Finally someone understands.
We’ve been beaten over the head with statistics — 9 percent unemployment! —and horror stories — #OWS — by our parents, professors and publications. We know the sluggish economy refuses to right itself; we know we’re apparently doomed when we graduate. At this point, the entire working world appears cold and unfeeling.
Except that, as NEXT for Women founder and CEO Whitney Wilkerson proves, it isn’t. As the creator of a website that promises to help you “Own Your Career,” Wilkerson plainly understands what it is to be young and unsure of what your professional future holds: “Stepping out into the job market can be a scary thing,” she says.
But NEXT’s website does more than just feel your pain: it provides excellent, relevant advice on every aspect of your budding career and provides for you a forum to connect with other professional women. The site is, as Wilkerson says, “100% free…100% relevant…[and] 100% for YOU…Want more information on a certain topic we haven’t covered? Great! Let us know and we’ll make sure to research and highlight that topic in the coming weeks.”
Why let such a valuable tool go to waste?
Profile
The NEXT website provides a profile feature that combines personal and professional interests. As a sort of Facebook-LinkedIn hybrid, the NEXT profile highlights your accomplishments, while also allowing space for questions. That way, the advice given by the site isn’t limited to articles alone: other users who read your questions about, for example, building a personal brand, can share their acquired wisdom.
And if connecting with women who have “been there done that,” as Wilkerson says, isn’t incentive enough, with a profile “students can comment on articles or videos and earn points for doing so. The points can be cashed in for rewards like brand name gift cards.”
My Blog
Creating personal blog can be an enormous time commitment, especially for the less technologically savvy among us. And while career counselors wholeheartedly support a well-written online presence, it can be disheartening to craft post after post for an audience that only includes your mother. Which is why the NEXT blog feature is such an exciting one: any NEXT user with a profile can post a blog to the site. You’ll have a built-in audience in the site’s other users and you’ll be able to read what other professionals, both young and old, have to say about the current job market.
Additionally, Wilkerson notes, posting on the site is “a good resume builder [because you can] say that you are a contributing writer.” Written communication skills are vital in nearly every field – use the site to hone an unpolished style or, for you future Pulitzer winners, flaunt your chops.
NEXTer Interviews
Locating an appropriate career mentor can be a daunting task. Not every professional woman is eager to share her sagacity and even those well-intentioned women who are have full lives and might struggle to squeeze in time for career guidance. The NEXTer Interviews offer a clever virtual solution to the problem. Here successful women from every field share their experiences, advice, trials and tribulations. Who better to offer career advice than women with proven expertise?
Land a Job
The NEXT website helpfully lays out for you a career path via top-of-the-page tabs: Land a Job, Navigate Your Career, Advance. Because most of us are still full time students, the first tab is likely the most relevant on this campus. Under “Land a Job” heading, you’ll find answers to all your burning career questions. Most professional advice sounds either stuffy or outdated, but because NEXT is catered to our demographic, every post feels applicable. Read about “The Ultimate Work Tragedy” (crying in the office), fall fashion or even whether you should buy or lease your new car! This is one-stop shopping for all the career and life advice you’ve been searching for in vain.
Sources:
Whitney Wilkerson, Founder and CEO of NEXT for Women
nextforwomen.com (Photos and Information)