Although COVID-19 has disrupted the world and its economy, students continue to seek employability opportunities in an uncertain job market. According to a Business Insider article, “Businesses and organizations ranging from Yelp to the National Institutes of Health have canceled summer internship programs due to COVID-19. Others, like Google, announced they would move summer internship programs online rather than cancel them completely.” To support the students that are worried about what step to take next, there are universities like the National University of Singapore (NUS) that continue to deliver career services with Symplicity CSM. Using CSM, NUS was able to host a virtual career fair that drew over 200 employers.
Originally, NUS scheduled the career fair to be an in-person event but once COVID-19 became a cause for concern, it was clear the event couldn’t be held as planned. Rather than canceling the event, however, the NUS career services staff decided to pivot towards a virtual career fair. This seven-day event began on March 23 and ended on April 2 (excluding weekend days). This virtual career fair allowed NUS students to search for active job postings, submit their resume, and use the live chat feature to discuss job postings they were interested in with the employers. “Once we decided we would transition to a virtual career fair, it took my team about a month to prepare but I’m glad that we had the event. A total of 4804 students RSVP to our virtual career fair and there were 695 students that joined the live chat,” said Sharon Ang, Head (Operations & Technology), Centre for Future-ready Graduates at NUS. Additionally, the NUS virtual career fair drew a total of 207 unique companies/employers with 444 chat representatives engaging in live chat sessions with students during the event.
When it came to plan for the virtual career fair, NUS was able to set up and configure the module exactly as they wanted from within CSM. Ang also noted that the Symplicity support team was on stand-by during the event, ready to provide assistance if any issues arose. “It was great to know that Symplicity support was available to help me. The responsiveness of Symplicity support is always quick so it was good to know I had backup if anything went wrong,” Ang added. After observing the student engagement during the virtual career fair, the NUS career services team suspects they’ll host another virtual career fair in the future. Ang said, “We know that our students miss being on campus, but we are happy to show our students that they still have options through virtual recruiting. Symplicity CSM ensures that we can continue to support our students’ employability journeys, no matter where they are located.”
For more information about virtualizing student services, email info@symplicity.com or schedule a conversation.