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For too long, career services has been an afterthought. Now it's time for career services to be in the driver's seat, leading institutional strategy around career readiness. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth interviews with today’s most innovative career leaders about how they’re building a campus culture of career readiness… or what we call Career Everywhere.
Amy Ballard:
Thank you so much, Meredith, for having me and to the uConnect community as a whole. It's really wonderful to be here today. And hi everyone joining me, whether it's now or later, and welcome to Online Career Development that reaches all ages, programs, and places. I'm so delighted to be in a virtual room full of career development professionals today because it's such a unique space that we occupy and particularly in the online world. It's always a joy to get people together who are exploring this concept of how we reach folks in the online spaces and ways that we make this field even more effective and connected for online learners. So let's get started.
Meredith did a brief introduction there. Thank you for that. My name is Amy Ballard. I'm the online career coach for Eastern University. And I'll share a bit about my story today, but my background actually does not come from the career services world.
I started this role in January of 2025, and my background instead comes much more from the adult education and professional development world. I'm an educator at heart and I bring that into my practice as a career coach. And I've seen that across many of you that I've interacted with through different organizations and also in the Career Everywhere community, that that's a value of many of our practices. And so I felt very at home drawing that into the career development space.
I myself am an Eastern University grad twice sober, but I came back to the community a year and a half ago to fill this role working with our online students. And I'm excited to share with you what I found building this from the ground up.
So today I'll start with a little bit about Eastern University and our online students. And then I want to get into something that I believe will all be able to apply in different ways to your unique populations and needs in the online space. And that's about what makes a good gathering online. And through all of this, I'm going to be sharing some of my own successes and flops and growth and learning. And I hope that I'll be able to hear some of yours as well. So feel free to use the chat and of course the Q&A at the end so that we can connect on some of those spaces.
So I want you to start with me by imagining that we're in a lake. It's a very beautiful clean lake. So imagine the best lake that you can in your head. Maybe you have one that you particularly love. And while we're out here swimming in the middle of the lake, we're given the task of building a dock.
This proverbial lake is where I started my work. I had joined a team who had done an excellent job of managing both online and our on campus content and appointments and needs over the years with a very small team. And as I joined as a new position as the online career coach, it became very evident that we needed some new systems and supports. And so I began to envision my work as this lake of online learners and all of our programs where it was all there, I had to find a way to bring it together. And it became my main goal and task to provide a career development landing space for our online learners and to connect with other docs that I could spot in the lake. There was a lot happening here and yet it felt a little disconnected. And so part of the central theme that you're here today is really making those connections to make a meaningful program for the adult learners.
So with this, just a little background about Eastern University and what we're working with. Eastern University is located in St. David's, Pennsylvania, which is just outside of Philadelphia. So we have our on campus population and then we have very robust online programs that are continuing to grow. Eastern's a nationally recognized Christian university, and we're rooted in faith, reason, and justice. So that's the mission of the university and it informs the kind of content and education that the students are getting in their courses, both on campus and online and also forms a unique identity in the types of careers and interests that Eastern University students gravitate towards from that learning.
We are approaching 10,000 students. I mentioned that I'm an Eastern graduate and when I was a student, I was a much smaller school and has grown exponentially over the years. And so the fact that we're approaching 10,000 and that two-thirds of those are online, we are really re-imagining what it means to be an Eastern student and what the needs of those Eastern students are.
So for the online student population, we are looking at a lot of challenges. There are really diverse age groups. In my experiences with meeting with students, I have met with our students as young as 18 and as old as 65 and one-on-one appointments alone. You get a really big variety there. Some folks are retiring from a corporate career and wanting to switch into social work in this Connects chapter of their lives so that they can make an impact on their community.
Some folks are in a really rural area and have family care responsibilities. And so it's much easier for them, even though they're a more traditional age student, to be in this online space so that they can have access to do their courses when they're able and not be constricted by the commute, the expenses of living on campus, and they can still meet the needs of their family commitments and other things going on in their lives.
We also have really diverse programs online with really varied requirements. So we have everything from associates of arts programs all the way up to PhD programs and we see everything in between. The largest conglomeration within the online students are our graduate programs and particularly in data science as well as the MBA are the largest two there, but we do see a little bit of everyone in these programs.
They're coming from all over the USA and parts of the world. Just a few weeks ago, I met with a student who was joining from Indonesia and it was 2:00 a.m. their time. So I felt very humbled, but they chose to make an appointment at such an early hour of the morning, but they're coming from across the world.
And also we have new terms and new graduates every seven weeks. So running on these smaller seven week terms, students are able to get really impactful information in a short time and complete them in these short cycles so they're able to move through their programs efficiently. But also that means we have new people constantly coming in these seven week rotations, people progressing through their programs and then also have new graduates all the time.
So if you join today and you are here wondering, "Wow, Amy, did you solve all of these problems that are on the screen?" Unfortunately, I have bad news for you. I did not solve all of the problems because there are a lot of challenges in this space. But what I do want to share today is what I've learned from working with this large variety of people, how I've been able to meet people where they are and scale for different challenges and what principles I used that you might be able to apply to your programs and your unique populations and learners. And even more than that, I'm excited to lean into the broader conversation today and hear your questions, ideas, and concerns as we look through this.
So let's get back to that lake. I knew that if I was going to build a doc in this space and have this centralized space for people to be able to gather and access the services that exist here, I was going to need a lot of tools. And so I went to start thinking about what I had available to me.
Now for those of you who work on campus with learners, we have annual events like our Cake with Careers and our Coffee with Careers and our Cookout with Careers. Wild successes, right? However, I did not have the food to fall back on for engagement. And that's hard for me. I really love to feed people. I love to be a host. I love to engage people in that way. So I had to really fall back on what did the adult students who were on these online programs who had other responsibilities, who had different ways of engaging with the community, what did they really need and what were their main interests?
So I started by looking at my own experience and my own tools that I was bringing with me into this field, and I want to share some of those with you today. So in the world of career development, I found that I had a lot of adjacent experiences. In working in adult education, I had formed a lot of philosophy around what it meant to be an educator and a facilitator. And I also had a lot of experience with thinking about the different ways that students have unique needs from a trauma-informed lens. So I brought a lot of those different pieces in with me.
As we say in our office, being a career changer is like a gift with purchase to the employer. They get your old experience and expertise as well as what you're bringing into the current role and the things that you're going to be completing there. And so for me, I was trying to lean into my own career adjacent move where I'm moving into specifically career development education. And though it's not as dramatic of a shift, it was going to let me use some of this previous knowledge.
So just to give you a picture of my background, my own background was really the foundation for what I was thinking about. I'm thinking about working in adult education, having worked with adult learners who are bringing a wealth of experience and also a wealth of strengths and also all of the things that they're balancing in their lives. Any one of us could be thinking about our own experience being a learner. And by the way, as an educator, I always recommend that anyone in an education space always puts themselves in a learning space too so you can remember what it's like to be a learner and the challenges of that. But we know that everyone's bringing a number of different things with them. I'm a working single parent myself and I know that every experience is never just as simple as you enrolled in a course and you need some career development. You're bringing all of your life with you to these experiences of being a student and of thinking about your next steps. And for many of us, time is limited.
So drawing on the people that I've gotten to know, the experiences that I've gotten to know early career and some social work, doing some adjunct teaching both at Eastern and in community colleges, professional development facilitation that I've done, all of these really informed how I was thinking about the needs of adult learners.
I also went back to my old friend, Malcolm Knowles, who invented the idea of adult learning theory back in the '80s. And this theory was used to think about what we know about adult learners and what they're bringing and what they need in a space. These five assumptions of adult learners of course can each be nuanced in very specific ways for the people we're working with, but I love leaning back on these because they remind me of who I'm working with.
These online learners who are coming from this adult space, whether it's from their age and responsibilities, the place they are in their career, they want to know the why behind what they're doing. "Why does this matter? How does this impact me? Why should I know this?" They're self-motivated. They want to develop their skills. They're bringing in their own knowledge and experience. We're not starting absolutely fresh with this. They have something to build on there and really with the right tools, they can self-d.irect. They have their own sense of self-concept and they can use that to further their own education and own understanding when provided with the platforms and tools to do that. So I brought these basic principles in with me.
The other theory that I want to point you to that I thought was really impactful in designing events and designing this online space is Priya Parker. If you're a Priya Parker fan, put it in the chat. We love to see other Priya Parker fans out there. But Priya Parker's work really is centralized around the idea that gathering is about creating meaning over simply fulfilling a function. We can all fulfill functions on our list where you check off like, "Well, every year we do this so we're going to do this again. And get that checked off our list and we're done. We provide appointments, so we're just going to keep providing appointments at the same times and the same structure that we've always provided appointments."
Really, Priya Parker's work says, "No, let's be innovative. Let's be great hosts in this space. Let's invite people into more than just a function but something that connects people together and creates a shared meaning in a space." So if you get a chance to check out The Art of Gathering, I think there's a lot of valuable things in there for us as career development professionals. And I think there's a lot to apply in the online space as well.
So what's a good gathering? This really made me ask the question for my learners because let's be honest, you all are so generous with your time today. Thank you for coming on or for listening to this later, but no one, no one needs another Zoom in their life, right? So we have to find ways to make it really connected and meaningful for ourselves when we're coming to events like this, but especially for our learners whose time and resources are limited. And also because at least at Eastern, careers is an opt-in option for our learners. So I want to make sure that I'm providing something of great value for them so they have a reason to opt in and continue working with us.
So using the different theories that I just pointed to, I took these basic principles out. I wanted to provide meaningful content. I needed it to be accessible and flexible because everybody's bringing in different experiences and needs to this. I wanted it to be rooted in the opportunity for connection. And I wanted it to build on wherever they are, their existing knowledge and their existing communities. Many of you who are doing this work of engaging online learners know this already, but there are already pockets that are connecting in the online spaces. So how do I find those? How do I make sure that I'm working alongside what's already working in that space?
So that's what led me to be really passionate about providing these opportunities for all ages and programs and places. And I want to give you some of the ways that I've been able to do that with the space that I'm working on. Before I do that, you should know whatever career center space you're coming from, I hope that you'll be able to find something that relates. In our career center at Eastern University, as of the time of this presentation and recording, has four staff members. And so we were able to scale some of these things in meaningful ways and also get really creative about how we used our time and resources to really engage folks. So I hope that there's something that you can take away no matter what size staff you're working with here.
So the first one is ages. I had to start by really thinking about the many different student interests and needs across the career lifecycle. And this meant being really clear about who I was reaching out to for certain events. It became clear to me that I could offer generalized webinars that might be of value to different people. But really it was much more effective to think, "Hey, this webinar is more focused on folks who are early career. This one is more focused on folks who are career changers, and maybe something a little bit more nuanced for folks who are in the PhD space and are taking that step in their career."
There were very diverse needs. And so I stopped trying to meet a general demand and just offer very vague information and I started getting clear on what I was hearing from student interests and their different needs across their entire career lifecycle.
I also wanted to make sure that I was providing opportunities to connect with others and the students were getting the chance to see representation from all different experiences and ages. I'd be curious if any of you have had this experience too, because I was talking to a lot of students in our individual one-on-one appointments who would say to me, "My situation's really unique. I'm a parent. I have 15 years experience teaching in schools, but I realized that I really want to pursue data science." And what I began saying to people is, "Actually, I talked to three other people that were doing that this week." There was actually a lot of common ground for folks and they just didn't know because they didn't have as many opportunities online to really connect with other people in that way and to talk about their career development in that way. So finding these opportunities to create networking events and opportunities for folks to gather online at different times and in different spaces and around different topics was really helpful to bring them together and see that they weren't alone.
And the same thing when we've had alumni panels or alumni come back to speak individually, having representation from all different experiences and ages, from folks who went directly from our BSW to MSW program who are early career and really jumping in, to folks who are in their mid to late 50s and making a career change, we've seen all of them in these events so that everyone has a chance to see themselves reflected in these events and different experiences.
I also have focused on having high impact brief content with clear takeaways. So when I do something like a webinar or like some kind of event that engages people about best practices with resumes, whatever it might look like, I try not to do events that are longer than 30 minutes, and I typically try to keep them even shorter. Folks do not have time, like we mentioned before, just to jump on Zoom for fun. They're often joining on lunch breaks or taking a shift off of doing bedtime duty that night so they can jump online to get connected to some of these resources. So I try to make sure that I'm giving them the most high impact tools and brief content and reasonable resources to run with it to the next step.
And the last thing is with ages, and you'll see this as a recurring theme and it will be no surprise to those of you in the uConnect and greater community here, but having a 24/7 space to access the resources is so important. For those of you who use the uConnect platform, you may see a similar to us that folks are accessing it at 3:00 a.m. And we're not online at 3:00 a.m. I'm sleeping at that time, so I'm not taking appointments. So it's great when we have a 24/7 space that folks can really access with that.
For our programs, one of the biggest takeaways that I found is that partnering with academic programs directly is the best way to get ahold of students who are online. When I gave you the imagery of the lake and building this doc, I mentioned there are other docs out there and I started to find them. I found out that our MBA program does a monthly get together that already draws in 50 to 75 students on a regular basis. So partnering with that program to be able to offer some career development, really impactful. There's already a built-in audience and here are folks who maybe haven't heard about some of the resources that are available to them through the Center for Career Development.
Same thing with just thinking about how to partner with particular departments on their needs and what their students are looking for most. So when I came onto this role, data science is our largest online program and the data science department said, "How can we work together to answer the most common student questions?" And so we really realized very quickly that I was taking a lot of one-on-one appointments with students answering their same questions over and over. And I said, "What if we could turn this into an event where everybody could get this information in great detail and we could record it and put it online to let them know about one of the most common frequently asked questions. And then everyone would have access to that within the data science program. So if someone's asking their professor, their advisor, they have access to send them that information really efficiently.
This led to the data science projects webinar. The very first time that it launched, it had over 230 registrants for the event and had over 50% of them join live and a number of them joined the recording later. And so through that, we were able to take what would've been many one-on-one appointments, which is very time-consuming for a small staff, and really scale it out. And it's something that I now offer on a regular basis for that program since, again, we have new students coming in all of the time and it's still one of our most common, most frequently asked questions.
I also have built some regular routines with the MSW program to align with their internship deadlines and do some webinars around internship search and resume workshops. What I found again is focusing in for these folks really helped them to be able to understand that this resume workshop is not just, "Generally, here's how you write a resume. This is specifically for you. You're an MSW student, we're here for you." And that really opened the door to have those more intentional conversations with folks who do want that one-on-one coaching and to provide access to that for them, but also to answer the general questions that apply to this specific major and thinking about their most common questions in a space that feels really aligned with their needs.
We're also developing some more asynchronous resources for programs like the Psychology BA program. Because their learners, we found it was very difficult to find times that worked for everyone. Many of them were currently working multiple jobs, they had families, they had different responsibilities. And so though it became very difficult to gather everyone together, we were able to provide some really high impact asynchronous resources that were available to the psychology students around things like internships and finding their next steps.
It's also been really impactful to be on either side of the lifecycle of a college student. So connecting with admissions, making sure that folks coming in each seven weeks are getting information about the Center for Career Development and connecting with alumni to make sure that we're meeting those alumni needs that we serve and also alumni can see the great work that's going on with students.
All right. The third element here of places. It was so essential to get a central space to find connection here. And huge shout out to uConnect. Hi, Christina. It was great to work with the whole staff here to be able to really build that space and have a really centralized space for students to actually access what we have available to them and find an in-road to connect with a real person.
Being an online student is really challenging if you don't feel like you have a connection to the community. And we know a lot more in the world now of education and our work that belonging is actually essential to student success. It's not like a bonus. It really increases graduation rates and does a lot of the intense work there behind the scenes. And so we want to make sure that there was a space for students to feel like they were represented and seen and also had a road to talk to a real person.
Again, we also were working and continuing to work on offering time zone-friendly events. So we do offer some different evening hours and shift around drop-ins that are offered at maybe 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. at night, which is going to meet time zones that normally wouldn't be able to meet during a 10:00 to 4:00 kind of schedule in an office. And so really thinking about how we're varying those and what's worked best for our students.
The 24/7 online space, again, more than just connection, but also thinking about time constraints. We wanted to offer that to them for folks who are logging on at that 3:00 a.m. hour. We also started offering asynchronous resume reviews through our Handshake platform where students can come on not just only to make a Zoom opportunity to meet with a career advisor, but also that they could submit their resume and ask for written feedback.
And then expanding past just Zoom, there's so many different ways to meet together online. And again, I think people sometimes get a little disenchanted with just getting on another Zoom in another breakout room. So we started playing around with more interactive platforms as well. One that we use currently is Gatherly and thinking about ways that we can make it a little bit more gamified and fun for people to gather online.
So to bring us to the end here, how do we know what's working and what's not? Like many of you, this is a continuous process of gathering data, figuring out what makes the most sense, and figuring out really what is not working for our learners. So I do want to start with the Flops Hall of Fame today because really not everything has been beautifully presented and wrapped up with a bow here. We did an event last August with a live alumni speaker where no one showed up for the actual live event. We had 40 RSVPs, no one actually came. And so that was a really humbling experience to get there and think, "Okay. Maybe August isn't the best month to bring an alum back," right? People are traveling, people are busy. This timing did not work. Even though people said they were interested, it was not a good timing and opportunity for that.
I had a networking night with students again that registered, but only one student actually came on. And this led to some great opportunities for thinking about how do we kind of rework the networking experience and think about how we draw in alums to participate, staff to participate, a number of different things there, just to make sure that we have the opportunity for everybody to have a meaningful experience at networking night, though it was great to connect one-on-one with that student.
We did have a technical error that prevented one of our highest RSVP events from happening at all, so had to reschedule that. The nature of online work, as I like to say, I spend a lot of my life on Zoom and on camera. Every day it brings something new to us. So we just have to roll with the punches with some of those things.
And I put together one webinar series that looked great on paper, looked great to stakeholders, but actually did not end up having a lot of interest because it wasn't specific enough. And so I hope that if you are experimenting with your own online program, that you can see these and understand that we have all had these kinds of experiences. And I have used those also as points to say there's still a lot of growth that can happen. There's still a lot of experience that we can get from that.
Okay. So what did work? What actually worked for us in the Eastern University space in 2025, there were 92 events for online students. So we moved from having occasional events for online students like drop-in hours and some speakers, to weekly content that was available for them, weekly opportunities to get connected. And so those varied from more of a low buy-in drop-in hour event that would happen every week to doing different workshops and webinars. We started doing these networking events where students could come together and network with their peers on this Gatherly platform. The departmental collaborations, the graduation celebrations for online students who maybe couldn't make it to graduation or even just had questions about what it meant to participate in graduation, gave them an opportunity to engage with us and to provide that from the career development standpoint as well.
Speaker events, we had nine different alumni come back as well as some other outside speakers. And then we also brought in multiple employers that had nationwide presences to be able to talk about hiring practices, what students had questions about because there are so many questions about what's happening to my resume, "When it gets out there, what should I be paying attention to?" and to be able to offer opportunities to our students as well.
From those 92 events, we had 2,300 total signups in that space. 2,310 to be exact. There were over a thousand students who did attend those events in real time. As any of us know with the online space, there's a lot of attrition there, especially free events, but we also saw 311 replay views during the year on the YouTube channel. So we know people were engaging there as well and accessing this information in other space. During the year 2025 and the fall, we also launched our uConnect platform, so there was a lot of excitement and students being able to find these things there as well.
Overall, if I could give you the summary of what worked best, again, it was these focused events. Our learners wanted clear takeaways and a clear audience, is this for me and what am I going to be able to get from it? They also really like continuity. So with a weekly drop-in option, a lot of us were able to say, "Okay. The learners who maybe weren't sure about making a 45-minute appointment were willing to come to 10-minute drop-ins." And then maybe they came back to drop-in next week with one more question and then they made an appointment and then they came to a webinar. So we saw that continuous growth there.
The partnerships and faculty engagement was also really key here. Again, those programs that were already doing things like our MBA gathering, there were some student groups that were meeting. The more that I was able to engage with the different groups around campus and faculty members around campus, the more students were drawn in to the events as well.
Word of mouth, really impactful. I would get an appointment and then all of a sudden see three more MSW appointments show up and they'd say, "Oh, my friend told me that this is a good place to come." So getting that communication amongst students is really powerful.
And then again, the opportunity to connect students to one another and to career development staff is really powerful because having a face and a name to connect to this really increases that sense of belonging and it increases a student's feeling that they have someone they can count on. I usually start my webinars with students by saying, "If you leave with nothing else, know that you have someone that you can call on when you have a career question." If you don't get any more of the material, I want you to know there's someone you can email, someone that you can contact there.
So we still have a lot of areas for growth that I'm excited about. Some of the ones that I'm focusing on right now are continuing to build out our online resources for students in that asynchronous way. So again, they have an inroad to meet with us. Thanks to uConnect. And again, thanks to Christina for helping us get a great setup there.
We also are increasing the amount of outcomes data that we're collecting. And so we'll learn a lot more about what was valuable to students during their experience and what we can continue to improve specifically in that online audience.
And then I'm continuing to increase contact points around campus because none of this work happens in a silo. All of our work has to be interconnected. And so thinking about more contact points with professors, with staff, that everyone knows what we're up to and where they can find that, I think, will bring the most impact to students being able to get specific things that they need.
So if you're starting this process or you're in the middle of this process, I do recommend just starting with some of those basic questions about really understanding who you're working with. Ask yourself, "Who is it that we're supporting? What do you know about your learners and what are their specific needs?" This is an ongoing process, but starting to get some of those things down. Where are they gathering and where can they gather? Where can you draw people together? How can you show up consistently and offer numerous things to build up the trust with that community and know that you're a space they can continue to come back to? And how do we continue to invite connection throughout all of this process?
So I want to say a huge thanks to all of you for joining me in this conversation today. There's still so much to learn and I hope we can continue to learn from one another. And I do invite you to check out our website at careers.eastern.edu as well as to be in touch with me directly through LinkedIn or through my email. And you can also find me through the Career Everywhere community. Thank you so much.
Meredith Metsker:
Thanks, Amy. Folks, if you have questions, please put them in the Q&A box. I had a quick question, Amy.
So I think you mentioned earlier that you have a team of four, right? Supporting like 10,000. So not a big ratio at all there, right? I'm curious, are you kind of the primary point person for the online programming and support?
Amy Ballard:
Yes, I am. So our office has a director and assistant director. And then we have an administrative assistant and then me for the online space. So we do all take appointments from the online community. However, I'm the primary person. I only take our online students, so many of them are funneled to me.
Meredith Metsker:
Okay. So you probably got a lot on your plate then.
Amy Ballard:
Clearly. And that kind of goes back to the data science piece. When I think about building that webinar, it was the realization of, even if I saw a student every hour of the day, which isn't possible, but every hour that I'm available, I'm seeing 40 students a week. I still couldn't meet with everybody that's out there. And so how can I make it accessible to everyone in other ways and how can I meet larger groups of people on common needs and common interests that they have?
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we just had a question come in from Amanda. I'm going to spotlight it here so we can all see it. Amanda asked, "Can you talk a bit more about the networking events and how they are structured and how many people usually engage?"
Amy Ballard:
Yeah. Amanda, thank you so much for that question. So I really have enjoyed trial and erroring these networking events because there's a lot of different ways to do it. The platform that I use called Gatherly, it is gamified in that students can click around on a map and they can join different conversations with different people. And so the way that I've set it up is I've created little booths within this map that students can join that have different themes of questions around whatever group is gathering. So if I have a group of MBA students gathering, they're all more MBA career-focused questions, but they run on different themes that allow them to have a conversation with someone that's more than, "So what do you do? How long have you been here at Eastern? And what are you hoping to do next?" Those are valuable, but that's kind of the first level of conversation. I want to really draw into some deeper themes and questions that I'm hearing from folks that they might be able to dig a little deeper into their own connections with one another.
So I generally structure it as welcoming everybody into the space and giving them kind of a tour because it is a space that they don't generally use unlike a Zoom or another video platform. And then allowing them to move around to different spaces in what I call networking blocks. So I usually do about 10 minute blocks and then come on to do an announcement like, "Thanks so much for meeting this group. You can now switch to another group and meet some more people, and allow them to have some freedom to stay in the room if they'd like to continue that conversation or to move somewhere else and have the opportunity to meet multiple different folks.
I've had all different sizes of events. The largest one that I've had so far with networking had about 50 to 60 people in it. That's about average I would say for interests and signups, the people who actually come. But it's been even the smallest one that I had that had 10 people at it, I had people emailing me afterwards being like, "That was so impactful." And so I still see it as this impactful event to say even if there's a smaller group, when they can still find something valuable there, again, that peer-to-peer word of mouth is really valuable and the way they continue to share that with others and the impacts their personal experience is valuable.
Meredith Metsker:
Cool. I will mark that one as answered. Next question is from Shannon asking, "What is the process you use to keep content relevant and fresh so you can compete with other online tools like AI or Google that people use for career advice?" That's a good question.
Amy Ballard:
I feel like we could relate to doctors on this because I think all of us have Googled or gotten an AI response about a medical problem by this point and you're asking all the questions and you self-diagnose before you even go in to see somebody. Doctors, I know, have frustrations around that from everything I've heard. So I think sometimes I feel the same way in the career advice platform like, "Well, I asked ChatGPT and this is what they said." I can, like many of you too, also spot a professional summary written by ChatGPT from five miles away.
And so to me, I think there's still a very human aspect of career development because it is humans ultimately doing the hiring, even if we're also catering to some of these AI systems for sorting out resumes and ranking resumes, et cetera. So it's been that balance of definitely promoting some of the tools that we use. We use Big Interview. I know a lot of schools are using JobScan or other types of platforms that help to review resumes. They're so valuable to us, but having a human conversation about, "Does this really make sense for my resume? And here's what ChatGPT told me to say about my bullet points, but I don't think it really reflects what I did," and being able to flush that out with a real human voice I think is still valuable. And so I do try to center the human approach to what we do. And again, like putting a face with the career services office I think is an important piece to that.
In terms of keeping the content relevant and fresh, one of my hacks, Shannon, is just to recycle the material that actually worked really well and bring it back in a couple of terms because we have a lot of new students or somebody missed it the first time. So if something is working, I do do it a couple times a year at least just to keep it in the rotation.
And then also just paying attention to, again, the questions that are coming up in my individual coaching sessions, what other coaches are hearing, what I'm seeing in question boards online, what professors are telling me they're asking for in the class, those are all the things that I come back to. And the more practical they are, the better results I see from that.
Meredith Metsker:
Cool. And then we had a couple questions about platform. So this person asked, "Do you host gathering events through a Zoom meeting or a different platform?" I think you were talking about Gatherly, is that the main one?
Amy Ballard:
Yes, I was talking about Gatherly. Christina, thank you for putting that in the chat also. So you can find them at gatherly.io. And that's a great platform just to be able to, again, mix and match people in different ways. They have a lot of different engagement pieces on there. You can even set up a little game room for people to take a break during your event. You could do career fairs on there, a lot of other things. So that's been a very effective platform for me. Again, I think just mixing up the environment for folks is really helpful.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah. Do you know, is that like a free thing or do they have a freemium model?
Amy Ballard:
There is a model. So just depending on your needs, there are different combined levels, but they have, depending on school size, the group sizes that you're using, a lot of different options and tools. And their customer service in my experience has been excellent to help you try that out.
Meredith Metsker:
And I'm assuming that that is also what Emily in the chat was referring to. She asked what was the mapping networking platform?
Amy Ballard:
Yes, that's the one.
Meredith Metsker:
Gatherly. Okay. All right. Any other questions from folks? Feel free to drop those in the Q&A box. Oh, we just had them pop in. All right I got a question from Ruby. "Could you describe some successful ways you're leveraging your uConnect website to see higher student engagement online?"
Amy Ballard:
Yeah. So this is continuous project as I'm sure all of you know, who have a uConnect website of thinking of what are students needing and asking for and how do we make it as clear and obvious as possible. I was just talking with Christina about this a little bit ago, but one of the first things that we did was just make a "Welcome to uConnect. Where do I go from here" video on our main page to help people navigate and get to where they're going. One of the processes that I'm working on right now is making sure all of our Career community pages have really specialized designed resources at the top.
In addition to the resources we tag, but here's the most common three resources that we get requested from this particular area and making sure those are really well mapped on there and connected. I do think that having the very clear "Make an Appointment" option on our front page and making that one of the first things that students see has also helped to personalize the experience and engagement online. And directing folks there for our events and making that our main event page for everyone has really brought a lot more traction to that page to our Handshake platform as well and really getting people in on that.
Meredith Metsker:
Cool. And then I just dropped a link to Eastern's Virtual Career Center as well, the one that [inaudible 00:41:46]-
Amy Ballard:
Thank you so much, Meredith.
Meredith Metsker:
...if you want to peruse what Amy was just talking about. Any other questions? I kind of have one too while we're waiting for a couple more to pop in. You've talked about this a little bit, but I'm just curious if you have a process for distributing content that you record or just squeezing the most out of recorded events or sessions. I'm just curious how you think through that.
Amy Ballard:
This sounds like a personal question, Meredith. Is that right? We're doing so-
Meredith Metsker:
I do have interest in content, marketing, and distribution.
Amy Ballard:
It's a continued challenge of making sure it gets out there. So definitely something I am thinking about right now is making as many connection points as possible for the content that we already have out there. We keep all the recorded content on YouTube, linking that YouTube channel to as many pages on uConnect as possible on our site, making sure that's available to people. Just kind of keeping it in front of people all the time and redirecting people back that direction. Something that's on my considerations for the future is do we turn it into also podcast and material so that people can engage with it in different ways? Do we think about adding highlighted videos to the front page of our uConnect platform? What will that look like for the future? So I'm going to send that back to you and maybe we can have another conversation about that as well, because I think there's always room to grow there.
Meredith Metsker:
Oh, for sure. I will happily geek out about that anytime.
Amy Ballard:
Thank you.
Meredith Metsker:
I've dropped in the chat [inaudible 00:43:26] Career Everywhere Podcast episode too.
Amy Ballard:
Oh, excellent. Okay. Yeah.
Meredith Metsker:
Nikki Pebbles from CUNY. She talks about creating a content ecosystem.
Amy Ballard:
Amazing. I will be giving that a listen.
Meredith Metsker:
Oh, Christina dropped a link to the video tour of your career center website or uConnect platform. [inaudible 00:43:44].
Amy Ballard:
Thank you.
Meredith Metsker:
Right. Any other questions? Because I'm curious, Amy, you just touched on this a bit, but what are some more of your goals for the future? What's on your vision board when it comes to engaging the online students?
Amy Ballard:
Yes, absolutely. Well, we're constantly thinking about what are ways that we get new peer groups together. So I'll tell you one of the things I'm trialing this summer is thinking about more than just a networking event, gathering people together for a really hands-on peer-to-peer workshop to work on things like how does my LinkedIn profile look? So doing some work together in live time and then getting a peer to give you some more feedback on, "Here's the update that I just made" and taking a looking at other examples there. We're going to be trying out some of that for the online space this summer.
We're also experimenting in continuing that connection theme, bringing in more faculty, staff and other people to participate in networking alumni as well because that really enhances that peer connection as well. I think so many people do want to get to know their peers, absolutely, but there's even more added value when they can talk to someone who graduated a few years ago and has experience in the field and can give them a little bit of advice within that peer group.
Buy-in begets buy-in. And so the greater buy-in that we have from our faculty and staff on these events and the more they can see what work is happening, the more our students are likely to also buy into that.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, for sure. Well, I don't see any other questions. I don't know if there's anything else you want to add, Amy, before close it out.
Amy Ballard:
Well, I just thank you for all the questions that came up today and for all of the feedback in the chat as well. If there's anything else that I can answer for you, do not hesitate to reach out to me. And I'll look forward to connecting with this community more. I think we all have a lot of ideas and space to grow, and so let's do that work together.
Meredith Metsker:
Yeah, love that. Well, thank you everyone for joining us today. And thank you so much, Amy, for this great presentation. Lots of good stuff here. I know there are a lot of thank you messages in the chat if you haven't seen them already. There's a lot of them.
Amy Ballard:
Oh, thank you so much to everybody. And Meredith, thanks so much for having me on.