CareerChella Kickoff Festival

To kick off the start of every semester, the Rose Hill Career Center has hosted a welcome back celebration with the goal of introducing its resources and services to students. The event originated in the Fall 2022 semester as a launch party to showcase the new office space in the newly renovated McShane Campus Center, as well as unveil the department’s new branding. Following its success, it became a bi-annual tradition with rotating themes that would eventually expand to add a modified rendition for the Lincoln Center Campus. Historically, the Rose Hill kickoffs saw an average of 170 student attendees, with the most popular kickoff welcoming 314 students.

In addition to serving as a showcase of what the Career Center has to offer, the kickoff events typically welcome employer partners and recruiters to table and begin to develop early relationships with students. Attending employers will often sponsor catering, food trucks, and ice cream trucks to further incentivize student attendance. While these employers tend to lean more into the business, accounting, and finance industries due to the recruiting timelines, the event welcomes students from all majors and encourages a wide variety of recruiters to attend.

Goals for 2024

• Increase overall student attendance, as well as for specific student groups:
  • Humanities and other non-business majors
  • First-year students
• Portray the Career Center as a welcoming and safe space for students
• Showcase Career Center’s openness for collaborations and community partnership, including Fordham community and employers
• Build early awareness of employer partners, who will return for career fairs and other events throughout the academic year

Contributions

• Ideated concept for music festival theme and “CareerChella” title
• Developed timeline for marketing campaign and promotional period
• Directed creation of graphics and visual assets by Marketing Assistant (Natassja Agina)
• Coordinated social media posts, including collaborative social media reel with fordhamuniversity page
  • Drafted concept, filmed, and edited collaborative social media reel
• Edited copy provided by event organizer (Assistant Director for Student Engagement)
• Outlined email segmentation and scheduling
• Provided feedback and consultation in event planning process from a branding perspective
• Ordered print products for promotion and branded products for event giveaways

Marketing Strategy Overview

• List event publicly on Handshake, Blog Events Calendar, and Fordham Now calendar no later than August 1
• Place promotional graphics on campus-wide TVs, beginning just before student move-in period
  • Post printed flyers in locations where screens are not available
• Include event promotion in Career Center newsletters and welcome back emails
• Post social media announcement of event just over one week prior
  • DM relevant Fordham accounts with post information, requesting they share it with their audiences
• Post reminder reel with trending audio 1-3 days prior to event
  • Secured collaborative post plan with Fordham University main Instagram page
• Send targeted emails to Rose Hill students served by the Career Center
  • First round segmented by class year, highlights benefits in student professional development lifecycle
  • Second round segmented by major grouping, with adjusted graphics to highlight attending employers recruiting in those areas
  • Reminder to pre-registered students within 24 hours of event
• Publish post with event details to Career Center blog less than one week before event
• Provide early check-in to students who visit the Fordham Career Ambassador/Humanities Student Ambassador table at the Club Fair (day prior)
• Send direct email invite to faculty and staff “friends” of the Career Center, encouraging they attend alongside their students

Outcomes

• 453 student attendees (highest ever for a Rose Hill kickoff)
• 50+ faculty and staff attendees
• 278 pre-registered students
• Instagram Performance
  • 34,000+ impressions
  • 16,800+ reach
  • 650+ content interactions
  • 25+ follows
• Targeted Email Performance – Overall Average
  • 75.51% open rate
  • 2.6% click rate
• 350+ views on Career Center Blog site
• New requests for collaboration from Fordham staff members