Some of the most significant but often underemphasized benefits of being an ambassador are the career benefits on offer.
Being an ambassador is a fantastic experience for students, helping them develop communication, organization and prioritization skills (amongst other things!).
We've observed a real desire from students to gain tangible experience to put on their CV, which student ambassador management teams can support.
In a questionnaire we ran involving 50 randomly selected students at King's College London, two thirds indicated that receiving a reference they could use on their CV would be a more significant incentive for becoming a student ambassador than getting paid.
TAP makes it easy for institutions to give data-driven references to their students automatically, providing your ambassadors with useful material for their CV while also saving you time.
Here's how we do it...
Career Reference Tool
Ambassadors can download an automatically generated career reference from the app which gives a summary of their activities as an ambassador on TAP. This reference uses quantitative data points, such as the number of conversations they've had with prospects, as well as qualitative data points, such as the feedback they've received on those conversations.
Career Points
Everything an ambassador does through TAP earns them 'career points'. Read our article, 'What are Career Points?', to find out how they are calculated and awarded.
Career Points give a quick view of the comparative input (i.e. value) an ambassador has added and this is tracked as a single figure over the total time they've been an ambassador. This number has a variety of uses, ranging from recognising ambassadors with awards, to providing you with some simple data if you're ever asked by an employer to write a personalized reference.
Talking to Ambassadors About Career Benefits
Happy and motivated students are a key element of successful student ambassador programs and career benefits are an easy way to help students feel valued and therefore incentivized to keep working hard! They are also free to give out and TAP makes it easy.
Make sure your students are aware that being a student ambassador is a great thing to put on their CV. You can even include this in your student ambassador recruitment materials if appropriate.
If you have any questions, do get in touch.