decision-making in higher education is opaque. You don’t know who makes the decisions and when. Sales cycles are notoriously long compared to the private sector. Rejection is almost a relief compared to the non-responses. I look back now at some of my sales emails and I cringe. I was definitely a shitty edtech sales person at times (thankfully I’ve improved).
Now I read most edtech coverage with a critical eye. I wonder: did they talk with users before creating their solution? Is their solution based on a real problem? How are users benefiting from this technology? So when I read the edtech news at EdSurge Highered and CB insights I like to balance it with the Leading Lines podcast. I’m also a fan of Hack Education Newsletter, a comprehensive yet critical take on edtech news (and policy).
My relationship with edtech is always evolving. I’ve flipped sides again, having launched a company in the edtech space and pitching universities. But having a critical perspective keeps me grounded as I build and pitch. Podcasts like Leading Lines remind me regularly to consider both the learner’s and administrator’s perspective when designing for education.
“Of the top five skills important to their job, the ones related to “people” skills or emotional intelligence are among the most important, with interpersonal skills (e.g., active listening, persuasion and negotiation, time management) topping the list. Others, like interpersonal orientation (e.g., cooperation, concern for others, self-control), learning, motivation, and leadership (e.g., achievement, persistence, initiative, adaptability), and conscientiousness (e.g., dependability, attention to detail, and integrity) also rate highly regardless of job function.” – GMAC 2017 Alumni Perspectives Survey
So why are Career Services departments so focused on teaching resume and cover letter writing? If not career services, who in higher education is responsible for ensuring students have these skills?
