Learn how your association can provide industry-specific, targeted, valuable career advice for your members.
According to a recent Community Brands Association Trends Study, the most important member benefits include job opportunities, help with career advancement, industry-specific information, and targeted, valuable content. What if you could offer all those benefits in one platform, making your association a true career destination?
Career Advice, part of Career Planning Portal by YM Careers, provides career planning articles for professionals to utilize as a resource to prepare for every step of their career path.
With our Content Management System (CMS) built into Career Advice, your association can personalize your career center with more industry-specific career advice. This puts you in charge of your career content – to invest as much or little time as you desire.
Taking advantage of a CMS:
- Elevates your career center from free and generalized content to industry-specific content created for a specific audience.
- Allows you to assume ownership of all industry-specific content on your career center, which personalizes the experiences for all visitors and members.
Custom articles and content within Career Advice will help professionals in your industry find the job, land the job, and take their careers to the next level. Let’s take a look at how this benefits your members by career stage:
Student/Intern and First-Time Job Seeker / Entry-Level Employed:
Career Advice provides the resources to learn about:
- Crafting resumes and cover letters
- Preparing for interviews, especially since they are new to interviews and don’t have specific employment experience to reference
- Learning about personal branding in this world of social media
- Presenting a professional LinkedIn and internet presence
- Navigating the challenging world of networking
Job Transition
A job transition could look like lateral movement, relocating, career advancement, starting over on a new career path, or an industry change (such as a member in the mechanical engineering field transitioning from a manufacturing to a teaching position).
Career Advice addresses job transitions with clear guidance and experience from professionals. This content should set professionals at ease and give them the confidence to make the next career step.
Late-Stage Careerist
A member at this career stage would benefit from articles about staying up-to-date in their skills and industry knowledge, even as they mature and technology advances. They could also browse articles on how to find a new job late in a career, or how to make a job transition after working at one company for a considerable amount of time.
Remote Work
Career Advice can provide articles to help professionals navigate the remote world post-covid, expectations of standard employers who have a remote-first office, and how to plan and structure your day.
Unemployed
Career Advice offers specific articles regarding unemployment, how to address layoffs, and how to resurface in a career. Articles also help with advice for resumes, cover letters, and any personal branding so professionals can land their next dream position.
Post-Maternity / Long-Term Absence (Gap in Employment)
For those who have stepped away from employment for any reason, Career Advice offers relevant and noteworthy articles to bring them up to speed on any changes in the job market. Some articles help with confidence and understanding in how to discuss the time away instead of allowing it to detract from their experience.
The authors for Career Advice are trusted professionals in your industry with relevant experience. The platform is engaging with clickable access to the authors, their content, and their social sites. This means that users can connect and learn more from the authors if they desire, authenticating both the material and authors.
Articles are updated continuously, incentivizing job seekers to revisit the career center often for new content. With continuous updates, job seekers can trust that as the job market evolves, the content stays up to date and pertinent to the job market/state of the world.
Research from the aforementioned Association Trends Study supports that a resource such as Career Advice is an area that associations should focus on strengthening. The study’s benefit gap analysis shows that industry-specific information and career advancement rank as very important to members.
We’ve reviewed how Career Advice can help your current and potential members; let’s look at how it can help your association:
- Boost member engagement with more valuable, updated, industry-specific content for career planning.
- Increase member value by providing a comprehensive collection of relevant articles written by industry experts, which encourages continual career growth at any career stage.
- Grow site traffic by providing a comprehensive career growth hub at professionals’ fingertips, keeping them returning for new and valuable content.
- Improve SEO by optimizing the content with specific keywords, publishing content regularly, time spent on the page (dwell time), and messages relayed to a target audience.
- Cultivate career growth and advancement by guiding professionals through their career journey by helping manage their next opportunity and staying on top of industry news and trends.
- Establish yourself as an industry leader through trustworthy content that helps an association build its reputation in the industry. Job seekers will view your association as a reputable source to access career growth/professional development resources.
- Drive revenue with a Career Planning Portal offering valuable and extensive custom career resources which will drive new and returning employers.
- Build trust and loyalty with professionals as they see the breadth of resources available and the investment in their career growth.
Support members’ professional growth with custom career content. Career Advice significantly raises the value of what your association offers beyond a standard career center, securing life-long members. This tool elevates an association as a professional development hub, improving member engagement and piquing the interest of non-members to join.
