What’s New With Career Coach: Give Feedback on Students’ Resumes and Help Them Search for the Right Career

Every year, hundreds of colleges and universities use Career Coach to help their students explore careers, find the right academic program, and take the next step by applying for jobs in their local area. Here are two updates we introduced recently to make Career Coach an even more effective tool for educators and the students they serve:

1. Similar careers – Makes it easier for students to discover careers similar to the ones they’re interested in.
2. Resume review – Helps career services engage with students by reviewing uploaded resumes and providing feedback.

Similar careers tab

For US and UK clients, we’ve introduced a new similar careers tab to facilitate your students’ career exploration. Located at the top of every career page (when activated), the similar careers tab allows students to easily explore occupations related to the one they’re already viewing. This can open students’ eyes to options they’ve never thought of before. For example, a student interested in becoming a graphic designer is only a click away from discovering that advertising managers use many of the same skills, but have a higher median salary in their area. Seeing these connections can help students clarify their goals and envision the kinds of career transitions they could make in the future with additional training and experience.

Want your students to have access to similar careers? Just ask your account manager to activate the feature!

Resume approval

For U.S. clients who have the employer portal enabled, we’re also pleased to introduce a new setting that requires all Career Coach users to submit their first resume for review before uploading it to any work opportunities on the site.

Last summer, we introduced the Career Coach employer portal to help institutions connect their students with high-quality, local work opportunities. Through the employer portal, students can create and upload resumes directly to approved employer job postings, right within Career Coach.

However, many students have never created a professional resume before. For them, receiving tailored input from career services professionals could prove crucial to crafting a resume that will impress potential employers and land them a job. Well-written, professional resumes reflect well on the students themselves, as well as on their college or university. In addition, resume approval provides a new avenue for your school’s career services staff to interact with students, giving them personalized guidance as they transition into the workforce. 

How it works

If you don’t yet have the employer portal activated, you’ll need to ask your account manager to turn it on before resume approval can be enabled. Once resume approval is activated, students are required to submit their first resume for review:

Next, your institution’s Career Coach administrators will receive an email notification that there is a resume waiting for approval:

Finally, you can review their resume and suggest changes:

If feedback is given, students are required to re-submit their resumes for approval. Once resumes are approved, students can begin submitting them to work opportunities right away!

To learn more about using Career Coach to help your students discover careers and connect to good job opportunities, visit our site or contact us. We’d love to learn more about your work and explore how our data can support your mission!