At Udacity, we want to be the place where you come to get an education, to get a job. One of the key ways we pursue this objective is through candidate profiles. Every career-ready Nanodegree program student has a unique candidate profile, which functions as an optimized showcase for your skills, your projects, and your experience. We want to see top employers consistently discovering Udacity talent, and student profiles help make this possible.
The Talent Source Connection
Once you’ve set up your candidate profile, it can be made available on an exclusive basis to Udacity hiring partners through a proprietary directory called Talent Source. There are now over 300 hiring partners with access to Talent Source, including Accenture, AT&T, Google, Microsoft, Priceline, PWC, Twilio, and more. Hundreds of Udacity students have already gotten jobs because of their Nanodegree experience, and these numbers are growing every day. Optimizing your profile is one of the best things you can to do to maximize your hireability.
L-R: Alan Kim, Josefina Terrera, Kushal Sharma
These three Nanodegree program graduates all got jobs through their Udacity profiles. Alan Kim, a Full Stack graduate, got a job as a Technical Intern at AT&T. Josefine Terrera, a Front-End graduate, became a Contract Developer at Transformations by Martha. And Kushal Sharma, an Android Developer graduate, got a job as an Android Developer at Flipkart.
Progress and Achievements
Our Career Team is working diligently to support the career objectives of our students, while at the same time compiling critical data about the current hiring landscape, and the impact Udacity and Talent Source are having upon it. Over the past six months, we’ve learned an incredible amount about what employers want, how they go about finding talent, how they make their decisions, and what we can do to further establish candidate profiles—and Talent Source—as fantastic tools to help you land your dream job. Some of the highlights from this period include:
- Growing our hiring partner list to over 300 top companies
- Sending out nearly 1000 emails to students, alerting them of Talent Source opportunities
- Celebrating over 400 students getting jobs because of their Nanodegree experience
What We’ve Learned
The insight we’re gaining through these efforts is helping to inform improvements, upgrades, and the launch of new features. Below we’ve collected some key findings, and the subsequent changes we’ve made to leverage what we’ve learned:
Discovery
Employers spend only a few seconds to review a profile before deciding to dig deeper.
Challenge
The most important information must be upfront, with differentiating experiences highlighted.
Solution
We’ve added one new feature, and updated another:
- A “Top card” feature in the profile gives a quick overview of your accomplishments at Udacity, as well as where you’re currently working, and what you hope to do next.
- Work and education experiences have been updated with a horizontal scroll rather than a long list. This visual style also allows you to curate your list of experiences so that the most relevant are upfront, and gaps in your experience are discrete.
Discovery
Employers won’t review every project.
Challenge
A student’s best work—and the easiest to review—must be on clear display.
Solution
We’ve added a new view, and updated another feature:
- We added a gallery style view of projects which is intended to grab employers’ attention with a large image of your project. You’ll be able to display your 4 top projects and can re-order as you like to ensure that employers see where you’ve put in the most work.
- We’ll now auto-add your github project link if it’s submitted with your project review. While some employers may take the time to download your project, most want an easy way to dig into your code quickly.
Discovery
Employers want to know how you are unique.
Challenge
Personalize the profile presentation.
Solution
We’ve added one new feature, and updated another one:
- New badges for contributions on the forums, StackOverflow, and GitHub highlight how active you are in the developer community.
- Interview questions have replaced the previous bio section. Employers are interested in hearing your perspective on various topics relating to your chosen Nanodegree program. These questions now give them insight into how you handle challenges, what your technical preferences are, and what you want to accomplish with your newly-mastered skills.
Connecting With Your Career Team
There is one other significant change we’ve made to Udacity profiles—we’ve added a Job Status pop-up. This will help us provide you with appropriate and relevant resources in timely fashion, and ensure we’re helping you when you need it, and giving you space when you’re strictly focused on your studies. When we understand where you’ve progressed to, what you’re you’re succeeding with, and what you’re struggling to conquer, we can respond with the best resources, and the right degree of support.
We encourage you to update your new profile today, and remember, there are already over 300 hiring partners actively seeking talent right now—you could be next!
