Professional Networks No Longer Just for Experienced Workers
Over the past couple of months, there seems to have been an explosion of professional networks for college students about to enter the workforce. To be fair, most of these networks have been around for some time. They just started making news in February as one of these networks, Koda.us, received an additional $1.5M in private angel funding on top of the $3 million they already have. You know what that means…investors love the idea.
So, what are these new networks…by name they are Koda.us, BrazenCareerist.com, and UGrowU.com. Functionally, these networks are the college student / entry level white collar job seeker’s equivalent to LinkedIn. Fast Company calls BrazenCareerist, “Twitter meets Facebook meets LinkedIn meets Gen Y.” To put it another way Koda says that, “young professionals have everything they need to launch their careers except for the networks that so many seasoned professionals count on.” That’s where Koda comes in.
Although these three networks have a similar goal in common; connecting first-time career seekers to employers interested in graduate recruitment, they all go about a little differently. Uses (job seekers) set up a free account and build a profile like you would on LinkedIn. They then network with other student job seekers and share their skills and links to projects they have done while in school. Employers can then access the site (for a fee) and pick off the cream of the crop. The goal for job seekers is to use this profile to stand out. They are able to share themselves much better on this type of platform than they can with a basic resume.
Employers can also set up company pages which allow them to showcase their company and opportunities. Again, these tend to be similar to a LinkedIn company page.
One place where network UGrowU is a little different is in its use of project based crowd sourcing. One of the key features to UGU is that a company or group can post a project that they would like help on. Then UGU members apply to work on the project or offer suggestions. The company can take a look at what innovative suggestions they get from student job seekers and then possibly recruit them.
Did you know that there is also a new professional network for high school students? Can you even call it a professional network if it is targeted to 16-18 year olds? Zinch.com is just that network. Instead of match job seekers to jobs, Zinch matches college-bound students to prospective institutes of higher education. This is a brilliant idea, but it raises a startling question…will there ever be a professional network for grade school students? Or one that you can use from the first day of kindergartner to the day you retire? I’m sure it’s not far off into the future.
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