CommentaryA More Connected College Communication Experience Recently, the annual Business Horizons Career Fair parked its wheels in Squires Commonwealth Ballroom. Instead of rolling out of bed in pajamas and frizzy, electric hair, students actually took a shower, brushed their teeth, and dressed fancy, all in an attempt to impress someone enough to actually earn an interview. Interviews are initiated quicker these days, and the subtle, but friendly nods from employers are quickly turning into hypertext greetings via your inbox. In this new world, the tedious task of beefing up an electronic resume establishes a solid, cyber handshake that will ultimately earn you a place in the working world. The traditional method of trying to get a job is going away, with web-based job search agents taking its place. Some would argue that the initial face-to-face interpersonal first impression is very important, but why waste time weeding out possible candidates when you can examine hundreds of resumes online before coming down to Blacksburg? Most of the career fair booths are telling students to apply online anyway. There are plenty of examples of online approaches superseding traditional approaches, but there really isn’t one central website or medium that all students use to communicate with each other, therein creating stronger social networks within. Yea, there’s Facebook, but that’s just a looking glass into a student’s personal life. Besides occasional wall signing and poking, there is very little online participation among students today. It’s very easy to manage four or five instant message windows while writing a paper, but there is not really a sense of “community”. The Information Age proves to be pretty elastic in the 21st Century, but it’s youngsters who seem to have the best handle on it. MySpace quickly became one of the top five most visited websites in just a short few weeks, and its sole purpose is to connect friends. YouTube lets people “broadcast themselves” in any way they want with more online video traffic than any website in history. When will the college environment really take advantage of this phenomenon? Instead of a glamorous engagement with a potential job offer in Squires, you could be applying online to the companies where you want to work, and establishing a connection that is more efficient to explore for both the employer and you.
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