How do you get students into the career center? For some institutions, from Vanderbilt to Miami University in Ohio, part of the answer has been installing professional headshot booths. Providing access for all students to get professional photos for their LinkedIn and other social media accounts, as well as internship and job searches, can help level the playing field while also enhancing student engagement.
“During the last two-plus years, a lot of institutions like ours were noticing a decline in student engagement and co-curricular activities,” Jennifer Benz, an assistant vice president with Miami University in Ohio’s Center for Career Exploration and Success, told Inside Higher Ed. “And so we’re trying to retrain our students to re-engage them, and we did not want them to miss the over 300 employers that were coming to our campus to recruit them.”
Once students at Miami use the headshot booth, the university sends them a guide to establishing and maintaining an online presence. Sometimes faculty members require students to use the booth and establish LinkedIn accounts, the publication reported. And it’s promoted to students through first year experience courses, too.
Read more about these headshot booths here.
