Adding employer information to your Bio-Link program page

Employer information is valuable for your program and prospective students. This article explains why students value this information and how you can add it or edit it on your program page.

This article is part of our series on ways to spruce up your program pages.

Updated 3/1/2012

Last year, I wrote that Bio-Link students had found jobs in over 158 different biotechnology companies and 18 universities or government organizations. We knew this because 41 Bio-Link programs had shared these data by entering employer names in their program pages and we have summarized these data on a page listing Bio-Link employers.

Now, there are 60 Bio-Link programs who have shared employment data. You should all be proud of this. Your students are incredible.

Not only is employer data valuable for understanding hiring practices on a national level, this information is important for prospective students.

This article is part of a series on sprucing up your program pages. In our last article, I wrote about adding your college logo to your program page.

In this article, I will discuss:

Why employer information is important for students

How to add or update employer data on your program page

How some programs have customized their employer data

Why employer information is important for students

Career-minded students often ask where other students form a program have been hired. They do this because:

1. Hiring data provides a measure of validation.

If employers are hiring your students, you must be doing something right.

2. If a company has hired one of your graduates, that company might hire more.

This helps students get an idea of the places they might work. These insights are important for researching possible careers.

How do students get information about where other students have been hired? From you!

That's why it's important to keep this information up to date. The information you enter on your program page also serves as a record for you. You can use this information to see where your students have been hired in the past.

How do you add or update employer data on your program page?

1. Log in to the Bio-Link site.

2. Navigate to your program page.

3. Click the Edit tab.

(If you have any problems with these steps, please contact me for help, sandy at bio-link dot org).

4. Scroll way down the page until you find a box with the heading "Graduates from this program have been employed by :"

It looks like this:

5. Enter the names of companies who've hired your students in this box.

6. Scroll all the way the page to bottom and click the Save button.

Saving your work is critical. If you don't your changes, they will be lost.

How some programs have customized their employer data

There are two ways that programs have customized their employer information.

1. St. Louis Community College, Florissant-Valley lists internships and full-time positions separately.

2. Some other colleges add links to company websites.

Example: Solano Community College

Adding links is optional. There are both benefits and drawbacks to linking to company websites. As a benefit, links are helpful for students. Having a link does save students a step when researching possible employers. If you're thinking about adding links, you should be aware of two drawbacks. The first drawback is that biotech companies can have short lifespans. Notice in the example above Chiron was purchased by Novartis. You may find it too much work to determine who's been bought by who and who's simply vanished. The second drawback is that web addresses can change. This means that if you add links, be aware that you will have to update them. It's a good idea to update links on a yearly basis as you add new companies to your list of employers.

How to add a link to an employer

1. Use Google to find the company web site.

2. Copy the address from the browser address bar.