Santa Fe Community College used an outdated homegrown database to manage jobs posted to their career center, which was difficult and inefficient for career services staff. Critical learning materials related to career services skills were only available to students if they paid for an online class or went to the career center in person – an inconvenient process for everyone. Furthermore, the college’s technology department faced constant issues with the old homegrown server, which took their attention away from other priority tasks.
“Our IT department is so happy they no longer have to keep patching together our old server and damaged functions -- or spend any time at all on our database, because now we are set up. Symplicity manages it all for us.”
Patty Armstrong,
Senior Career Services Coordinator
Situation
When Senior Career Services Coordinator, Patty Armstrong, began working at Santa Fe Community College, she inherited a homegrown database that was a difficult tool for job-seekers to navigate and for staff to maintain. Career services staff had to copy and save job postings and use a separate spreadsheet to track current postings and their expiration dates, which they then had to manually remove. Patti was also forced to disable the ability for employers to post their own job profiles to avoid fraudulent postings, blind ads, and hacks into their database. She created a Word document for employers to complete, which she and her staff manually entered into the database after researching and vetting each individual employer. Posting jobs took hours.
Santa Fe Community College faced other struggles with their old system as well – students could not easily access critical learning tools that included learning materials about career skills. Students would have to come to the career services office with an appointment to view PowerPoints and other materials containing this information. The IT staff on campus also struggled with their old system, which was constantly crashing, producing errors, and affecting productivity in the career services office.
Solution
Santa Fe Community College named their new Symplicity-hosted job database Your New Job to direct and attract community members and employers, whom the institution serves as enthusiastically as students and graduates. The career center staff spent the summer of 2016 customizing and learning their CSM platform, as they prepared to launch Your New Job by the start of the fall semester.
Now, staff can manage Your New Job on their own with plenty of time to focus on other strategic initiatives. CSM allows staff to vet each and every employer and their postings, which they can enter themselves again if needed. To ensure they were getting specific employer information, the staff embedded customized fields and forms into their platform.
“I love the opportunity to choose the employers we will promote and screen out those who are too far for our clients to commute to, or who are in communities they are unlikely to move to,” Patty says.
Additionally, the career center has utilized CSM’s Document Library to store all career skills resources and learning materials that were difficult to distribute before. The career center takes advantage of CSM’s Announcements feature to let students and community members know where these materials are located.
Success
Students and community members who seek out the career center’s services were quick to register and look for job opportunities, with the career center pulling in many new postings a week.
Santa Fe Community College is now able to choose the employers they promote and can screen out those that present too far of a commute for students and community members. The career center especially appreciates CSM’s measures against suspicious job-posting; staff can view or post concerns about an employer in what Patty describes as a “disturbing time of fraudulent postings, unethical employers and identity theft.”
Additionally, students and other community members associated with the institution who are seeking learning materials about career skills can simply log into CSM and access blogs, videos, articles, recorded lectures and more.
“We are extremely happy that our small community college found an affordable and flexible tool that allows us to reach more employers and keep up with expectations of up-to-date, responsive technology to teach job-seekers and connect them to great job opportunities. Symplicity CSM rocks!”
