When students log onto Facebook, they now have an additional option to peruse other than pictures of family and friends: searching for jobs and internships.

West Virginia University’s Career Services Center has created a Facebook fan page where students can “like” the program and get daily updates such as “job of the day,” articles with relevant career information, access to career advice blogs and information about additional career-related services available to students.

Sarah Glenn, assistant director of the Career Services Center, said the Facebook page was requested by students, and will help to reach more students on a broader scale.

“We are trying to reach students in new and more effective ways,” Glenn said. “In addition to MIX, we use posters, banners, the student newspaper, student radio station and the infostations found throughout campus to advertise our services as well as our career fairs. Even so, we still haven’t been able to reach all of our students here on campus.”

Glenn said she hopes students will look into jobs on the Facebook page more than they have in the past through MIX e-mails.

“A student might delete an e-mail with the job posting of a small company that they don’t recognize, but on Facebook we can link that company’s page to ours for easier information accessibility,” Glenn said. “We want to get students to think outside of the box and look at all job postings, not just the ones with big brand names.”

David Durham, director of the Career Services Center, said that a large portion of students on campus are not aware of the services currently offered.

“Our problem is that students don’t know that we’re here, especially that we’re here for free,” Durham said. “There is a subset of students that need our help that are not coming to use it. Students sometimes don’t realize that they need our help until April of their senior year, which can make it hard for us to help them in some ways that we could have earlier in their college years.”

Durham said that it is important for students to understand that the center is strictly a student service office.

“Everything we do here is free for students, and our job is to help them prepare for whichever path they may take after graduation, whether it is grad school or a job,” Durham said. “We find ourselves having a significant number of jobs each month on MountaineerTRAK that are not only not applied for by any of our students, but they’re not even viewed. We are confident that the students who do come for our help are getting excellent service, but we’d like to see these numbers rising.”

Students and faculty can reach the fan page by going to: http://www.facebook.com/WVU.Career.Services.Center. In addition to the daily job postings, there will also be video tutorials and more career advice added soon.

The Career Services Center is open daily for students to get help writing a good resume, mock interviews, information on employment opportunities and internship help.

For more information, visit http://careerservices.wvu.edu.

-WVU-

mm/02/18/11

CONTACT: Sarah Glenn, WVU Career Services
304-293-8214, sarah.glenn@mail.wvu.edu