Moments of impact from Alex J. Tunney's career
The New SchoolWhen I joined the career center, the digital presence was minimal and underutilized. The center had a Twitter account and blog that were rarely updated, and no LinkedIn presence whatsoever. Meanwhile, students repeatedly asked the same foundational questions during one-on-one appointments, which meant counselors were spending valuable time answering basic inquiries instead of providing deeper, more strategic career coaching. The center served only certain schools within the larger university, so visibility was already a challenge—and the lack of proactive information sharing meant students had to stumble upon resources rather than discover them easily. Recognizing this gap, I pitched my supervisors on a plan to expand our social media footprint and create more accessible, upfront content for students. Once approved, I developed a multi-channel content strategy that included interviewing alumni for profile features that highlighted real career paths, writing FAQ-style blog posts directly addressing the most common questions from appointments, and curating a weekly roundup of interesting and relevant job postings. This approach transformed our channels from static placeholders into dynamic resources that met students where they were. The impact was both qualitative and operational. Counselors reported a noticeable drop in basic scheduling and informational questions during appointments, which freed them up to focus on more substantive career advising. By proactively answering common questions through accessible digital content, I helped the career center work smarter, improve student access to critical information, and elevate the quality of the counseling experience overall.
iNDEMAND · Operations Lead, VODAs I transitioned from an Operations role to Product, I recognized a critical knowledge gap that could derail both my departure and the team's ongoing work. Operational workflows I had owned were at risk of being lost on shared drives, and valuable institutional knowledge remained siloed in the heads of a few team members. I needed to ensure continuity for the operations team inheriting my responsibilities while preventing myself from becoming a bottleneck after moving roles. I took a systematic approach to capturing and organizing this knowledge. I began by conducting a comprehensive audit of all existing workflows, reviewing and adapting current documentation where it existed, and interviewing operations team members to extract tacit knowledge that had never been formally recorded. I then established a structured documentation system in Confluence, creating clear category hierarchies and developing a consistent template. For each of the nearly 20 workflows, I wrote detailed process guides complete with screenshots to ensure clarity and ease of use. This effort spanned two months, with 2-3 hours dedicated weekly to interviews, writing, and iterative revisions. The impact was immediate and sustained. The operations team adapted quickly to the workflows they inherited, seamlessly taking ownership without disruption. Most tellingly, the volume of questions directed to me about processes I had previously owned dropped from an initial handful of edge-case inquiries to virtually zero. The documentation system became a self-service resource that empowered the team to operate independently and preserved critical operational knowledge for the organization.