Collin Gallagher
Philosophy:
The Career Education Center developed their web site to truly integrate with their services. This is their second iteration of the Web site - the first was mostly a gopher to web conversion. In the new design, they looked first at organization, content, and key areas - what they wanted to ultimately deliver to support the Center.
The Center is a newly designed facility. When you walk into the Center, you face a receptionist area & off to the right there are 5 PCs with Web access & word processing capability. (There are also about 10 additional PCs available in their Center library.) They place a high value on personal interaction and did not want the PCs to be the first thing you face. From 12-4, in addition to the receptionist, there is an additional staff person on hand for "quick referral". This idea stemmed from discussions around the "intake function". The idea is to spend about 15 minutes with the person & direct them to the right resource - e.g. JobTrak, resource library, etc. Often this includes a referral to the Web site - pointing students to the PCs available for their use. This has led to better use of counselor time.
In addition, counselors include in their sessions with students a "walk thru" of the web site to teach students about the resource.
The Center staff consists of 18 full & part time staff plus 2 information technology staff. One of the I.T. staff does planning & development; the other does maintenance & upkeep. They are continually working on new ideas & enhancements. The I.T. staff is integrated into the Center’s business activities, even to the extent that they perform the reception "quick referral" service several hours per week.
Technology:
Files:
The web front end accesses a number of 4th Dimension databases - including the scheduling database of all events, workshops, etc., the interviewing program database, etc. They have their own student database which is fed from the central student info system. The student database includes tracking all program participation, etc. The company database has a relationship to student database for campus interviews, etc. They are currently restructuring their company database because it is "messy" due to companies with multiple divisions and similar problems. Their next attempt at company database is going to be a hierarchical approach: A company record with info like industry, name, etc. Then a contact record occurring multiple times; within that, a division record with multiple jobs. Example: IBM, Joe Smith, Accounting, 5 jobs. They use a randomly assigned sequence number as key & use alpha look-ups on company name.
They feed information to the Alumni Association and also work with the Alumni Association on joint programs such as the Career Network.
They use JobTrak, as well as a 4th Dimension database to track on-campus recruiting. They do not use software such as Resumix because their philosophy is to teach the job search skills. They don’t want resume referral software that "shoots resumes out to employers". (I’m not sure if Resumix fits this category, but I get the idea.) Along the same lines, they do not use any of the resume building software such as "Disc Resume Professional" or even Word templates. The philosophy is that they don’t want to hold back creativity & force a template; samples and general instructions are available online.
Other Innovation Ideas:
They found from student focus groups that students wanted to be called when a program started up that they might be interested in. Calling students was deemed impractical due to resources, so they turned to e-mail. They set up several list serves, including one for general information appropriate for alumni & students, on-campus interviewing, pre-law advising, and undergrad internships. These have proven highly popular.
They are currently working on a system that will allow students to go online and build a career profile of their interests, geographical areas, etc. Then, any job opportunity or event that starts up will be matched against this database. E-mail will be sent to the selected students. This is sort of the next generation of the list serves.
LaGuardia Community College - Jeff Weintrab, Harry Heinemann
Have just totally revamped their administrative management support system
Students start out with a required "gateway" course (1 credit). During this course students get assigned to a coordinator & generally stay with them for the duration. Coordinators work with students assigned to them and are responsible for companies. Positions are shared across colleges; coordinators develop positions for other majors as well as their own. Specialization has not been a problem because they are a 2-year school and do not have a highly technical curriculum. Most coordinators can either develop the positions "across the board" or else bring someone in to assist. The job descriptions are developed in meetings between coordinator and company (not faxed in by employers.) The coordinator is considered the "manager of the internship" including problem resolution and employer evaluation. Co-op also offers seminars, etc.
Information Technology:
Their new system is developed in FoxPro. They are planning a student lab and web access. When available, student access will allow viewing the jobs & querying the job criteria. This will replace the current process where students view text documents each term and select the jobs they are interested in. Either way, the student takes his/her selections to the coordinator for further action.
They have about 600 positions and about 480 unique companies. A company record is created for the first occurrence of position. Any coordinator can set up a company - it is an alpha search & manual verification that the company does not already exist. The system automatically generates a position number.
They have added to their new system the ability to track internal referrals from one coordinator to another. For example, coordinator A works with a student and then refers him to Coordinator B for another job opportunity. The idea is to measure the amount of time it really takes to place a student and also to provide alternatives to measuring coordinators by placement only.
They do some placements in Israel but don’t have an international program per se. They do not have plans to automate the resume process. They serve about 1200 individual students and 1800 placements annually.
University of Cincinnati
Sam Sevilla, Director of Co-op Program
Overview:
They have 2 different approaches:
The College of Applied Science, about a mile away from the main campus, is almost fully automated in terms of referral. They are using Academic Software & were involved in some of the development of that package. I’ll be following up with another call to Dick Able, who is knowledgeable about their system.
The main co-op office is automated in terms of record keeping but referrals are not done via computer. There are two reasons for this. Many of their programs, such as architecture and fashion design, require portfolios rather than resumes & they haven’t found an efficient way to scan those. Also, there is still a philosophical interest in controlling the matching process, rather than just taking all the resumes and sending them out. Many disciplines work one-on-one with students. Co-op advisors are faculty.
They don’t do much job development. Their system is that if a company is fairly large, one advisor is designated as the co-op contact person. If the company is real large, such as General Motors with 7 or 8 divisions, the Associate Director of Co-op is assigned to co-ordinate. Their philosophy is that they can’t make the companies do what they want them to do, so they adapt to whatever the company wants. Some companies appoint one person internally as a central contact person & request the same from the university. Others are fine with multiple contact people on both sides. Sometimes a company that has jobs for multiple disciplines designates the prime preference (e.g. Engineering) and that co-op advisor serves as the internal university point person.
Co-op advisors handle employer evaluation and grading.
They handle about 3,700 students in the program.
Their system was developed in-house, with a database that is not going to be supported much longer. They have just started to look at packages.
University of Waterloo - Keith Kenning
Waterloo has a highly automated "job matching" system. Coordinators are assigned to jobs and, once placement has occurred, to students. A student may have a different coordinator with each co-op placement throughout his/her career. The coordinator visits the site at least once during the placement.
Much of the paperwork between employers and Waterloo is done by office staff rather than coordinators. For example, employers work with office staff on job descriptions and evaluations.
The company/coordinator linkage has undergone major re-engineering in the past year. The re-engineering was motivated by a new director from outside co-op and also budget cutbacks that encouraged a number of early retirements within the co-op program.
Old Process:
Coordinators were faculty-based (faculty = colleges in NU terminology). Each faculty had a managing coordinator and field staff of about 3-10 coordinators in each. Within those teams, companies were divided up geographically.
Problem:
Employers did not like dealing with multiple coordinators across colleges. Employers want to deal with one person.
New Process:
Field coordinators are one team, grouped by geography. Within geography, they specialize in different programs but are multidisciplinary also. Coordinators work out of their homes and are set up close to the geographical area that they manage.
Feedback on the transition:
Initial feedback has been good - from coordinators and employers. Coordinators are starting to think multidisciplinary, but, although organizationally restructured, the actual adaptation is slow.
Information Technology Issues:
Their company file is very messy. They have about 12,000 registered employers and only about 2,500 of them are active each semester. Keith thinks the old process contributed to the problem, particularly with multi-national large companies. They are trying to clean up their company file.
They have "a home grown system that nobody want to emulate". They are looking at Academic Software - which was developed by Texas A&M and is web-based. Keith is getting me their phone number.