From resume critiques to mock interviews, a pilot online advising platform is connecting alumni with students seeking to hone their job search skills. The Evisors program, launched in January for alumni and students of the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, is a streamlined way for students to seek career guidance. If successful, the platform is expected to roll out to the rest of the college.
“We want our students to go out and change the world,” said Rebecca Joffrey, the director of interactive services with CALS Student Services. “It is incredibly valuable to have alumni make themselves available to students and be a part of helping them figure out that path. The Evisors technology makes it easy to engage.”
The premise of the Evisors program is to create an online community of thousands of advisers offering a diversity of perspectives, through a platform that is easy for alumni to use. A social media-savvy successor to the CALS Alumni Career Link database, Evisors allows advisers to import their LinkedIn profiles and list their availability and offerings. In the pilot program, students searching for career guidance can make appointments for phone meetings conducted via Evisors, knowing that the alumni are truly available to help. And the CALS Career Services team can precisely track how many students are using and benefitting from the system.
Joffrey hopes the pilot program, made possible by support from the CALS Alumni Association and the Dyson School, will attract a pool of thousands of alumni advisers and spur even more ways for alumni to connect.
“Evisors allows us to include alumni directly in student development and training programs,” Joffrey said. “It provides the sort of experience and interface that students have come to expect in today’s social, mobile world.”
For more information or to be part of the pilot program, email Rebecca Joffrey at rj283 [at] cornell.edu (rj283)rj283 [at] cornell.edu (@cornell.edu).
