Helping students and early career professionals identify career opportunities is critical for any higher education institution that cares about outcomes. Moreover, many organizations that prioritize hiring diverse talent rely on these institutions for candidates.
The good news is that in today’s fast-moving landscape, there are more resources, organizations, vendors and organizations to help solve specific pain points in the student career journey.
For the past few months, I’ve spoken with career educators, VCs, and talent and university recruiting professionals to better understand some of the most commonly used tools out there and wanted to share some six trends of research in this space.
#1)Proof of Work and Proof of Skills
These organizations provide platforms for students to showcase their skills, engage directly with employers and allow employers to discover candidates abilities outside of just a resume and cover letter through events, real-world projects, and micro learning opportunities.
Ex:: Forage, Parker Dewey, Multiverse
#2) Platforms and Marketplaces to Efficiently Connect Talent to Opportunity
These platforms are commonly three-sided marketplaces (free for students, paid for universities and employers) that allow students to find opportunities and companies to efficiently scale their sourcing and hiring and employer branding efforts.
Ex:: Handshake, Pathmatch
#3)Bottoms Up Career Communities
Job searchers were never meant to be solo missions, but team ones. These industry, function, or role specific communities help job seekers get feedback, collaborate with peers, and find connections
Ex: Ladders,
#4) Scalable and focused Interview Prep
Using software, data, and AI these platforms provide resources, question banks, feedback, etc to help candidates prepare for an interview in ways specific to the industry or role they are applying to.
Ex: Management Consulted, Rocketblocks
#5) The Rise of Career Ecosystems
A combination of platforms, products and education that provide free (or low cost) training and hands-on learning as well as pathways toward education. These can be both technology products that have an education offering as well as an ecosystem to support career outcomes (Ex: Salesforce) or a provider/platform that trains students and helps with career wrapper services (Pathstream)
#6) New Mediums of Career Information
Outside of traditional channels (ex: Career Centers, mentors, professors) students are looking for expert guidance and trusted information about career related topics from a number of platforms, individuals, and resources. What’s unique about this trend is that some of these are created for the intent of career information (ex: LinkedIn) while others are more general that happen to be trusted sources of information by this demographic (TikTok)
If you’re using any of these tools, vendors, or organizations to help students or recruit talent, I’d love to hear from you and your experience. And if you’re a vendor or organization with an offering please DM me!