Most college career centers have been employing artificial intelligence created by outside vendors to help students accomplish such tasks as polishing résumés and prepping for interviews.
“We’ve been delivering the same darn product forever,” says Joe Catrino, executive director of the Dartmouth Center for Career Design, referring to the usual college career office offering.
And if this works, will college career services change forever?
3 mistakes to avoid when you have a 1:1 with a direct reportBy Suzie BishopWhen was the last time you had a one-on-one meeting with someone you lead?
The 1:1 meeting is broken.
Welcome to Fast Company Daily, our daily newsletter on LinkedIn, featuring a free article selected each day by our editors as well as a roundup of great advice on careers, hiring, innovation, and technology.
Visit fastcompany.com for our top stories and breaking news. First time seeing this? Please subscribe.
[Photos: Ronni Kurtz/Unsplash; JonaKoh/Unsplash]
AI’s role in the hiring process has become a major one—for better and worse. This has not been lost on universities.
Most college career centers have been employing artificial intelligence created by outside vendors to help students accomplish such tasks as polishing résumés and prepping for interviews. As of April, 86% of U.S. schools of higher education reported using AI when working with individual students on their job searches, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). But Dartmouth College is taking a different approach.
Dartmouth has hired a chief product officer, the only job of its kind at an Ivy League institution, to build proprietary, in-house AI tools for students and alumni seeking career assistance. The center’s new AI product, in development, aims to engage with students throughout their time on campus, asking them questions regularly about their interests, skills, and desires that will, ideally, result in a targeted and successful job search when it’s time to graduate.
“We’ve been delivering the same darn product forever,” says Joe Catrino, executive director of the Dartmouth Center for Career Design, referring to the usual college career office offering. That’s what Kiley McEvoy, a former Google senior product manager and a Dartmouth alum, is here as chief product officer to change.
This makes Hanover, New Hampshire, Dartmouth’s home, an unlikely vector in the current fights over not only the role of AI in hiring processes (for both employers and applicants) but also the role of the tech on college campuses. Just a few months ago, undergraduates booed commencement speakers who dared to bring up AI. How will students respond to an AI designed to assess their aptitudes and preferences intimately? And if this works, will college career services change forever?
Third-party AI tools have become commonplace among U.S. colleges’ career services.
For example, around two summers ago, Danielle Marriner, assistant director for career services training at University of Wisconsin-Madison, began hearing “rumblings” about how students were using AI in their career development. “We knew students would probably be using it,” she says. So the school strategized ways it “could be helpful in that conversation.”
A Fast Company Premium subscription offers readers full access to subscriber-only stories including exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design.
Get the details and subscribe here.
3 mistakes to avoid when you have a 1:1 with a direct report
By Suzie Bishop
When was the last time you had a one-on-one meeting with someone you lead? How did it go? Did it feel energizing? Did you leave feeling aligned and connected? Or did you, like many leaders and team members, question the point of the meeting?
The 1:1 meeting is broken. For those that have them regularly, they feel repetitive and more like a chore than a meaningful conversation. As a result, many have gotten into the habit of skipping them, simply checking in through chat. Or they’ve spread them further apart, meeting maybe once a quarter on high-level goals. This is not the answer to the broken 1:1, because effective one-on-ones are critical to the health of the organization and the leader/team member relationship.
There are three key areas where a 1:1 can break down if not approached with clear intention.
1. Planning
This is the stage leading up to the actual meeting. It involves scheduling the meeting, deciding a regular cadence, and coming up with an agenda. Here’s where most leaders go wrong at this stage:
They don’t prioritize the 1:1
This shows up in a few different ways. The most obvious one: simply never scheduling one-on-ones. This can also occur when the leader regularly cancels the 1:1 to accommodate other priorities. It sends the message that meeting with your team members isn’t important to you.
They don’t prepare an agenda
We know there isn’t enough time in the day to get to everything we’d like to. As a result, preparing agendas for 1:1s often falls to the bottom of the to-do list. Although it might seem like an inconvenience or an extra step, meetings are most effective when both people have given forethought to what needs to be discussed and their answers to any questions. To remove the need to create a new meeting plan every week, keep a running list that can be transferred easily to the agenda.
2. Connecting
Connection is ideally what happens in the meeting itself, but it doesn’t happen by default. Real connection is built intentionally by showing up fully engaged. Here are some common mistakes that break the opportunity to connect.
