Situation
Before the Georgia Tech Division of Professional Practice merged with Career Services in 2013, the experiential learning office used a homegrown system that provided little flexibility for customization and did not streamline a lot of the manual processes. On the other hand, the career services office had been using CSM by Symplicity since 2007 to manage job postings and other related activities. Once the offices merged to create the Center for Career Discovery and Development (C2D2), the experiential learning office compared both systems and decided to implement Symplicity. “We saw a lot of functionality and ease of use,” said Scott Green, Information Technology Support Specialist at C2D2. “That's what I loved the most about CSM.”
“Symplicity always listens to the schools that they partner with and are always rolling out improvements and enhancements to the system regularly."
Scott Green,
Information Technology Support Specialist, C2D2
Solution
Once the C2D2 office was created, the office began customizing its new platform to streamline some of the processes it had in place. The career services office was using an outdated and very manual system to manage career fair registrations for employers and students. The office began using the Career Fair 2.0 module to streamline the entire career fair process. The C2D2 directors also began promoting Career Fair 2.0 to academic departments organizing career fairs to encourage them to use the system. By getting the academics to use the 2.0 module, the C2D2 office saw an increased awareness of the career fairs, and students began relying on Symplicity as their one-stop platform for all career fairs on campus.
The Center for Career Discovery and Development also used Symplicity to track placements and progressions of students in the system. From experiential learning placements to on-campus interviewing, to scheduling counseling appointments and attendance information, the staff would pull reports in Symplicity to understand how to modify their activities and what services they should provide to better assist their students. The office also used CSM data to compile an annual career services report that it published online and shared internally with two goals in mind – to build relationships with other campus departments, and to partner with staff and counseling members to leverage all CSM modules.
Success
Since merging both offices and implementing Symplicity, the C2D2 office has been able to consolidate all its career services activities in one single platform for students, employers, and staff members to use. The office partnered with Symplicity team members to customize its system to streamline its processes and display university branding. Kenji Terawaki, an Information Analyst who took part in the system customization process, believes Symplicity’s biggest advantage is that it offers universities the ability to brand themselves across the entire platform. “Branding is the most important thing that Symplicity offers to universities and colleges,” Kenji says. “You can brand your name throughout the product, through every single module.”
Partnering with the academic departments for career fairs and job postings also increased the awareness of the career center and the number of student logins in CSM. Scott Green added a job posting widget to the academic units’ web pages to advertise jobs to its students. If a student was interested in a job posting, he or she would need to log into CSM and apply through the portal. Employers also benefited from the visibility they obtained from promoting events in the system. The C2D2 office used the report API to push upcoming employer info sessions and workshops, which resulted in over a 50% increase in student attendance. The staff also began promoting employer events through the On-Campus Recruiting module, an idea that Scott and Kenji presented at Symplicity’s annual Symposium and that was quickly adopted by other universities in attendance.
“You've provided a product that is so customizable that any school with any type of program can set themselves up to function smoothly and seamlessly in a short period of time."
