This fall, the University’s Career Center introduced CareerDrive, a new online recruiting platform to replace My Career Center (MyCC). The new site is accessible through student ePortfolios and allows students a convenient way to connect with the Career Center and potential employers.
The change occurred over the summer due to the University’s dissatisfaction with the interface of MyCC.
“We were unhappy for a variety of reasons, ranging from inadequate data reporting to their habit of spamming students,” Director of the Career Center Sharon Belden Castonguay wrote in an email to The Argus. “Just after we made the decision not to renew our contract, the vendor, Experience, declared bankruptcy. That left two primary vendors on the market for this type of technology. CSO Research, Inc., which provides the platform for CareerDrive, had a great reputation with schools that used it. MIT, Dartmouth, and Wellesley are also customers.”
Castonguay went on to express her excitement about CareerDrive and how it can help students in their job searches.
“We liked the fact that we could let students log in with their Wesleyan credentials instead of a separate user name and password,” Castonguay wrote. “The card swipe technology is also a plus, since it cuts down on wait time for checking in for appointments and events. I also love the fact that students can search for an employer and immediately see if they have any Facebook or LinkedIn contacts at the organization. On the administrative side, the ability for us to analyze usage of the Career Center is more robust. The system was also customizable to our specific needs.”
Castonguay hopes students will come to use Career Drive regularly, as it is constantly updating new opportunities for internships and jobs, as well as information sessions and other events.
“Just because you do not see something in your intended field one day doesn’t mean it won’t pop up the next!” Castonguay wrote. “Students can also set up text alerts for advising appointments, events, and new postings that fit their criteria. The Important Resources tab houses a number of great subscription-only platforms like Vault, an industry research site, and GoinGlobal, for those interested in working abroad.”
CareerDrive will also allow students to make appointments over the internet, rather than having to go in and set up an appointment, as MyCC worked.
Zander Porter ’17 expressed excitement about the online nature of the new system.
“I’ve been hesitant in the past to use the Career Center because it always seemed like such an involved process to set up meetings with them,” Porter said. “I’m very busy, so it was hard to find the time to go to the office, not just for the actual appointment, but to even set it up. The online appointment integration makes it much easier for me to make and check in for an appointment and it has made the whole process much more appealing to me.”
The new website will not only allow students more control over their own job or internship search, it will also give them information on internships that students have held previously or what jobs they have gotten after graduation.
“I hope that students see the Career Center not just as a place to get your resume critiqued or find an internship, but the place on campus where you can learn what you need to know to manage your career over time,” Castonguay wrote. “CareerDrive is just one part of our #Drive campaign aimed at preparing students for the world outside Wesleyan. Other features include our Driver’s Ed workshop series; Accelerate, an intensive job search boot camp for seniors; our Wesleyan Graduate Outcomes project; and Wesleyan Student Internship Reviews, which lets students share information about their internships with their classmates. We’re also excited about this year’s Winter on Wyllys offerings, which we will start marketing shortly.”
Ava Miller-Lewis ’17 spoke to the benefits of the new features, particularly the Wesleyan Student Internship Reviews.
“A tool like that would have been really helpful to me last year in my internship search,” Miller-Lewis said. “I interned this past summer with a company that didn’t really teach me much and sort of felt like a waste of time. I knew other Wesleyan students had interned there but I hadn’t been able to talk to them about their experiences, so if I could have read their reviews of the experience I might have looked elsewhere for my internship. This tool seems like a good way to avoid the same thing happening to other students.”
Castonguay also spoke about more changes in store for the Career Center, such as a new data collection initiative that will allow students to see where graduates have ended up working.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be done making changes to the Career Center, only because we need to be adapting constantly to both the job market and students’ needs,” Castonguay wrote. “A top, immediate priority is improving data collection around employment outcomes of graduates. Parents, students, faculty and the general public are all demanding this information, and for the class of 2014 we adopted new national standards for reporting. We are using a web-based portal called WesGO to collect information from graduates through December 31, and I’ll be issuing a report on the results in March.”