When trying to find the right career services platform, it’s best to look for one that helps your staff manage, prioritize, and deepen relationships with employers, turning every interaction into a stronger pathway to student success. 

Strong employer relationship management (ERM) is vitally important to improving student employability outcomes and institutional reputation.  However, most career service offices struggle to manage hundreds (or thousands) of employer relationships efficiently.  

That’s where Symplicity CSM comes in. 

With Symplicity CSM, your staff has the tools to strategically manage employer relationships, so they can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on student-focused impact. 

Is your institution's software ready to meet the modern demands of ERM? 

What is Employer Relationship Management and Why it Matters 

ERM is the strategic process that career service offices use to manage partnerships with employers who hire students and graduates. 

Strong employer relationships drive employability outcomes, improve student engagement and placement rates, and strengthen institutional brand, and ROI. 

Universities don’t just prepare students academically; they help to drive national competitiveness by equipping graduates with skills that the labor market demands. Research shows that universities are most effective when they work in partnership with employers, aligning academic outcomes with workforce needs.  

For an effective ERM, career services need to operate more like a B2B operation, treating every employer like a valued client or strategic partner. This requires an integrated platform to automate, centralize, and report on employer relations at scale.   

The Challenge of Managing Employer Relations without an ERM Platform 

Without a unified system for ERM, career services may face significant operational hurdles. The absence of a platform leads to: 

• Siloed employer data across spreadsheets or staff inboxes 

• Duplicate outreach from different departments 

• Lack of visibility into which employers are most engaged 

• Missed follow-ups and poor tracking of hiring outcomes 

These challenges prevent career services from scaling and transforming their employer relations from transactional activities (like hosting a one-off career fair) into genuine, strategic partnerships. What career services need is a unified platform that functions like a sophisticated B2B system. 

How Symplicity CSM Excels at Employer Relationship Management 

Symplicity CSM transforms the chaotic process of employer relations into a strategic, scalable operation by providing career services with an integrated platform that functions like a powerful B2B system. 

Centralized Employer CRM 

With Symplicity CSM, career services have a single source of truth for employer data. All employer contacts, history, and notes are stored in one centralized location. This single view avoids duplication of efforts and ensures consistent communication across your university. Every interaction, from job posting to event attendance is visible in one dashboard. 

Additionally, each employer has their own profile, where the employer can promote their brand, post jobs, manage applications, and register for events. 

Full Control of Employer Relations 

With CSM, your institution has full control and ownership of employer relations, which means you own your data, your network, and your strategy. 

Unlike job-board style platforms that pool employer data and share recruiting access across schools, CSM keeps your partnerships securely within your branded space.  

The Employer Profile Analysis tool provides necessary guardrails by automatically raising red flags, allowing your team to quickly vet potential partners and prevent fraudulent jobs from compromising your system. 

Engagement and Outcome Reporting 

The platform automatically tracks all key employer activities, including job posting, on-campus interviews, and event participation. All data is visualized through interactive dashboards and reports. 

Your team can then segment employers by their engagement rate to run highly targeted campaigns designed to increase participation or spur re-engagement. Your team can also generate reports showing hiring trends and student outcomes.  

CSM is the only platform that gives your team the ability to understand your institution’s unique employability drivers.

Integrated Event and Communication Tools 

CSM provides email templates, tasks, and automated workflows to simplify communication with employers.  

The system allows you to manage both in-person and virtual career fairs, complete with mobile-friendly QR code check-in for easy attendance tracking. It also enables employers to schedule and manage all their interviews. 

Powering Skill-Based Matches 

Skill-based hiring is an integral part of CSM. Through a Skills Inventory, students actively build a detailed profile of competencies gained from various experiences. The system uses these skills to intelligently recommend tailored job opportunities to students.  

Employers can leverage this inventory to search for and find candidates based specifically on the skills they need to fill open roles. 

Experiential Learning  

CSM's built-in experiential learning features give you complete control. You can quickly enable employers to post co-op opportunities, while Career Services develops structured journeys that teach students how to connect their experiences to professional skills.  

Reporting then ensures you can share quantifiable results and make data-driven decisions for improvement. 

Employer Network 

Institutions are looking for more internships and jobs that are relevant to their students. With CSM, your students have access to thousands of jobs at the national, state, and metro-region level. The job-feed curates relevant jobs based on the degree-type, whether you are a 4-year, 2-year, MBA, or law school. 

CSM is the Right Fit for You If... 

Why juggle multiple tools? CSM is the only platform built specifically for Career Services, offering all the tools you need in one place. It delivers unlimited potential, thanks to its ability to be completely customized for your institution and specific operational workflows. 

CSM is the right fit if: 

• You want to know your unique employability drivers so you can double down on what works, improve what doesn't, and scale career readiness as an institutional differentiator 

• You want to map skills to opportunities and connect with employers shifting to skill-based hiring 

• You want to strengthen employer partnerships by owning the relationship and having the right tools to manage these relationships 

• You want access to a robust network of employers  

• You need a platform built for the modern Career Services office that proactively evolves to meet future demands