LinkedIn Clinic and CareerChella

Rachael Stanley, Meg Erlewine, Kortney Jarman

In 2017 two co-workers and I had the idea for a LinkedIn Clinic which would provide students with help looking for jobs. We had three goals:

  1. Provide all students with a quality experience to help them search for jobs.
  2. Partner with underserved students.
  3. Increase awareness and positive feelings for OIT services.

The LinkedIn Clinic was born. Kortney Jarman (right) is a professional photographer outside of UT. He provided free professional headshots to students. Meg Erlewine (center) created our advertising posters and provided website consultations. I had experience in training students on building resumes and LinkedIn profiles so provided one-on-one consultations with students to better market themselves. That first year, the clinic saw 53 contacts. Each fall and spring, we re-offered the clinic. Eventually, we joined with the Center for Career Development and renamed the clinic CareerChella. The most recent time we offered the event, we served more than 400 students. In 2018, we presented about this event at the Educause conference.

Serving the Underserved
veteran serving the underserved

We purposefully reach out to groups such as the Veteran’s Resource Center and the FUTURE program to encourage students who may not have access through their college to career fairs to join us. The FUTURE program is a program designed to help intellectually and developmentally disabled students get jobs after graduation.

Building Relationships
collaboration dictionary image

Quite quickly, we found that we wanted to partner with the Center for Career Development. We had more attendees than we could handle and we felt it was a natural fit to partner with them on this. After partnering with them on the clinic, they have requested our presence at their career fairs to give mini versions of our LinkedIn consultations.

Marketing & Communication
OIT logo

Many students think of OIT as just the HelpDesk. Our goal was to make them aware of our training opportunities, our partnership with LinkedIn Learning, and other services such as research and software consultations available to them. We have been successful and continue to have parents contact us asking when the next clinic will be so their child can attend.