Tag Archives: Social Media

Google Stalker: What do search engines say about you?

Image via CrunchBase

Entry by Valerie Petrey, Public Relations & Event Planning Intern, Purdue Liberal Arts Career Development

Have you Googled yourself recently? If you’re internship or job searching, I highly recommend you Google yourself to see how others view you in the virtual world. 

Everyone is always talking about setting your Facebook and Twitter accounts to private, and making sure there are no inappropriate pictures of you on the Internet. Okay, we know to do all of that so when employers Google us, they know we are responsible
 but when they Google us, don’t we want them to see something that will make an impact on them?

Every job seeker’s goal should be to get on the first page of Google. It’s more difficult with names like “Kayla Smith,” but it’s doable. Rather than having your Facebook pop up, what if a well-written blog came up? …

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Career Services: Taking Advantage of Social Networking

Entry by Pat Patterson

Social networking may help you reach your student body, keep in contact with alumni, connect students and alumni with employment opportunities, and market your events.  John Hill, alumni career services director at Michigan State University (MSU), has had a lot of success with social networking:

The MSU career services network’s social networking strategy is to have alumni help it access industries, interest areas, and professions that it wouldn’t be able to reach through traditional on-campus recruiting or career fairs.

“The MSU alumni who get involved in these groups through social and professional media are our low-hanging fruit and it’s up to us to mobilize them,” Hill says. “Social media gives us a ready-made repository to identify them.”

MSU primarily focuses on LinkedIn as there are 135,000 MSU alumni and students using it. Through information and data on resumes, the career services network creates communities that …

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To Blog Or Not To Blog

Entry by Brittney Horn, Membership Intern, Greater Lafayette Commerce

By now everyone pretty much knows to keep their Facebook free of any wild and crazy pictures and ludicrous statuses. This fact is old news by now (or at least I hope so). But what about blogging? Can you blog on your own free will without worrying about future employers reading and analyzing every word you write? The answer is yes. Well, urm, sort of.

You can have a blog that isn’t professionally related, but you MUST be careful at what you write about. If it’s about your life in general, you should be aware of what you reveal. Do you want your future employer to know that you had a 3-day drinking binge to celebrate your birthday? Yeah I didn’t think so. If it’s a specific type of blog such as a food, fashion, music, etc. be …

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Getting Yourself Noticed by New Blog Author Valerie Petrey

Entry by Valerie Petrey, Public Relations & Event Planning Intern, Purdue Liberal Arts Career Development

Hello everyone! My name is Valerie Petrey. I’m currently a senior at Purdue University majoring in public relations and advertising and will graduate this May. To learn a little bit more about me and what I will be blogging about, please read on!

 In today’s workforce you need to have an internship to get a job, and most of the time you need a few. Employers LOVE to hire students fresh out of college with real work experience! This semester I will be sharing experiences of my current internship with Purdue Liberal Arts Career Development (LACD), advice I have received from past internships and my current journey of locating internships and jobs via social media and traditional methods.

The best advice I can give anyone is to take a chance. While it is easiest to …

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Career Services Professionals: Best Practices

Entry by Pat Patterson

Now that students are back to school and somewhat settled in, it is likely that more students will start visiting their campus career services office.  As career services professionals, it is important to keep on top of the best practices in the current market to help students acquire internships and jobs. 

The following is a list of advice from the Intern Bridge’s blog The Intern Advocate, which will help you help your students:

Get a RSS reader account. Find blogs that dole out daily or weekly advice pertaining to job searching and career centers. Add each blog to an RSS reader, such as Google Reader, and make a point to check it at least three times per week. If your career center has social media accounts, be sure to share helpful articles with your students directly!

Read new literature available. There are countless …

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Indiana INTERNnet: The Next Generation

Change is in the air for Indiana INTERNnet.  We are designing a new website that will position the organization to utilize new media in serving our user database populations.  The plan is to unveil the new site in 2011, and here’s what we have in store:

 Email integration to deliver timely, automated communication to INTERNnet users, website integration of social media tools, higher level of search functions, including filtering mechanisms designed to zero in on search results, enhanced matching technologies to provide a robust solution intended to help people discover the best internship match, and improved visability of our blog, Indiana INTERNnation, intended to offer ease-of-use for contributing authors.

Overall, we know we are competing with every other communication channel for the attention of our users and we’re working to make Indiana INTERNnet: The Next Generation a destination site that will offer a dynamic, interactive, and more engaging experience for …

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Employers: Market Your Internships via Social Media

Entry by Pat Patterson

We launched our blog in June, and every so often I will check our Google Analytics account to determine how many people visit our blog and how they find our blog in the first place.  Today, I noticed a trend that somewhat surprised me – the majority of traffic to Indiana INTERNnation is directed from our social media marketing, more specifically Facebook.

This made me think – although all organizations and websites are different, if you are not using social media to market your organization, you are missing out on a large, free opportunity to increase your exposure.  Specifically, I encourage all organizations to market your internship opportunities or at least links to your opportunities through your social media accounts. 

Think about it – Facebook was created for university and college students, a majority of which use Facebook at least once a day.  If you want …

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Reaching Audiences using Social Media

Entry by Courtney Sampson, Marketing and Communications Intern, Indiana State Fair

Social media – talk about a “buzz phrase.” The mere thought of social media evokes some serious emotion from people – You either seem to love and embrace it, or you dread the thought of “tweeting,” “tipping,” or “tagging.”

NEWSFLASH! Here’s the thing: social media is not for every person or every single thing. Well, I guess that’s my opinion, but here’s why: You have to actively update your presence online! Online time = real time. If you’re not willing to update and participate, you might as well stay offline.

The best part about social media is connecting with a virtual community; granted, some of your “friends” and “followers” are neighbors, best buds, and co-workers, but face it, you probably haven’t met face-to-face with a significant portion of your social media community. Why then, would any person (or company, …

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