Humber College Relies on CSM to Streamline Student Services

Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning (Humber) offers bachelor’s degrees, diplomas, certificates, and Ontario graduate certificates in more than 200 programs. Located in Toronto, Ontario, Humber has a diverse student population including international students from more than 120 countries, students who attend directly from high school and those returning to higher education to shift careers or newcomers to Canada looking for opportunities to earn credentials to support their efforts to enter the Canadian job market. With six academic Faculties (Health Sciences and Wellness, Social and Community Services, Applied Sciences and Technology, Business, Media and Creative Arts and Liberal Arts and Sciences and Innovative Learning) and a diverse student population, Humber’s Advising and Career Services team together with the Work Integrated Learning staff (from each Faculty) use Symplicity CSM to collaborate with departments and employers for all types of jobs. With CSM, Humber has been able to customize the platform for each Faculty and job opportunities to ensure that everyone working with a particular student is on the same page. 

Highlights:

• CSM provided an avenue to implement campus-wide collaboration to build processes and communication standardization so that all users are on the same page;
• Open API and the feature of a multi-school environment where some customization for each faculty is available were both important features that attracted Humber to CSM.
• Using CSM has provided a streamlined student experience by enabling the team to build trust with faculty and students with training and support to help place students with the right job opportunities;
• Having CSM for all Faculties at Humber has also improved the employer experience with Humber College as there is now one platform for employers to access all Academic Faculties and students at Humber; and
• Symplicity’s support centre has been crucial to support user adoption at Humber. The ability to troubleshoot with a dedicated client manager has helped Humber’s career services team to better support users as they adapt to a new platform.

Increased Collaboration

CSM has been critical for collaboration across the college. The career services team uses CSM to work effectively with the Faculties by creating faculty and staff portals specific to the needs of the programs in that faculty. Through these portals, career services work closely with the Faculty Work Integrated Learning Managers to create standards to optimize the experience for the faculty, employer, and student. This process has led to the creation of better procedures and communication standards. This information is available for employees as needed, such as onboarding new faculty and staff with ready to use materials, providing templates for messaging at key times to employers and improved vetting processes for assessing employers seeking access to post jobs on CSM. Collaborating with each faculty has also enabled the career services team to create standard processes and training for all of its students, faculty, and staff.

"CSM gave us an opportunity to work together with our academic Faculties in a new way. In a year full of challenges, we have developed an innovative approach that we might never have even considered. CSM helps us evaluate how to improve the student experience across the college.”

- Melanie Chai
Associate Director of Advising & Career Services Practice
Humber College

Streamlined Student Experience

Armed with an all-in-one platform, career services staff are integral partners to employers and to faculty members to help identify students who may need more support, and to start a dialogue with them to help pinpoint their specific needs. With one consistent platform, CSM enables students to remove some of the exhaustion of finding the right job utilizing the Curated Jobs Feed in CSM. With the Curated Jobs Feed, Humber staff is able to personalize job opportunities for each student. Additionally, students have access to the career services portal for up to two years post-graduation and allow the office to work with Humber alumni. Working with the community and alumni, Humber has also been able to increase its community outreach with CSM’s Virtual Career Fairs module. This enabled Humber to successfully host its first virtual career fair in November 2020 with more than 1,000 students in attendance. CSM provided the ability to host practice fairs, provided ample support with training to learn this new module and flexibility when it came to the video conferencing system.

Unparalleled Support

Symplicity’s support team has been critical to ensuring Humber continues to deliver excellent career services resources and programs. With a dedicated Symplicity client manager, the college is able to troubleshoot any issues that arise, implement new customization, and receive training on new modules for their career services staff. Additionally, with the Symplicity Help Center, onboarding new staff members has been easy. Symplicity support’s ticketing system is especially helpful for resolving problems effectively and in a timely manner.

Having a dedicated client manager who meets with us, troubleshoots with us, helps us advance projects or new modules and provide solutions is important. We are a small team serving a large number of students and faculties so CSM allows us to manage career services efficiently.”

- Melanie Chai
Associate Director of Advising & Career Services Practice
Humber College