When college students are looking for internships these days, many turn to Handshake, a company that has partnered with 500,000 employers and 1,000 colleges and universities to connect 17 million students and alumni.
WorkingNation interviewed Christine Cruzvergara, vice president of higher education and student success of Handshake, for #WorkingNationOverheard as a media partner with ASU+GSV’s Virtual Summit 2020, held September 29 through October 1+October 8. You can watch all of the interviews on our YouTube channel.
Cruzvergara says, virtual recruitment has taken on a new level of importance during the pandemic.
“Employers are really investing in digital capability, digital recruiting, helping to reach more diversified students, people are starting to see the benefits of what can happen when you focus on digital,” said Cruzvergara. “Handshake’s mission has always been about democratizing access to opportunity, so that for a student it doesn’t matter where you go to school or what you major in or who your parents are. And so, our mission, I think, has not only been important from the get-go, it really has been exacerbated by what we’re seeing with the pandemic.”
That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy, considering, Cruzvergara says, hiring it still slow. Students should use this time to prepare for when more hiring resumes.
“I would encourage students to think about building their skills during this time,” she says. There are so many platforms right now that students can go on for free to be able to take classes and to be able to build on either the skills that they already have and really hone those, or to be able to learn new skills. I would say two skills in particular that we see across every industry and every employer is looking for, one is Excel,” she says. “And the second is data analysis, data science, data management. Again, across every single sector and industry, employers are looking for people who understand data, how to analyze data, how to synthesize it, how to get good learning and nuggets out of that, and how to help propose solutions based on that data.”
Learn more about the Handshake – click here https://www.joinhandshake.com/
Learn more about the ASU+GSV Summit – click here https://www.asugsvsummit.com/
Follow the conversation on social media: #workingnationoverheard #asugsvsummit
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Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.
Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.
Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.
Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.
Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.
Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.
