Your future at your fingertips

When I think back to the careers resources that were available to me when I was a student, I look around at the class of 2012 and feel rather green with envy. Yes we had a dedicated Careers service, graduate fairs and employer presentations, but fast forward to the present day and this looks like chicken feed in comparison.

With the dawn of social media, students have never had it so good. Access to employers and recruiters has never been so easy, with all of the big companies having a presence on Facebook and LinkedIn. YouTube is packed with useful video clips offering advice on how to make applications, or prepare for interviews. Online communities such as The Student Room and Wikijob empower students to share experiences of assessment centres. The fantastic CareerPlayer offers a huge range of videos for students to browse different industries and career options. And of course, anybody who is anybody can be contacted directly on Twitter.

This blog provides a very small snapshot of what is achievable in this age of technology. Within 24 hours of setting up this page and the associated Twitter account, I have had the fine people of GradWeb link to two of my posts, the fabulous boys and girls at RateMyPlacement retweet my message to their near 2000 followers and had journalist, internship campaigner and founder of GraduateFog Tanya de Grunwald reply to one of my tweets. Throw into the mix a direct message from GradPlus to see how my graduate job search is going, and you can see just how much can be achieved, even in a very short space of time.

The days of paper application forms are long gone but fortunately for me there is still a big role to play for the Placement or Careers services at universities. My colleagues and I are there to provide support, advice and guidance to help students take those first steps into what he hope are successful careers. Don't be afraid to make use of the services we offer, whether that be CV checking, bouncing ideas around or taking advantage of our information resources.

Ultimately, it is down to the individual student to decide upon the path they take in pursuing their career aspirations. As Tom Watson's Intern discovered last week, there are risks involved when using social media, but if students embrace technology and take the opportunity to network with recruitment professionals, they may find that their future is at their fingertips.