Do you know what benefits matter most to your association’s members? Association industry research shows that member career planning help – specifically job opportunities and career development resources – consistently top the list of most valued benefits.
The 2023 Association Trends Study by Community Brands shows that these career-building benefits are not only among the most important benefits for all members, but they are especially important to members who are in the early or middle stages of their careers.
These findings make it clear that members are looking for help in planning and growing their careers.
How an online career center can help with member career planning
Offering an online job board is a great start for delivering the member career planning benefits your industry seeks, year-round. But your job board can be so much more than just a place to post jobs.
You can transform it into a true online career center, where your members and other job seekers in your industry or profession can:
- Plan and research their entire careers – from student to retiree
- Find their next great jobs
- Discover resources to help them land the jobs they’re seeking
- Connect with mentors to grow professionally
How these activities can help with member career planning
Let’s look at how each of these activities can help with member career planning:
Plan and research their careers
There are multiple ways you can help your members plan and research their careers. For example, offer a career pathing tool in your online career center that helps members visually map out what steps they will need to take to reach their career goals. These steps should include job descriptions and relevant skills needed to reach each job in their career journeys.
YM Careers by Community Brands offers job board software and a Career Planning Portal that includes a Career Paths module. Career Paths provides clear direction for members and other professionals in your industry to navigate through the member journey.
Career Paths – Career Planning Portal by YM Careers
Another way to help your members plan and research their careers is to provide them with detailed information about their career directions. Offer them things like career descriptions, salary data, unemployment data, day-in the life videos, and more to help them decide if they’re on the right career path or if they need to change direction.
The Career Planning Portal that comes with every YM Careers job board also includes the Career Insights module. With Career Insights, your members have the data they need to understand important career factors, such as what opportunities exist in their career path and what they should consider about a potential career or location move.
Career Insights – Career Planning Portal by YM Careers
Career coaching can also help your members plan and research their careers. Connect members with career experts who can guide them through career challenges, add direction to their career goals, and plan the next steps in their careers.
The Career Planning Portal from YM Careers includes a Career Coaching module that matches your members with a career expert. Your members can search for coaches by practice or industry so they can find the right match for their specific needs.
Career Coaching – Career Planning Portal by YM Careers
Find their next great jobs
An online job board is the foundation of a robust online career center. It helps your job-seeking members find their next jobs by connecting them with employers in your industry.
To provide the most impactful online job board for your members, make sure you use the right online job board software. Look for job board software that:
- Is built for association job boards versus generic job boards. As an organization that supports your industry, this approach helps you provide job seekers with a focused list of job opportunities.
- Helps your members actively search for jobs. Your members should be able to easily search and apply for jobs as well as receive recommended job opportunities based on their prior searches.
- Helps your members passively search for jobs. Allow your members to sign up to receive automatic emails with new job opportunities that match their criteria.
Discover resources to help them land the jobs they’re seeking
Once your members find the jobs they’re seeking, they can use all the help they can get to land the jobs. Career coaches can certainly help your members in this area. You can also help them by offering career advice through your association’s online career center. For example, offer articles about things like résumé writing, preparing for interviews, and explaining employment gaps.
Career Planning Portal from YM Careers includes the Career Advice module to help you easily deliver helpful articles about landing jobs as well as other career advancement topics, such as networking, job transitioning, working remotely, and more.
Career Advice – Career Planning Portal by YM Careers
Connect with mentors to grow professionally
Mentors can provide new ideas, guidance, encouragement, support, and a positive influence to help your members grow professionally. Help your members by connecting them with a mentor through your online career center.
Here are some examples of specific ways that mentors can help your members with career planning:
- Provide students, new graduates, and members who are early in their careers with valuable career tips, perspectives about the workplace, and professional lessons learned.
- Help members who are between jobs to expand their networks and hear about job opportunities by introducing them to colleagues.
- Support members who have left and returned to the workforce by offering ideas to guide them back into their careers.
Career Planning Portal from YM Careers includes a MentorBoard module that helps your members find the right mentor match to help them plan their careers and grow professionally. It’s a powerful tool for supplementing the member career planning resources on your association’s online career center.
Bonus benefits of an online career center for member career planning
Keep in mind that a robust online career center benefits more than just your members. In addition to providing the career planning help your members want, an online career center helps employers in your industry connect with hard-to-find, highly qualified candidates for their job openings. For example, with YM Careers job board software, you can allow employers to easily post their job openings in your online career center. Employers can also attract, screen, and manage applicants.
An online career center also benefits your association. By offering your members a highly desirable benefit, you can recruit and retain more members. And by selling opportunities for employers in your industry to promote their job openings to your members and other job seekers in your industry, your association will have a new stream of non-dues revenue to help your organization stay strong for years to come.
Learn more
Offering a robust online career center is a powerful way for your association to provide the career planning resources your members seek. YM Careers can help your association to not only become the career destination for your members, but also provide value to employers in your industry and drive unmatched revenue – without requiring a lot of extra effort from your staff.
