Career advancement is the primary goal for the overwhelming majority of students who enter higher education. Research shows that 86% of students pursue higher education to launch or advance their career and to achieve economic and social mobility. One key skill to career advancement is networking, essential to gain exposure and open doors. Many students, however, graduate wishing they’d had more help developing networking skills - nearly 50% of students in a recent Gallup poll wished they received more training on it.

Conducting informational interviews to learn from the firsthand experience of others already in the industry is a vital part of the exposure from networking. With this in mind, uConnect and Candid Career are excited to announce a new partnership that will bring thousands of informational interview videos from Candid Career into the uConnect virtual career center.

Candid Career creates and curates videos from across industries specifically designed to help students get the inside scoop on careers and land a job. The videos help students access informational interviews without the constraint of having to conduct each one by themselves. Candid Career also includes resources on conducting informational interviews independently to help facilitate relationship-building. “We are thrilled to partner with uConnect to help students easily access our videos in their virtual career center,” says Neilye Garrity, Co-Founder of Candid Career. “The engagement and visibility created by having the videos highlighted in uConnect aligns perfectly with our goals of making high-quality career video content accessible to as many students as possible.”

uConnect is the creator of the first all-in-one virtual career center, designed to integrate the jobs, events, mentors, resources, and media that schools already offer their students, but are often underutilized, to increase visibility, accessibility and engagement. The Candid Career video integration adds to the growing library of integration that uConnect has built with best-in-class career tools to ensure that all students are able to utilize these resources to inform and inspire their journey. “The ability to pull videos in from Candid Career is an extremely valuable add-on to the uConnect virtual career center.” says uConnect Founder and CEO David Kozhuk. “The addition of videos from Candid Career will add to the stimulating and exciting content in the virtual career center and help students, faculty, and alumni engage with the career center in newer ways.”

The integration makes the administrative experience effortless for uConnect partners looking to promote and curate Candid Career videos. Career center professionals will no longer need to direct students to a separate Candid Career portal to view their informational videos. The integration automatically pulls over Candid Career videos into the uConnect backend, automatically tagging them and making them ready to publish into customized digital communities aligned to students’ class year, affinities and career interests. Thus, be it a business major, STEM graduate, or undeclared undergrad, each student can find and engage with the videos they need the most. The videos will appear alongside featured resources, blogs, articles, jobs, events, and employers within the communities, helping students make connections and develop career clarity along the way.

uConnect and Candid Career are strongly committed to making the career exploration process in higher education as exciting, rewarding and informational as possible. By combining forces, uConnect and Candid Career are getting high-quality career development resources into the hands of far more students and helping our next generation of leaders discover and pursue rewarding careers!

Learn more about uConnect and Candid Career’s integration on 24th March at this informational webinar!