When students finish university, they require guidance and need to connect with the right people in order to best use the skills they have learned.
Chatting to ITWeb last week, Sanjeev Agrawal, one of the founders and CEO of career assistance social network, Collegefeed, outlined what the service hopes to offer graduates and how the team is looking to expand its reach.
The main motivation behind Collegefeed is to learn more about the students and to use this knowledge to help them connect with the right companies and find opportunities that are suited to their skills. "It is about better opening up the world to students."
The site's vision is threefold, Agrawal said. Firstly, it looks to help students explore their careers. It also wants students to do a little self-promotion by showing off their strengths through their Collegefeed profiles. Finally, the social network assists students to develop relationships with potential employers.
"During our trials for the site, we spent six months connecting with a lot of students, a lot of universities and a lot of companies. The aim of this was to really understand what problems we could solve for students using technology."
The site was launched in the US once they were happy with the idea, before opening up to other regions to gauge how international students would react to the platform. Today, anyone can join the professional social network, he said, noting that e-mail and SMS-based services will be available in regions with limited Internet access.
Thus far, the response to Collegefeed has been positive, said Agrawal, adding that they have had a significant amount of feedback from students asking for further advice and wanting more services.
Unlike a platform such as LinkedIn, Collegefeed is aimed at a segment of the market that has limited job experience and a limited professional network; with an aim to help them build up these connections, he said. "We are geared towards people who are in college or are just out of college and are looking to communicate with the right people in their field," he said, pointing out that Collegefeed also opens up its own business network to students.
Today, employers need to be "showing themselves off" to students, who could eventually become their employees, said Agrawal, noting that they can do this using Collegefeed company pages. "We are also helping companies build their brands and allowing them to reach out to students in different ways."
Students need to start thinking about their careers early and put in a little effort, he concluded. "They must use technology to their advantage by tailoring their learning and their future careers to best utilise their abilities."
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