New year, same you? Maybe, maybe not. As the new year begins, institutions and offices across the country are returning from their winter break ready to kick start a busy spring semester. Instead of adding to a list of New Year’s resolutions likely already on your plate for the new year and semester, we’re taking a deeper dive with CSM. Hear from our clients the tools they are using to provide you with some inspiration to take with you into the new year.
Student Outreach with Campaigns
Year after year, outreach was ranked as the biggest challenge facing career centers. At a time when it is hard to get students’ attention in a sea of distractions, career centers have turned to creative ways to engage with students. With CSM’s Campaigns module, institutions can send targeted emails directly to students under a variety of criteria. Take a note from the University of Florida that has set up email campaigns tied to career fairs. Once a career fair ends, students automatically receive a ‘thank you’ email that provides students with concrete next steps to continue their career readiness journeys. Offices can set up other campaigns targeting jobs directly to students on demographics, majors, student groups, or interests.
Data, Data, and Data
It’s not breaking news to say that data says it all. CSM can provide institutions with as little or as much data as they want. If you’re new to CSM, institutions can start by utilizing the First Destination Survey feature to include customized questions for you to gain insight from. At Yale University, the data collected through the First Destination Survey revealed that 40 percent of its students were seeing Common Good Careers which led the team to realize they needed to hire a dedicated staff member to oversee the program. Yale can better identify and track what industries students are applying to, what employers they are going to, the demographic of the students, and more.
Experiential Learning
The discourse in 2023 around the “value of higher education” has primarily centered around getting students career-ready skills. Whether that’s through co-op, internship, ex-ternship, study abroad, or an experiential learning opportunity, institutions today are being tasked with ensuring students have work-based learning experiences. At Central New Mexico Community College, the EL module streamlines the entire process for the staff by incorporating student interest forms, learning objectives, placement forms, approval workflows and mid- and final evaluations for employers and students. For placements, the EL module has facilitated the process and connection between students, employers, and faculty, track the internship in various stages, and then collect data about internships to inform their strategy going forward.
Pathways
One often underutilized, but impactful, tool in CSM is the Pathways module. With Pathways, institutions can build a custom workflow module for defining career plans, boost student engagement, allow Career advisors to set up structured paths for student skill development, and easily measure the success of these plans.
At Northeastern’s D’Amore McKim School of Business, the introduction of the Pathways module has automated the work that used to take tedious manual hours of input and processing. With Pathways, students enable Northeastern to track completion of reflection assignments as students go through the lifecycle of their co-op program. The surveys and evaluation tools in CSM, combined with the system's ease of use, has contributed to enhanced internal communication and streamlined administrative tasks.
Symplicity CSM has been a trusted collaborator for career services professionals for over 20 years. Hear more about how our clients are utilizing CSM to enhance their career services offices at www.symplicity.com/success-stories. To learn more about the tools within your own CSM system or to learn how you can bring CSM to your campus, schedule a conversation.
