While with the most creative group of graduates I have ever known, I reinforced an idea that I first noticed when several of them had been hired immediately after finishing their final year projects.
It’s common to be hired by text.
I asked three of our graduates—twentysomethings who finished their Honours Degree projects in early May—how they got picked up for paid work within a few weeks of finished their final academic projects. All of them mentioned the SMS text strings they enjoyed writing as prospective employers asked about their qualifications.
Sometimes the text chats happened inside LinkedIn. Other times as direct messages with Instagram. But through all those quick exchanges of information one fact bubbled to the surface: most of the first students to be hired completed part of their interview process via text messaging.
We spend a lot of time helping students tweak their CVs and improving their cover letters. These were lovely skills for students I trained in the 20th century. But our current crop of graduates always had Instagram, Twitter, Discord, Reddit, and Facebook ever since they attended our first information days.
These app-based services have been tweaked to encourage comments, threads, and deeply personal one-to-one communications. And the students who can elegantly present themselves in threaded text strings often discover they’re at the top of the pile when contracts for work are offered.
I wonder if you can spot the graduates who’ve been able to nail down job offers through their elegant use of threaded text messaging.