In a buyer-seller relationship, trust is often transactional and brief. The consumer buys, the seller delivers, and their interaction ends. The stakes are low, and trust builds—or breaks—quickly.

Hiring, however, requires a deeper, more personal form of trust. A candidate isn’t just making a purchase or a quick decision—they’re committing a significant part of their life, identity, and future to an organization. They must trust that the employer’s promises about culture, growth, and support will hold true long after onboarding.

Employers, in turn, must trust that new hires have the right skills and will integrate into the organization, contributing over time. This trust isn’t built in a single moment—it’s developed through relationships, with transparency and consistency.

Students evaluating job offers often ask themselves various questions, many of which begin with the same concern:
Do I trust this employer…

…with my time and my early career?
…to treat me fairly, encourage professional growth, and value my contributions?
…will they compensate me fairly and provide stability?
…is offering meaningful work aligned with my values?
…to motivate, engage, and inspire me to show up every day?

How Is Trust Built in the Employer-Selection Process?

A job offer doesn't automatically earn a candidate's trust—employers have to earn it through various signals from multiple sources that students process consciously and subconsciously.

Personal Connections & Word of Mouth

Trust often stems from familiarity. When students know someone who has worked for an employer—a peer, mentor, or professor—their experiences can shape perceptions.

Career services professionals are crucial to this process. When a trusted career center advisor trusts an employer, students are significantly more likely to view it as a favorable workplace.

Recruiter & Employee Interactions

One conversation at a career fair or networking event can build or destroy trust. A recruiter's communication style, body language, and enthusiasm affect whether a student feels safe and valued.

Authenticity is important. Students can easily sense if an interaction feels rehearsed or authentic.

Employer Branding vs. Consumer Branding

A company's consumer brand may be strong, but that does not always mean it is a trusted employer. Just because a company makes a great product doesn't guarantee it treats its employees well.

Employer branding—how a company presents itself as a workplace—often significantly impacts a student's decision-making process. Employee testimonials, transparent salary ranges, and a clear mission statement can all build trust.

Digital Presence & Storytelling

The content that employers share online—like videos, blog posts, and social media interactions—can foster trust. Hearing employees talk about their experiences can have a greater impact than polished corporate messaging.

Transparency in communication fosters credibility. A company that openly addresses challenges and company expectations about resolving them is building trust.

Alignment with Personal Values

Trust is most robust when students believe an employer's mission aligns with their values. Companies that advocate for issues significant to young professionals—such as diversity, sustainability, and ethical leadership—often cultivate greater trust.

When an employer's stated values align with their actions, students feel confident that their trust is well-placed.

Factors That Erode Trust

Missteps or questionable behavior can undermine trust and quickly erode a student's confidence about accepting a job offer:

Impersonal Mass Messaging

Students want to feel valued as individuals, not like names on a list. Mass messaging might generate short-term wins, but over time, it erodes trust and weakens relationships. Generic recruiting without personalization or context makes students question whether hiring managers truly see their potential or are just filling quotas.

Beyond personalization, students want to know the humans behind the outreach. They need to feel genuinely wanted, not just contacted. When communication feels cold or automated, they hesitate to apply, unsure if they’d truly belong. Employers who invest in meaningful, individualized outreach build stronger connections and give students the confidence to take the next step. That human connection is what attracts top talent and builds long-term credibility.

Lack of Transparency

When employers are unclear about job responsibilities, salary, or opportunities for career growth, students are unlikely to trust their intentions.

Not discussing company culture, expectations, or work-life balance may lead students to believe that the employer is concealing something.

Disrespectful or Inconsistent Communication

Not following up after an interview, canceling meetings at the last minute, or providing conflicting information undermines an employer's credibility.

Students appreciate honesty and reliability, and when an employer shows inconsistency, it raises concerns about how they may treat employees after hiring them.

Negative Employee Reviews or Experiences

Students pay attention to whether or not current or former employees openly criticize an employer's culture, leadership, or ethics. Negative reviews on platforms like Glassdoor or
LinkedIn can backfire fast.

Students seek workplaces where they are respected and valued; a negative reputation is hard to overlook.

Career Services are Trust Facilitators

Endorsements from Career Services carry significant weight when graduating candidates evaluate job offers. When a student meets an employer at a career fair or on a job board, it holds some significance—but when a career advisor personally recommends that employer, the level of trust increases dramatically. Career centers act as gatekeepers of employer relationships, and their guidance plays a crucial role in influencing student decision-making.

For students, choosing an employer is not just about securing a paycheck—it is about entrusting a portion of their lives to an organization. The decision hinges on trust built through personal interactions, employer branding, digital presence, and recommendations from trusted sources. Employers who understand the psychology of trust and work to earn it through authentic, transparent, and meaningful engagement will attract the most dedicated and motivated young professionals.

We often talk about networking, mentorship, and collaboration, but what do impactful relationships in the early talent network look like? What are the fundamental elements of these crucial career connections?

It turns out that the same behaviors that create strong personal relationships — like trust, communication, and empathy — also forge professional interactions. So, let's talk about the characteristics that define effective professional relationships:

🔹 Admit to being human
🔹 Prioritize open communication
🔹 Model understanding
🔹 Cultivate patience
🔹 Set and respect boundaries
🔹 Support mutual growth
🔹 Balance initiative, collaboration, and compliance

Admit to Being Human – Build Trust Through Authenticity

It's easy to feel like you have to put on a "perfect" professional front, but people connect with people, not polished personas. Admitting to being human—acknowledging challenges, sharing real experiences, and being honest about expectations—creates sustainable, more meaningful relationships.

💡 Where this matters in career development:

🔹 Career services teams – Students don't need a "perfect" career coach; they need realistic guidance. Being open about industry realities and job market challenges helps students trust your advice.
🔹 Employers & recruiters – Transparency about hiring timelines, role expectations, and company culture fosters more substantial relationships with candidates and career services teams.
🔹 Students & job seekers – Showing genuine enthusiasm for roles, asking honest questions, and admitting what you don't know makes networking more productive.

Authenticity doesn't mean oversharing—it means being real. The more open and honest you are, the stronger your connections will be.

Prioritize Open Communication – Clear Conversations Lead to Stronger Connections

Miscommunication is one of the most significant barriers to building strong professional relationships. A lack of clarity can slow progress and create frustration, whether it's vague job postings, unclear expectations, or unspoken concerns.

💡 How open communication strengthens relationships:

🔹 Career services teams – Set clear expectations for student appointments, follow-up actions, and response times to create a smoother experience.
🔹 Employers & recruiters – Be upfront about hiring timelines, interview feedback, and job expectations. Candidates value clarity.
🔹 Students & job seekers – Ask direct questions during networking and interviews. Don't assume—seek out the information you need.

Professional relationships develop through clear, honest, and timely communication.

Model Understanding – Empathy Creates Better Outcomes

A great professional relationship isn't just about what you need—it's about understanding the other person's perspective. Empathy builds trust, improves collaboration, and helps everyone involved feel valued.

💡 How to apply this in career development:

🔹 Career services teams – Every student has a unique background, challenges, and goals. Understanding their perspective helps tailor advice that works for them.
🔹 Employers & recruiters – Students and early-career candidates may be navigating the hiring process for the first time. A little patience and guidance can make a big difference.
🔹 Students & job seekers – Recognizing an employer's challenges—like high applicant volume or limited time—can help you approach networking and applications more strategically.

When you take the time to understand others, you build stronger, more productive relationships.

Cultivate Patience – Strong Relationships Take Time

Not every professional relationship pays off instantly. Strong connections—whether between career services teams and students, recruiters and candidates, or employers and job seekers—take time to build.

💡 Why patience matters in professional relationships:

🔹 Career services teams – Students may need multiple conversations before they feel ready to take action. Trust the process and continue guiding them forward.
🔹 Employers & recruiters – Some of the best hires come from long-term engagement. Building relationships with career centers and students now can lead to great candidates later.
🔹 Students & job seekers – Job searching takes time, and networking isn't just about immediate results. Keep showing up, learning, and refining your approach.

You can't rush professional relationships--you need to build them over time with consistency and trust.

Set and Respect Boundaries – Clear Expectations Build Better Relationships

Let's practice clear communication with a direct opening to boundaries.
Boundaries aren't about saying no but about creating clarity and respect in professional relationships. When everyone understands expectations, interactions become smoother and more productive.

💡 Where boundaries matter in career relationships:

🔹 Career services teams – Define appointment structures, response times, and communication channels to help students navigate the process effectively.
🔹 Employers & recruiters – Respect candidates' time by providing clear hiring timelines, avoiding excessive follow-ups, and setting realistic expectations.
🔹 Students & job seekers – Know your limits. Saying yes to everything can lead to burnout; focus on meaningful opportunities.

Strong relationships thrive when both sides understand and respect each other's limits.

Support Mutual Growth – Strong Relationships Benefit Everyone

As promised, a short and helpful section about why the best professional relationships don't just serve one person—they create opportunities for growth on both sides.

💡 How to create relationships that foster mutual growth:

🔹 Career services teams – Partnering with employers on long-term engagement strategies benefits both students and hiring teams.
🔹 Employers & recruiters – Investing in early-career talent helps your company develop future leaders while supporting students' growth.
🔹 Students & job seekers – Viewing networking as a two-way street—offering insights, staying in touch, and sharing knowledge—leads to stronger professional relationships.

Growth happens when people invest in each other's success.

Balance Initiative, Collaboration, and Compliance

Successful professional relationships require a mix of independence, teamwork, and adherence to best practices. All parties need to know when to lead, follow, and work together. Finding the right balance is key to making career services, recruiting, and job searching more effective.

💡 How this balance plays out in career development:

🔹 Career services teams – Guide students with clear advice while allowing them to take ownership of their job search.
🔹 Employers & recruiters – Provide structured hiring processes while allowing for flexibility in candidate engagement.
🔹 Students & job seekers – Take initiative in networking, collaborate with mentors, and respect application processes.

Knowing when to step up, when to work together, and when to follow guidelines creates stronger professional relationships.

The Big Takeaways

Time to wrap up our conversation about seven key characteristics of strong professional relationships:

✅ Admitting to being human
✅ Prioritizing open communication
✅ Modeling understanding
✅ Cultivating patience
✅ Setting and respecting boundaries
✅ Supporting mutual growth
✅ Balancing initiative, collaboration, and compliance

These aren't just "soft skills"—they shape student outcomes, improve hiring success, and make career services more impactful.

A report from General Assembly (a talent training and solutions firm under the Adecco Group) highlights a significant concern: Many Gen Z candidates struggle with essential soft skills, including clear communication, confident collaboration, and resiliency. While these skills are vital in any professional environment, blaming young professionals does not solve the issue.

So, what will? Relationships.

Soft Skills Don’t Come from a Handbook

You can’t teach communication, collaboration, and resilience through PowerPoint slides or one-off workshops. These skills develop through practice—with real conversations, teamwork, and problem-solving. Yet, too many students navigate their career paths primarily through mass emails and job boards instead of engaging in person. If we want graduates to be prepared for the workforce, we need to create more opportunities for human connection before they get there.

Career Services as Conversation Hubs

University career services can bridge the gap between students and employers by fostering environments where students actively develop interpersonal skills. Consider these questions:

• How often do students engage with career services beyond resume reviews?
• Do they practice networking with alums and industry professionals?
• Are mock interviews a standard part of the student experience?
• Do career fairs emphasize meaningful conversations over job postings?

If even one answer to these questions is “not enough,” we have work to do. Encouraging students to engage early and often with professionals—including career advisors, professors, mentors, and alums—prepares them for workplace interactions.

Turning Career Events into Learning Labs

Employers want graduates who can communicate effectively and work well in teams. Let’s stop waiting for hiring managers to change their expectations and ensure students have real-world practice before graduation. We can do this by rethinking career programming:

• Mock Interviews with Immediate Feedback: Pair students with hiring managers or alums to simulate real interview experiences and receive constructive, actionable feedback.
• Industry Meetups Over Traditional Career Fairs: Create more informal networking events where students and employers interact meaningfully rather than relying on structured Q&A sessions.
• Peer-to-Peer Coaching: Encourage students to mentor each other, refining their ability to communicate ideas clearly and collaborate effectively.
• Resilience Training Through Experiential Learning: Organize role-playing activities or case competitions where students face challenges and must adapt in real-time.

A Collective Responsibility

General Assembly’s research is clear: Workforce readiness isn’t just about technical ability. It requires collaboration between students, educators, employers, and policymakers. If we model strong relationship-building skills within career services and employer engagement initiatives, we will help shape confident, career-ready professionals.

Instead of blaming Gen Z, let’s work together to ensure early talent pipelines are filled with academically, technically, and interpersonally prepared candidates.

The AI Arms Race in Recruitment

The widespread use of AI tools by applicants has raised concerns about authenticity. Some companies, like AI startup Anthropic, have taken a stand by prohibiting the use of AI in job applications, emphasizing the value of genuine communication skills and personal motivations. ​

On the employer side, AI-driven applicant tracking systems (ATS) and chatbots streamline the hiring process, increasing application rates and reducing hiring times. For instance, Chipotle's AI chatbot, "Ava Cado," has enhanced efficiency but also led to challenges like miscommunications and impersonal interactions, highlighting the limitations of AI in understanding human nuances. ​

The Authenticity Challenge

As AI-generated applications become more prevalent, recruiters face difficulties distinguishing genuine candidates from those heavily assisted by AI. This has led to concerns about "CV inflation," where applicants exaggerate or falsify credentials, prompting recruiters to enhance verification processes.

The Human Element as a Differentiator

In this AI-saturated environment, human connections and networking have become critical differentiators. Recruiters increasingly rely on personal referrals, trusted recommendations, and direct interactions—elements AI cannot replicate.

Demonstrating hard-to-find soft skills can further set candidates apart in a sea of AI-generated applications.​ How do you ensure your students develop these interpersonal skills that stand out against AI?

Start by:

• Encouraging them to reflect on their values, strengths, and career aspirations to engage authentically with recruiters.​
• Practicing active listening through role-playing exercises.
• Coaching them to recognize and manage their emotions, especially in professional interactions.
• Providing opportunities for students to practice clear and transparent communication.​
• Emphasizing the importance of reliability and follow-through in all professional engagements.

Building Meaningful Connections

To navigate this evolving landscape, job seekers should focus on cultivating genuine relationships:

• Network Actively: Attend industry events, engage in professional communities, and seek mentorship opportunities.​
• Seek Referrals: Leverage your network to gain introductions and recommendations.​
• Engage Directly: Reach out to potential employers or colleagues for informational interviews or collaborative projects.​

While AI continues to reshape the job market, the importance of human connections remains steadfast. By prioritizing authentic relationships, candidates can position themselves for success in an AI-driven recruitment landscape.

Data Migration Woes

Moving your existing data into a new system can be tricky. You worry about losing important student records or employer contacts during the transfer. Imagine if a student's internship details got lost in the move—this could mean a missed opportunity that you worked hard to secure.

To keep your data safe and organized:

• Assess Your Data: Review what you have and decide what’s essential to move. This helps keep your new system neat and focused.
• Back Up Everything: Before starting the transfer, make sure all your data is securely backed up. This will give you a safety net if something unexpected happens.
• Run Test Migrations: Do a trial run with a small portion of your data to catch any issues early. This simple step can save you a lot of trouble later.
  These steps secure your data to move forward.

When IT Pushes Back

Your IT team might be hesitant about switching to new software. They might worry about how it will work with your current systems, its security, or the extra workload involved. This hesitation can slow things down and affect your ability to serve students.

Here’s how you can work together with IT:

• Involve IT Early: Bring your IT colleagues into the discussion right from the start. Their insights can help you choose software that fits well with your existing tools.
• Discuss Compatibility and Security: Work side by side to make sure the new software meets your university’s security standards and integrates smoothly.
• Allocate Resources: Plan together to figure out the time and support needed from IT to make the transition work.

Collaborating with IT helps ensure the technical side runs smoothly. With that in place, you can focus on helping your staff adapt to the new system.

Staff Training

Your team is used to the current system, and learning a new one can be a bit overwhelming. This might slow down responses to student inquiries or lead to small errors as everyone gets used to the changes.

Make the transition easier for your team by:

• Offering Hands-On Workshops: Set up sessions where everyone can explore the new system together. This makes learning more practical and less stressful.
• Creating User-Friendly Guides: Develop simple manuals or videos that serve as easy references while you get comfortable with the new system.
• Encouraging Open Communication: Create a space where your team can share questions and tips. This way, everyone supports one another during the change.

By supporting your team through training, you help them feel more confident. Next, think about how new users will join in.

Onboarding

Introducing new team members to a different system needs a clear, step-by-step process. Without it, they might feel lost or take longer to start contributing, which can delay your overall service.

Smooth the process by:

• Developing a Structured Onboarding Plan: Create a clear guide that walks new users through the system step by step.
• Assigning Mentors: Pair newcomers with experienced team members who can show them the ropes and answer questions.
• Utilizing Vendor Support: Use any training resources offered by the software provider to give your new users extra help.

A good onboarding process helps new staff feel welcome and efficient. Even with onboarding in place, some team members may still resist changing their routines.

User Resistance to Change

Even with proper training, some team members might be reluctant to change their long-standing habits. This natural hesitation can result in uneven use of the new system, which may create confusion.

Address this resistance by:

• Communicating Benefits Clearly: Talk about how the new system makes daily tasks easier and helps improve service for students.
• Involving Staff in Decision-Making: Include your team in choosing and planning the new software. This involvement can help everyone feel more connected to the change.
• Providing Continuous Support: Offer ongoing assistance so everyone feels comfortable and confident with the new tools.

By easing resistance, you help ensure everyone gets on board. The next challenge to consider is keeping your services running without interruption during the switch.

Service Disruptions

Rolling out new software can sometimes lead to temporary interruptions in your services. Even a short downtime might cause missed opportunities for students or create frustration among employers.

Minimize these disruptions with these steps:

• Implement in Phases: Roll out the new system gradually. This allows you to manage changes and address issues as they come up.
• Schedule During Low Activity Periods: Plan the transition during quieter times to reduce the impact on your services.
• Maintain Parallel Systems Temporarily: Keep the old system running alongside the new one until you’re sure everything is working well.

Managing service continuity is important, but it’s equally crucial to keep your students and employers well-informed as the changes roll out.

Customer Frustrations

Changes in your system can sometimes confuse or frustrate the people who rely on your services, like students and employers. If they find the new system hard to navigate, they might feel left out or frustrated, which could lower their trust in your department.

Help smooth the transition for them by:

• Communicating Changes Proactively: Let students and employers know what’s coming, why you’re making the change, and how it will benefit them.
• Providing Support Resources: Offer guides and a help desk to assist users as they adjust to the new system.
• Gathering and Acting on Feedback: Encourage your users to share their experiences and use that feedback to make necessary improvements.

Keeping your customers informed and supported goes a long way in maintaining their trust.

Changing your career services software might seem like a big hurdle, but with the right approach, it's a manageable one-time effort. By carefully planning data migration, collaborating with IT, supporting staff through training, onboarding new users, addressing resistance to change, and keeping services running smoothly, you set yourself up for long-term success. A smooth transition today means eliminating ongoing frustrations and the hidden costs of an outdated system tomorrow. Trust in the process, you and your team can do this!

Helping students access meaningful internships and other experiential learning opportunities can be exciting and sometimes challenging, especially when money gets in the way. Below are seven ideas for securing funding for these crucial experiences. Each idea includes a few practical resources and tips to make the process smoother.

1. Tap Into Government Grants & Databases

Government grants are an often-overlooked potential lifeline for funding work-based learning. Develop a database of federal, state, or local funding opportunities with your team or guide students through a search.

Here’s a head start:

• Department of Labor grants: Look into the DOL’s Employment and Training Administration for workforce development grants.
• Apprenticeship.gov: Explore registered apprenticeship grants that support on-the-job training, which can sometimes apply to shorter internships.
• The GoGovernment Federal Internship Finder: Search this centralized, free list of government opportunities for students and new grads
• Local economic development offices: Check with city or county development programs. Beyond discovering possible financial support for your students, you might enhance your employer relations.

2. Use University Resources

While you’re likely familiar with on-campus funding sources, reaching out might reveal new or in-development programs. It’s a worthwhile call or email if you find a way to help one student say “yes” to an unpaid internship.

So, humor us with this simple list:

• Financial aid departments might allocate scholarships or financial aid for internship expenses.
• Student success offices sometimes have small grants to cover living or travel costs tied to experiential learning.
• Honors colleges or programs occasionally provide stipends for career development. For example, the University of Miami College of Arts & Sciences’s “Beyond the Book Scholarship” enables students to pursue unique, intensive learning experiences beyond the lecture hall or lab.

3. Engage Alumni and Development Offices

Alums who launched their careers from internships are often eager to open that door for undergraduates. Engage and encourage your graduates to:

• Contribute a portion of reunion fundraising to an internship grant.
• Support employer-based internship funds as available.
• Collaborate with university development staff to establish and promote grants.
• Become alum mentors who combine financial support with professional guidance.

4. Host Targeted Career Events

Specialized events that connect students with employers can also raise money for internships. Promote these programs as supporting internship scholarships via admission fees or voluntary contributions. Here are a few examples to bring recruiters, employers, and students together for a good cause:

• Industry-specific career fairs
• Career panels and workshops
• Co-hosted university-industry gatherings
• Student club collaborations with alumni
• A signature internship fundraising event

5. Seek External Funding

Explore the internet and your local community for foundations and non-profits dedicated to career development, educational equity, or skill-building in specific industries. These organizations often present scholarships as part of their 501(c)3 mission, so suggest that your students research:

• The Council on Undergraduate Research represents member institutions that support collaborative undergraduate research or scholarly internships.
• Professional associations like the American Marketing Association or IEEE sometimes award scholarships for student projects or internships.
• Grant databases like the Foundation Directory Online or Grants.gov simplify scholarship searches.

6. Partner with Local Businesses

Local associations are possible funding partners with the added benefit of networking with business representatives who might offer internships or hire graduating students! Consider connection with your area, including:

• Chambers of Commerce
• Small Business Development Centers (SBDC)
• Rotary clubs and civic groups
• Industry associations

7. Apply for Industry-Specific Grants

Tech, healthcare, and finance invest heavily in cultivating future talent. Look for grants from industry councils, companies, or associations invested in building strong workforce pipelines like:

• Tech industry giants, including Microsoft, Google, and accelerating start-ups, generally have initiatives for STEM education and internships.
• Healthcare organizations may support internships for students in nursing, public health, or pre-med programs.
• Environmental foundations often award scholarships, grants, or stipends for interns to work on green initiatives or community outreach.
• Professional conferences are known to sponsor travel or internship grants for students who participate or volunteer.

🤝 🎓 🤝 🎓

Professional development is fundamental in career services and includes positioning students to accept unpaid internships and other similar opportunities. Work with your students to explore government grants, tap into alum relationships, and build strong connections with local businesses.

Demonstrating your students' value to employers who offer these hands-on career experiences could generate financial support. To secure experiential learning funding, think creatively and nurture long-standing relationships.

Goal setting, ongoing support, and periodic progress evaluations separate the former from the latter. Non-guided internships often leave students to figure things out independently. During guided internships, students get the structure and conversations they need to connect their classroom and on-the-job lessons.

Improved Learning Outcomes

Structured internships give students the tools to connect classroom lessons with real-world applications. A 2024 study showed that clear internship objectives help students apply what they've learned effectively in professional settings. These programs build stronger skills and increase confidence in career readiness.

Enhanced Reflection and Career Identity

Reflection helps students process their experiences, think critically, and develop self-awareness. Research from 2020 found that reflective activities during internships play a key role in shaping professional identity and career goals. Guided programs include these elements, ensuring students get more out of their experiences.

Higher Satisfaction and Professional Growth

Internship satisfaction has a ripple effect on career development. According to a 2024 study, programs focusing on growth opportunities create a stronger sense of purpose and drive. Structured support during internships helps students build relationships and gain valuable professional experience, giving them a solid foundation for future careers.

How Classwork Makes Internships Work Better

Adding academic frameworks to internships creates more meaningful learning experiences for students. A well-designed guided program focuses on key elements that help students thrive:

• Goal setting gives students clear steps to bring the most relevant and sustainable lessons back to campus--and to future employers.
• Reflecting on assignments reveals connections between internship activities and career-specific academic training.
• Listening and evaluating supervisor feedback informs self-assessments to fuel professional and personal growth.

Combined, these components elevate the value of internships from an off-campus learning experience to realistic career preparation.

Zero-Credit Internship Courses Open Doors

Zero-credit internship courses make internships more accessible by removing financial barriers while offering valuable structure and support. Here's what makes these programs so beneficial:

• Transcript Recognition: Students get formal acknowledgement on their academic records for their hard work and learning experiences.
• Skill Development: Assignments and mentorship opportunities help students grow professionally and personally, giving them tools they'll use long after the internship ends.
• Data Collection: Schools can track participation and outcomes, which helps identify areas for improvement and ensures the program meets student needs.

Zero-credit courses break down cost barriers and lift up more students to meet early career challenges--starting with getting hired!

Embrace Your Role

Career services teams impact on students' internship successes by:

• Encouraging and coaching students to connect with faculty, peers, co-workers, and relevant professionals to build productive, long-lasting networks.
• Presenting resources like e-portfolios, reflection templates, and goal-setting guides that keep students engaged and on track.
• Strengthening confidence with simple tasks like LinkedIn connection exercises and ready-to-use cold conversation scripts to practice networking.

Career services teams aren't on-site with their students but can add deep value to any internship experience.

Guided Internships Offer More (for Some Students)

Guided academic internships turn work experiences into meaningful learning opportunities. By adding elements like reflection, mentorship, and networking, these programs help students build skills and confidence for their future careers. They also strengthen the link between what students learn in the classroom and what they’ll need in the workforce.

Multiple resources and tools help coaches stay current with industry trends, connect with students, provide relevant resources, and track student progress. Career services advisors and coaches keep up with the information, conversations, goals, and nuanced emails associated with hundreds of (or more) students.

Here’s a look at what makes career coaching effective, why the wrong software can cause problems, and how the right tools designed for career coaching foster better student outcomes.

Career Coaching Basics

Career coaching isn’t merely about helping students navigate job boards or polish resumes. It’s about knowing students and conveying an understanding of the challenges students face gearing up for professional life after graduation.

Listening to Personalize

Listening to each student’s unique goals leads to personalized guidance, which makes a bigger impact.

Encouraging Practicality

Focus on skills that matter in the workplace, like:

• Communication for clear and effective interactions.

• Problem-solving for critical thinking in tough situations.

• Networking to make valuable connections.

Staying Connected

Working through the maze of finding work takes more than a 30-minute conversation. Adjusting goals, providing feedback, and keeping students on track is ongoing.

Curating Resources

Software plays a big part in making sure students have direct access to job search tools, resume templates, interview guides, and other materials career services teams create.

Guiding Career Exploration

Leading students without clear career plans to explore different industries is a core part of coaching. Helping students identify their relevant strengths and encouraging volunteering to gain experience in a potential career field are smart steps toward a potential career goal.

Applying for Jobs

Getting students ready to apply with polished resumes, strong cover letters, and solid interview skills are familiar career services activities. The confidence coaches build is invaluable during student internships and job searches.

The Problem with Generic Software

Using software that isn’t built for career coaching can slow you down. Here’s why:

• Lack of Relevant Features: Generic tools don’t offer what you need. They might not have job matching, personalized career planning, or integration with university systems. This makes it harder to provide targeted help to students.

• Inconsistent Data: Without software designed for career services, keeping track of student progress becomes a mess. It’s hard to see who needs what when data is scattered and inconsistent.

• Wasted Time: If you’re spending more time wrestling with software than working with students, that’s a problem. Inefficient tools take time away from coaching and add to your workload.

Why Career Coaching-Specific Software Matters

Using the right software can make career coaching more effective and less stressful. Here’s why it’s important:

• Functionality: Software built for career coaching includes tools like appointment scheduling, personalized career paths, and job board access. These features make your job easier and help students more effectively.

• Engagement: Interactive tools like progress trackers and career visualizations keep students interested and motivated. When students can see their progress, they stay engaged.

• Insights: Specialized software gives you data to see what’s working and where you can improve. This information helps you make better decisions and improve coaching outcomes.

• Growth: The right software helps maintain a high standard of service, even as student numbers grow or staff changes. It keeps everyone on the same page.

Ideal Coaching Software

To support effective career coaching, look for software that includes:

• Automated Appointment Scheduling: Saves time and makes it easy for students to book sessions.

• Personalized Career Planning Tools: Helps create tailored career paths and track goals.

• Integration with University Systems: Connects easily with existing student data.

• Job Matching Capabilities: Find relevant job opportunities for each student.

• Analytics and Reporting Tools: Provides insights into student progress and coaching effectiveness.

Career coaching is about more than just giving advice. It’s about equipping students with the tools and support they need to succeed. Using generic software can make this harder than it needs to be. Choosing tools designed explicitly for career coaching can improve the quality of guidance, engage students more effectively, and help them achieve their career goals. The right tools make career coaching more efficient, impactful, and rewarding for both coaches and students.

Here’s why…

Comprehensive Career Management

People are talking about Career Forge because it’s the only career services management platform built directly from career services feedback powering:

• Job Board Engagement
• Coaching
• Events
• Experiential Learning
• Intuitive Reporting
• First Destination Outcomes
• Employer Relationship Management
• Badge Printing

We forged empowerment, collaboration, dedication, and adaptability into a centralized imagined solution that relies on human insight and relationships to deliver better outcomes.

Emphasis on Human Engagement

People are talking about Career Forge enhancing the human elements of career development instead of focusing exclusively on digital transactions. Career services teams are using the platform to personalize guidance and realize better student outcomes.

Flexibility and Integration

People are talking about Career Forge because it integrates smoothly with other systems like Handshake. Career services can choose a comprehensive career services management platform without disrupting current processes. You can finally forge ahead with innovative software without starting from scratch during implementation.

Data-Driven Insights

People are talking about Career Forge because of the advanced analytical insights into student progress and employer engagement. These data-driven tools show your key metrics, identify trends, and inform meaningful decisions to improve student outcomes.

Exceptional Support

People are talking about Career Forge’s support team because they’re smart, patient, and responsive. The hand-holding starts with onboarding, follows you through live training, and comes across in every future interaction. After all, Career Forge is human-focused because of the humans behind it.

University acquisition processes can be frustrating and time-consuming. Give yourself plenty of time to get what you want: start exploring Career Forge now.

The Details are in the Demo

Being able to post a resume or research company culture online doesn’t mean students can, or even want to, navigate the nuances using their phone for career support. Despite our overwhelmingly automated world, human interactions will always be fundamental to successful career development. Whether writing traditional cover letters, researching corporate culture, or preparing for an interview with the help of an AI chatbot, career services professionals are there for their students.

Career services teams need technology to support–not replace—human engagement. Rather than building the technology solutions that career services are asking for, giant companies like Handshake are helping employers create more content for students to scroll past.

According to Forbes, “Handshake is creating a social media-style feed for its popular jobs platform for college students, adding video tools for employers to match less buzzy companies with young job seekers—and connect with a generation that lives by the medium.”

Single-focus job board software can’t facilitate today’s broad--and deep--career management activities. So, while Handshake prioritizes the “scroll world,” Career Forge facilitates human engagement. Instead of increasing dependence on discouraging and overwhelming digital transactions, we’re building reliable and relevant technology designed exclusively for the career services mission.

Career Forge is a robust career management platform that can be used as a single source or collaboratively with Handshake to refocus recruiters and students on the essential human elements of hiring and job searching.

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Comprehensive Career Management

Beyond social content channels and job boards

While Handshake transforms into something resembling a TikTok experience, Career Forge delivers comprehensive career management software.

Sure, buzzy employer videos in a scrollable content channel get attention, but does getting noticed in a digital feed translate into career management support? Can this TikTok-like technology consider individual nuances and role-specific information to connect qualified students with the right recruiters? No, no, it cannot.

Students immediately or eventually realize that scrolling through a content channel won’t unilaterally produce job offers. They ultimately recognize the value of career services for:

• Comprehensive advising based on real-world experience
• Connections to experiential learning opportunities
• In-person access to recruiters and hiring managers
• Knowledge of individually relevant jobs
• A truly personalized experience

And because students need these resources, you and your team need software that doesn’t limit you to collecting data about digital transactions.

You need Career Forge

Career Forge is a complementary solution for existing job search tools like Handshake or an alternative, depending on your team’s preferences or existing processes. The career management platform flexes to match your career services mission and

resources. The seven flexible modules exist to expand and deepen human interactions without ignoring the insights stakeholders demand in required reports.

Career services can finally accelerate their mission by augmenting or going beyond the presumed defaults of Handshake, 12Twenty, or Symplicity in a single platform for

• Advising
• Employer Relationship Management
• Event Registration & Payment (with an add-on badge printing kiosk!)
• Experiential Learning
• First Destination & Outcomes
• Intuitive Reporting
• Relevant jobs

Each module simplifies managing digital transactions and organizes, tracks, and reports on human interactions. Suddenly, career services staff spend more time engaging with students and employers than with their keyboards.

Better Student Outcomes, Even with Handshake’s Content Channel

How to start fresh without starting over

Introducing new software isn’t easy. The pros and cons of maintaining data integrity, integration, user adoption, compliance, and budget issues can keep decision-makers up at night.

Data migration is complex and prone to errors and inconsistencies. Relevant Career Forge models integrate with external email clients and campus platforms like student information systems. You minimize disruption and protect data integrity without settling for less helpful software.

Integrating new software is two-fold: technical and human. First, there’s uncertainty about performance levels within strict institutional data privacy, security, and

compliance policies, which raises concerns. Career Forge prioritizes compliance and undergoes regular rigorous quality reviews to ensure our software meets all necessary standards when integrated with your existing systems.

"I'll try it!" vs. "No, thanks, I'll wait."

Everett Rogers explains the human challenges of changing enterprise technologies by naming the points in time when people will accept the software. Understanding the technology adoption curve reduces the predictable staff resistance to learning a different software platform. Distinguishing between users ready to jump in (i.e., innovators) and the most resistant to the new system (i.e., laggards) can speed up and destress department-wide integration.

Finally, existing multi-year contracts, licensing agreements, and budget constraints can make switching systems difficult and costly in the short term.

So, rather than replacing Handshake entirely, add the Career Forge platform. Keep the familiar job matching system, but close the gaps in student outcomes and career management.

Powered by feedback, designed for success

Our customers told us how frustrating it is to give their all for students when they’re forcing sales-based or limited software systems to align with career services tasks.

Career Forge ends the dysfunctionality and disappointment. Former recruiters and expert software engineers built the platform on detailed industry feedback and our deep understanding of the career services landscape. Sure, Handshake has a big head start and is well-known; Career Forge offers a more focused, relationship-driven approach to career and employer relations management.

Career Forge emphasizes the importance of human interactions in career development. Our platform supports the kind of direct feedback and engagement students deserve—going beyond the superficial connections made through 90-second promo clips and endless scrolling.

The details are in the demo

Don't settle for a platform that views career services through the lens of social media; choose Career Forge and invest in a solution that truly understands and meets the needs of both students and career services professionals alike.

Career Forge is here for Career Services

You’ve probably heard of speed dating. And even if you haven’t tried it, imagine applying that fast-paced, interactive format to professional networking and recruiting.

Use this quick guide to set up a speed networking event that connects students with alums and potential employers with ideal candidates while avoiding common pitfalls.

For Event Hosts: Planning and Executing a Successful Speed Networking Event

Before the Event

Planning

First, define what you want to achieve. Do you want to help students find internships, secure full-time jobs, or gain networking experience? Choose a venue and time best suited to reach your goals. Consider the setup—round tables might work better for group discussions, while separate booths are perfect for one-on-one talks.

Promotion

Get the word out through social media, targeted emails, and campus bulletins. Ensure your messages resonate with your intended audience—students, alums, or recruiters.

Preparation

Use online tools to manage registrations efficiently. Prepare name tags and set up a logical flow in the venue to ensure smooth transitions between sessions.

During the Event

Kick-off with a warm welcome and a clear explanation of the event’s format. Track time and manage transitions gracefully to maintain energy and focus throughout the event.

After the Event

Send out surveys to gather feedback and measure the event’s success. Facilitate the exchange of contact information and encourage participants to join your university’s LinkedIn group to keep the conversation going.

A Common Mistake to Avoid: Don't Overbook

Avoid the temptation to overbook the event. Too many participants can lead to rushed interactions and inadequate time for meaningful conversations. Ensure the number of attendees allows for quality exchanges, and keep the sessions timed appropriately to balance efficiency and depth.

For Students: Leveraging Speed Networking to Advance Your Career

Before the Event

Do your homework. Research the participating companies and alumni. Craft a concise pitch that highlights your skills and career aspirations. Dress professionally and bring plenty of resumes and business cards if you have them.

During the Event

Make a memorable first impression by listening actively and expressing genuine interest. Efficiently convey your goals and the value you bring.

After the Event

Stand out by sending personalized thank-you emails to those you connected with. Include a note reminding them of your conversation and inviting them to connect on LinkedIn.

A Common Mistake to Avoid: Don't Overshare

Monopolizing the conversation is a potentially unrecoverable mistake. It’s crucial to be concise and allow equal participation. Avoid delving too deep into personal stories or overly detailed explanations of past projects, which can detract from discovering mutual interests and opportunities. Focus on clear, concise communication that respects your and the recruiter’s time.

For Recruiters: Finding Ideal Candidates Through Speed Networking

Before the Event

Identify the roles you need to fill and the skills crucial for those positions. Prepare questions that will help you quickly gauge candidates' potential.

During the Event

Observe candidates' communication skills and professionalism. Take notes and collect resumes to review later.

After the Event

Contact your top candidates for more in-depth interviews. Work closely with university career services to gain additional insights into the candidates' backgrounds and skills.

A Common Mistake to Avoid: Don't Focus Solely on Hard Skills

While evaluating candidates' technical abilities and experience is crucial, focusing exclusively on hard skills during brief interactions can be a mistake. Assessing soft skills like communication, adaptability, and enthusiasm is equally meaningful in these settings. These traits often determine how well a candidate fits your company culture and adapts to challenges.

Speed networking can significantly enhance the way universities connect students with job opportunities. All participants can make the most of these events by preparing thoroughly, engaging earnestly, and following up diligently. Remember, the key to success in speed networking—as in life—is not just showing up but standing out!

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Handshake recently rolled out its "Employer Relationship Management" (ERM) Platform. But if you look closer, you’ll see the update is more about looks than functionality. In this blog, we’ll break down what’s missing from Handshake’s new employer page, discuss how these shortcomings could impact your relationships with employers, and show you how the Career Forge ERM is closing the gaps.

The Missing ERM Essentials

An Employer Relationship Management tool needs to track all interactions with employers, such as emails, calls, and meetings. It should also offer advanced reporting, a dashboard for updates, and tools for managing tasks. However, Handshake's new employer page doesn't meet these needs. It's missing key features such as detailed contact tracking, interaction logging, and comprehensive reporting.

Specific Features Are Lacking

In a recent webinar, when asked about adding basic features like contact tracking, Handshake’s team said, “We will look into it." This vague answer points out a significant flaw in their model. The lack of these essential ERM features suggests that what Handshake is offering isn’t an ERM tool; it’s merely a fancier employer directory.

Handshake's Commitment Issues

Vague Commitments and Delays

In a February webinar, Handshake announced a "Spring" release for the next version of this employer page but failed to provide specific dates, only suggesting it might be ready by "late February or early March.” This lack of clarity frustrates career services looking to plan and implement robust employer engagement strategies.

Limited Feedback Implementation

Despite earlier promises to use feedback from customer service throughout 2023, Handshake often responds with noncommittal phrases like, "We want to support you, but we have to dig in further on this." That sounds like another delay and a big gap between what users need and what Handshake is willing to deliver now.

The Real Impact of the Update

Cosmetic Changes vs. Functional Needs

While Handshake's updates might enhance the visual layout of employer pages and make information more accessible, they fail to meet the core functional needs of career services. For example, the updates lack a comprehensive activity dashboard and do not support task creation, two essential features to manage employer relationships effectively.

Future Promises and Current Limitations

Future enhancements don't ease current frustrations. The current version lacks features like email integration and customizable notifications, severely limiting career centers' ability to engage with potential employers.

What Career Forge is Doing Instead

While Handshake's initiative to upgrade employer pages is a step in the right direction, the lack of essential ERM features limits its real-world effectiveness. Career services teams need more than a polished interface; you want a thoughtfully designed, comprehensive system to manage and enhance employer relations.

Here’s how we’re doing it compared to Handshake:

Handshake's ERM is effectively an enhanced employer page that lacks essential features, It lacks all the essential features that make up an ERM tool, including:

• Contact level tracking
• Interaction tracking (email, notes, meetings, calls)
• Advanced Reporting
• Activity dashboard
• Task assignment and creation

Buy an ERM that does what your career services ER specialists want it to do.

Ask Dale why employer relations are easier with Career Forge | ERM.

However, career services professionals and recruiters see these few weeks differently. May through August is prime time for them to nurture students' career development–as long as they can get their attention.

Here are a few ideas for making career prep a natural extension of summer instead of an obligation. Mix creativity, interactivity, and humor into a multi-channel approach to keep students plugged in when they’re off campus, starting with the semester’s end in May.

May

May is all about capturing students' interest right out of the gate with an interesting multimedia approach: relatable video emails, student-designed resume templates, creative social media challenges, and an interactive networking workshop.

Email: "Welcome to Your Summer Career Party!"

Introduce your plan by outlining what students can look forward to in a fun and maybe slightly silly video. Set the tone right away by proving this upcoming summer correspondence isn’t summer school. Including a popular resume template or sponsoring a resume design contest is a great way to draw in your creative majors.

Social Media: "Craft Your Career Story"

Post personal branding stories from a career services team member and a recent alumni in their dream job as the invitation to create their own. Offer guidelines in the video or copy. Tag key recruiters (with permission) in the thread to encourage student participation. You might consider multiple threads so student videos are organized by majors!

Virtual Event: "Summer Networking–No Sunscreen Required"

Host an online, interactive role-playing meet-up to build students’ conversational confidence. An alum guest sharing an embarrassing networking fail keeps things real and encourages ongoing participation.

June

June is the skill-building month, combining self-paced online courses, interactive social media challenges, and an insider panel event. From curated course lists to tutorial-guided projects to candid industry Q&As, we're structuring their upskilling through modern multimedia formats proven to sustain their engagement.

Email: "Top 10 In-demand Skills in 5 Minutes"

Give your students “Top 10” lists of the hottest skills by industry or provide lists directly from recruiters sharing their employers’ requirements. Include career services programs to sharpen those skills, or recommend quality third-party resources if appropriate.

Send a follow-up email with a student-curated playlist for fun and pique interest in what’s next.

Social Media: "Practice Makes Work Easier"

Turn skills development into a social media game with mini-projects for the Top 10 skills in your email. For example, if “Written Communications” is an in-demand skill, have students describe their current mood using 100 characters or less. Consider offering a donut party (or other incentive) for the author and friends of the most liked comment.

Virtual Event: "How Did They Get That Job Q&A”

Host a panel discussion with entry-level professionals one to three years into their careers, answering your students’ anonymous pre-submitted questions. Take live questions, too, for deeper engagement. Offer students an authentic space with real-world answers.

July

July is a popular vacation month, so step back and offer events you can put on (almost) autopilot and enjoy some time off. Encourage casual networking with peers and recruiters. You’re offering students low-pressure opportunities to build relationships before fall recruiting, expand their peer and recruiter connections and hear valuable feedback.

Email: "Welcome to Career Café Chats”

Use your growing email list to invite students to this month’s "Career Café" meetups. These casual get-togethers, either online or in-person, provide a relaxed space for students to discuss their career goals and bounce ideas off peers they typically don’t interact with on campus. No professors, no parents, just a career services facilitator. Or better yet, an engaged local alumni!

Add a digital Job Vision Board so students can post dream job descriptions and ideal roles to motivate each other.

Virtual Event: "Recruiter Speed Dating"

Practicing elevator pitches in a mirror is helpful advice; talking to a recruiter is more beneficial. Host virtual"Recruiter Speed Dating" sessions. Organize the events by industry, roles, or even alphabetical order. The purpose is to let students do live mock interviews with actual hiring managers through rapid-fire video call rotations with on-the-spot feedback.

Those recruiters provide direct feedback at the end of each short call so students can instantly iterate their approach for the next round.

August

Your August engagement period is short, typically two to three weeks, depending on your school’s move-in and start dates. First, thank students for their summer participation and celebrate their growth. Then, move them forward to on-campus career services events and upcoming recruiting events.

Email Campaign: "You Crushed Our Summer Career Party!!"

Encourage students to submit their career-related summer activities, especially their proudest moments or big wins toward their goals. Ask them to share which career services programs were most beneficial. Offer prizes to students and note which events were popular. Now you have immediate feedback and some post-campaign analysis!

In a follow-up email, map out a strategic game plan for conquering fall recruitment season. Send a downloadable career fair checklist and your event calendar for the semester, including related deadlines. Try this subject line: No more "I didn't know”--We’re Telling You Now!

Social Media: "Get Social–It’s on Us!"

Champion your students’ summer engagement by letting them take over your social media channels for a fixed period. Of course, they need to follow institutional guidelines, but you can help by suggesting they post:

• Internship stories and reviews
• Pictures and stories from volunteer activities
• Prizes won during your summer engagement program

Virtual Event: "Career Fair Circuit Training"

And…suddenly, it’s recruiting season again. Offer pre-season training on proofreading and finalizing resumes, informative 15-second introductions, and recruiting event pro tips. Invite alums to share their cringeworthy recruiting experiences and career success stories to reassure students their professional dreams will survive random nerves.

Follow through on the circuit training with a social media blitz spotlighting employers with job opportunities visiting campus. Share insider tips for connecting with these recruiters and composing noticeable follow-up emails.

You can turn summer engagement into interactive challenges, relatable stories, and peer activities. Take a casual, conversational tone and schedule for flexible access so students can join as they choose.

Your goal is to make these skills-building activities feel relevant but not urgent. Give your students multiple chances and ways to gear up for the fall recruiting season without giving up their summer.

Say goodbye to long lines, frazzled attendees, and missed opportunities. Career Forge Badge Printing ensures a smooth, professional experience that elevates your recruiting events to new heights.

We built Career Forge Badge Printing from the ground up based on the real frustrations career services teams shared about the existing systems. We heard it all: unreliable performance, hard-to-move equipment, and frustrating complexity. So, we built Career Forge Badge Printing for a simple, reliable, and portable on-site option. Here’s how.

This system is amazing. It's just so clean and sleek and super easy to use.
I've been doing check-in for years and years and years, and by far, this is so fast and amazing.
We're so thankful for it."

~ Breanna Gallagher, OSU Career Services

Print Reliably On-Site and In Real-Time

Imagine a career fair with hundreds of attendees waiting to print name badges while you, or hopefully an IT guy, troubleshoot the only available and suddenly broken printer. Recruiters can’t set up on time, and students might miss irreplaceable connections. Career Forge Badge Printing works all the time, every time, as long as the pre-loaded iPad and printer have power.

I've been working in career services for six years, and this is probably by far the most intuitive system that I've seen; it's great interaction with our employers allows us to engage in a different way and not be so distracted trying to get employers checked in."

~Taylor Harbuck, OSU Career Services

Speed Up the Line with ID Cards

Manually verifying attendee information is time-consuming and dampens the mood of everyone waiting in line. Offering quick and reliable photo-ID recognition technology streamlines the process and gets students in front of recruiters faster.

We tested the software so that it won’t test your patience.

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Sound familiar? Well, we heard you and turned your frustrations into a well-tested solution. We collaborated with career services and event hosts to build useful, portable badge printing software. Then, we tested and collected feedback, built a new version, and started again. Think of this as going through the technology version of “wash, rinse, repeat.”

The on-site debut was overwhelmingly successful and, like every new software program, a little glitchy. We converted those glitches into what we software engineers call “bug fixes” for a more robust, reliable in-person badge printing experience.

Immediately Update Attendee Information

A recruiter registers at the last minute, an attendee points out a spelling error in their registration, or someone wants to add credentials to their name. When you’re using the Career Forge Badge Printing, your new mantra is “No problem.”

In a few clicks, the attendee prints their corrected badge with a smile instead of asking you why their name or company is wrong.

The equipment setup was ridiculously easy! I saved so much time on the day of the fairs by not having to sort through different types of adapters and cords. Each station only needed two cords: one for the iPad to charge and one for the printer to work. Pairing the iPad and the printer beforehand saved troubleshooting the day of career fairs. This software, paired with the printers, was extremely reliable, and students were wowed by the simplicity of it all!”

~Erin Toney, Systems Administrator, OSU Central Career Services

Badge printing doesn't have to be a nightmare. We built our Career Forge Badge Printing by listening to the real issues career services teams face. It's a simple, reliable, grab-and-go system that eliminates headaches and keeps your events running smoothly.

See your Badge Printing in Action

For example, finding relevant jobs can be almost impossible with some recruiting software. Limited search criteria block students from filtering out hundreds, if not thousands, of unwanted positions. Fighting through giant databases with cumbersome or ineffective filters adds stress and wastes time. As do other disadvantages of relying exclusively on currently available recruiting technology to meet your career services team goals.

Disadvantages of Recruiting Software

Too many–and not enough–job options

In addition to the limited searchability of large databases mentioned above, students only see what employers choose to post. That sounds obvious, but the net effect is substantial: students face the two-pronged disadvantage of viewing too many and potentially not enough open roles.

Many STEM students see thousands of irrelevant jobs among the myriad opportunities, even when filtering and searching correctly. On the other hand, liberal arts students face the opposite challenge. Rather than seeing numerous irrelevant jobs, these large, database-driven platforms aren’t returning any jobs for them.

Students relying exclusively on this software and ignoring the expertise of career services are compromising their job searches. These professionals often have keyword or database search tips and essential direct connections to employers and recruiters. Some job descriptions don’t read well in a template; career services teams can communicate these nuances to students when software cannot. Job searching exclusively with technology might also mean missing out on job opportunities promoted directly with career services teams.

Lack of personal connection

While these platforms are convenient, they can also make it difficult for students to connect personally with potential employers. Submitting generic cover letters and resumes can make it hard to stand out. For example, imagine a liberal arts student with proven social media and video marketing experience. How do they demonstrate those skills on a one-dimensional resume or character-limited text box in the software? However, a five-minute online chat might result in the company’s best hire to date!

Highly skewed interest to select majors

With so many students relying on these platforms to find early career jobs, the competition can be intense—at least for in-demand majors. Like the first disadvantage above, recruiters frequently overwhelm high-value students while ignoring thousands of their ready-to-work peers. Limited or no interest from employers is discouraging, to say the least, and these job seekers often abandon the recruiting platform no closer to interviewing or a full-time employment offer.

Dependency on Technology

These platforms are only as good as the software codes and features. If the platform experiences technical issues, students may be unable to access job openings, submit applications, or provide promised follow-up material.

Advantages of Recruiting Software

Convenience

Students can search a vast database of entry-level job openings at their convenience. In addition, students can usually apply to multiple jobs with just a few clicks using stored resumes and cover letters, which is more efficient than creating new materials for each application.

Networking opportunities

These platforms allow students to connect with potential employers and alumni who can help them build their professional network. They can also use these platforms to attend virtual career fairs, participate in online interviews, and attend digital events sponsored by potential employers.

Time-saving

Recruiting software saves students a lot of time as they can search for job openings, apply for multiple jobs, and receive notifications about interviews all in one place.

Today's recruiting software is valuable and can supercharge students' searches for early career opportunities. These platforms are convenient, and keyword filters save job seekers and employers time. Unfortunately, the disadvantages, like fewer personal connections, limited job options, and intense competition, tend to dehumanize recruiting.

Blending in career services professionals’ expertise with purpose-built software gives students the best way to facilitate producing student-employer connections. If that sounds like the solution your career services team is waiting for, request the Career Fair Plus (CF+) newsletter or follow our social media. We’re launching a new product later this year!

Tags: online career fair, recruiting events, virtual recruiting, enterprise recruiting software, online job fair software, HR recruitment software for enterprise, software, talent acquisition

Career Forge’s newest career services software solution is an integrated Event Registration module thoughtfully designed to replace frustrating guessing and clicking with customizable fields and simple screens.

Part 1 presented features and benefits for employer registration; in Part 2, you’ll discover a requested recruiter registration function, and a recap of Part 1.

Simplifying Recruiter Registration

A novice software company or a group of engineers not paying attention might think managing employer and recruiter event registration is the same task. They’d both be wrong. Yes, employer representatives are signing up, but the individual recruiters representing the employer (or a third-party agency) are not necessarily setting filters. Instead, recruiters are typically responsible for attracting qualified student applicants.

This is why this event registration system is written for event hosts to help employers and recruiters with equal ease.

We showed how easily employers can sign up for events with our software: you send a link, they click, and if they're new, they set up an account. If their email matches an existing company in our system, the software asks if they want to join that group. Once they request to join, their company POC gets a heads-up to approve them so they can register for your event.

You also get an alert to confirm their association if you recognize them. It's all about making event registration straightforward.

What benefits am I missing if I’m not using the Career Forge Event Registration software?

With Career Forge Event Registration, employers and recruiters can easily:

1. Register for a fair already set up in the Event Registration module
2. Manage changes to their data until event day
3. View current logistical details in the dashboard view
4. Add, remove, or add pending approval for additional recruiters.

Additionally, event hosts have free access to unlimited, live customer support, starting with these Q&As from the webinar.

Q: Does your system allow Gmail accounts or what we'd call a free account? And if so, how does this affect registration when the employer has an account with a company email? What will the system do if the email domains don’t match?

A. Great question. We built the Event Registration module expecting event hosts to encounter this situation. First, ideally, the employer uses a professional email account. But some employers, like local small businesses, use Gmail, and that's ok.

Q: When a company makes a change that needs approval, is there a way the fair organizer can identify this, or is the registration back to pending status?

A: There is a separate status for reapproval because the change is distinct from the first submission. However, a change does not delist or cancel the original registration. And the need to reapprove is to ensure your invoice is correct after the change.

Of course, if the change doesn’t affect invoicing, for example, they’re still within the allowed number of recruiters, then the change processes automatically.

Q: How does your system handle emails? For example, a generic professional email, like “talent acquisition@company.com?”

A: Easily. We’ll send the verification code, and as long as it’s a valid email, the Event Registration module recognizes it.

What’s ahead?

We appreciate the exceptional feedback on the Event Registration module, but you know there’s more coming, right?

Hosting recruiting events is complicated, but you can simplify the workload

And now you have an “End to the Dread.” No more searching for workarounds or battling with tech support to make an off-the-shelf registration system accommodate the specifics you and your employers want to set up.

This Event Registration module eliminates unnecessary complexity and recovers hours of your valuable time. Instead of force-feeding event information into a rigid system, you can enrich your employer relationships with Career Forge | ERM and better serve students with the upcoming Advising Module in the Career Forge early talent network solution.

Take a peek at the Career Forge Advising Module…

…And everything else career services have been begging for in a purpose-built platform.

There’s still time to tell us about your student advising experiences and what you wish software would do to facilitate these interactions.

Use the QR code at the end of this article to share your wish lists for the upcoming Career Forge Job Board and Experiences modules, too!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading, watching, skimming, or clicking randomly through this second Webinar Write-up Series.

ICYMI: If you missed Part 1, End the Dread: Your Integrated Event Registration Software is Ready!, then check it out now! We know this is a lot of exciting software news to take in at one time, so...

Treat yourself to a 15-minute call with Dale to catch up & get ahead.

Here’s that QR code to drive product development with your feedback and requests.

Voice Your Interest!

In a recent webinar, Career Forge introduced its new Event Registration module, intentionally designed to replace frustrating guessing-and-clicking with customizable fields to simplify the event registration process for employers and career services.

This article is the print version of the interactive webinar, presented from two critical perspectives and includes the Q&A: Part 1 is about the employers' experience; Part 2 describes an enhanced recruiter registration function and, you guessed it, summarizes Part 1.

And combined, you'll discover how this new integrated software ends the dread of managing employer and recruiter event registration.

Who, or what, is Career Forge?

Career Forge is the industry's first software solution built by career services professionals exclusively for career services pros.

The first solution, Career Forge | ERM, premiered with rave reviews from career services teams fed up with managing employer relations with clunky spreadsheets and bloated CRMs.

You'll gradually see Career Fair Plus (CF+) products appear under the Career Forge banner and an eventual complete name change to Career Forge. As a brand and a company, we're all-in on delivering ongoing superior solutions for career services like the just-launched Event Registration module introduced in a recent webinar and described below.

Exhale; book a demo; do a little dance

I'm so done fighting one-size-fits-all event registration and hosting platforms!

Our years of overwhelming feedback and ongoing conversations with career services show that event hosts are fed up with fighting ill-fitting event registration and hosting platforms.

They're exhausted searching for workarounds in cumbersome or bloated software so they can accomplish particular event tasks. Symplicity's extended setup process doesn't match its name; Handshake launches relatively quickly, but customizing data fields to fit your event can feel endless.

Annual recruiting events are generally the same each year: returning employers, fixed locations, and even the fair name. But dates, times, recruiters' prerequisites, and even campus or facility rule changes complicate a direct "copy and paste" setup.

Busy career services teams don't have 30 minutes to guess which keyboard shortcuts or hidden drop-down menus will save them 15 minutes when they need to modify recurring events or update an employer's registration information.

Besides, who wants to spend hours clicking around a registration platform, even if they have the time? The Event Registration module simplifies simple tasks for people's sake.

Career Services teams ask, "How can I help who today?"

We know many of you wake up every morning thinking, "How can I best help students and employers?" because we wake up wondering how to support what you're trying to accomplish.

On-campus career services are essential bridges for building trust between students and employers. Yes, jobs are considered part of our professional lives, but personal factors influence extending and accepting job offers.

This fact fuels a fundamental company belief: humans matter. Technology–especially our solutions–should not replace people or personal interactions. We build software that adds value and efficiency; it's not a substitute for human engagement, especially in career services.

Recruiting and hiring decisions are very personal and much more complex than matching algorithms on a job board. These processes start well before students and employers use the job boards.

Moving your students and employers toward better outcomes is the mindset behind every line of code and comprehensive platform under the Career Forge brand.

What's the Career Forge Early Talent Network?

The Early Talent Network (ETN) describes the shared missions of career services, students, and employers. The Career Forge | ETN software solution facilitates career services juggling aligned but unique activities of advising, supporting job searches, building real-world student experiences, and event hosting. The popular Career Fair Plus hosting software integrates with Career Forge products.

The Career Forge | ERM—employer relationship management tool is a stand-alone platform under the Career Forge brand.

Career Forge ERM, ETN, and CF+ products fill the toolbox to meet specific recruiting and hiring needs for career services, students, and employers.

This Event Registration application is the newest Career Forge solution.

Why can't someone build event-hosting software with a faster event setup process?

Maybe it's because they're talking to salespeople instead of career services and their event hosts.

Based on your feedback, we had five primary goals for the Event Registration module:

1. Enable event setup in under five minutes
2. Accommodate school or career service unique requirements
3. Create the option to label types of employers and link them to associated registration fees
4. Showcase sponsor benefits or promotional offers
5. Automate recruiter communication at key touch points like registration and time-sensitive pre-event tasks

Our Career Forge software engineers work hard to simplify your event registration and hosting tasks. We're always ready to show off their efforts and accomplishments.

What benefits am I missing if I'm not using the Career Forge Event Registration software?

Reserving a 1:1 (or a team:1) tour with Dale is the best way to see the Event Registration module in action, but I’ll do my best to explain what our webinar attendees saw during the demo.

Why do I have to write new employer and student emails for every event?

Maybe because no one cared enough to develop a better way until now?

Event hosts spend a lot of time communicating with employers and students. The Event Registration module returns those hours to you with fully customizable templates.

What benefits am I missing if I’m not using the Career Forge Event Registration software?

I Don't Remember Who I Registered

Some employers will register so far in advance that they can’t remember the company or individual recruiter information they submitted.

Now, you can finally let them update this information directly in the new Event Registration module.

What benefits am I missing if I’m not using the Career Forge Event Registration software?

See the Event Registration module in action. Reserve a 1:1 (or a team:1) tour with Dale.

How do I configure employer registration payment methods?

Well, they say a picture’s worth a thousand words, so a .gif must be worth at least two thousand, right? Here’s how you configure employer payment methods in our new event registration software.

What benefits am I missing if I’m not using the Career Forge Event Registration software?

Can we offer multiple employer registration & pricing packages?

Absolutely. You can provide pre-configured registration packages, and the Event Registration module automatically displays the associated pricing to employers.

What benefits am I missing if I’m not using the Career Forge Event Registration software?

Employer-side registration recap

So far, we’ve demonstrated:

1. Fast and simple event setup
2. Automated messaging to employers
3. Multiple integrated payment methods with customizable pricing structures
4. Options to
   1. Display or hide specific registration packages according to the type of organization
   2. Publish, hide, or share the event with specific employers until complete registration opens

See the Event Registration module in action. Reserve a 1:1 (or a team:1) tour with Dale.

From the Live Q&A

Q: Can even hosts adjust pricing after an employer registers?

A: Absolutely. Event hosts retain complete control over the registration details. They can edit the registration information and change the type, and then the platform will recalculate the price they're supposed to pay based on that.

Employers receive the final invoice after event hosts approve the registration. So, suppose someone wants to register for a different package or forgot to indicate non-profit. In that case, you adjust the type of organization, and the system automatically updates pricing to match the new data.

Q: If employers need an “approved” status in the system before registering, how does an employer without that status register? Is there a process to hold registration until it is approved in the system?

A: When you send a registration link to a recruiter, the system reads the email used to create their account and asks if they’re part of an existing company (that matches that email domain) or want to create a new entity.

Or they can complete the entire registration process as if they were approved, and you, as the event host, get a notification that the registration is pending approval.

Career Forge Event Registration eliminates hurdles and frustration. When you or a team member invites someone to register, they can, whether or not the system shows “approved” status.

This goes back to our core belief that people matter. Career services know their recruiters, so you need the ability to say, “Yes, I know this person, and they are part of this team, and I'm vouching for them by approving their registration before the employer’s primary POC approves it.”

Q: What happens when the employer contact who registered six months ago leaves the company?

A: You update the former lead or POC’s contact information with the new recruiter or company lead and click “save.”

How do I know what’s approved and what’s pending?

Tracking employer registration is as simple as choosing one of six status tabs!

What benefits am I missing if I’m not using the Career Forge Event Registration software?

The employer’s approved, but their registration status is “not paid.” Now what?

Depending on their payment method, the Event Registration software automatically updates their status to “paid” once the funds arrive. You can also manually update their invoice status, as shown below.

What benefits am I missing if I’m not using the Career Forge Event Registration software?

Employers can update their majors, open roles, or add or remove an attendee without you or your team.

How do our employers add or remove recruiters themselves?

Employers can amend team members as easily as they can edit other registration information. However, remember that event hosts must approve the change if it affects the employer’s registration fee.

What benefits am I missing if I’m not using the Career Forge Event Registration software?

Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading, watching, skimming, or clicking randomly through Part 1: End the Dread: Your Integrated Event Registration Software is Ready! Looking for more? Check out Part 2 here!

This is a lot of exciting software news to take in at one time. Treat yourself to a 15-minute call with Dale to hone in on how the Career Forge Event Registration module makes employers, recruiters, and event hosts happier!

Here’s that QR code to drive product development with your feedback and requests:

We’re continuously upgrading Career Forge | ERM, which means the benefits list can change weekly. Talk to Dale about what’s new since we posted this article.

What is Career Forge | ERM?

1. ERM stands for Employer Relationship Management.
2. Career Forge | ERM is one of two technologies from Career Soft, LLC; Career Fair Plus (CF+) is the other.
3. Career Forge | ERM is the first Employer Relationship Management (ERM) platform designed to forge powerful connections and elevate student job search outcomes.

What are you missing if you haven’t upgraded to Career Forge | ERM yet?

1. Calm, productive, and comprehensive employer relationship management.
2. Permission to use the only ERM built by former recruiters for career services.
3. Freedom from forcing employer relations data into spreadsheets or sales-based CRMs.
4. Concierge onboarding, including integrating Handshake contacts and employers.
5. Frictionless email integration with Gmail and Outlook.
6. Easily add new contacts from your inbox through a simple bcc.
7. Ability to run reports on interaction history.
8. Automatically seeing sent and received emails in the contact and company's activity feed.
9. Add custom tags to employer and contact records to rapidly access crucial information.
10. Daily email notifications of scheduled tasks and overdue items to never miss a touchpoint.
11. Setting custom properties to gain granular insights and purposeful reporting.
12. Strengthening vital relationships with people and data
13. Reliable business continuity with seamless data handoffs during staff changes
14. Using built-in task creation & assignment.
15. Easy access to employers with default alphabetical sorting.
16. Clear paths to settings, archives, and admin tools.
17. Keeping hard-earned trust by staying connected when people change companies
18. Power to purchase as many seats as you choose; no one gets left out.
19. Ability to enter information from external data sources to minimize manual data entry.

What could you miss if you don’t onboard to Career Forge | ERM?

1. Innovative benefits developed in response to user feedback like
   1. Viewing sent or received attachments in individual activity feeds
   2. Sync meetings from your calendar
2. Freedom from manipulating spreadsheets to work as employer relationship management software.
3. Opportunities to easily engage employers in timely and specific interactions.
4. Critical performance data to inform future event and budget decisions
5. Red flags about dissatisfaction from missed touchpoints

Direct, simple, clear, valuable, effective, and beneficial.

Experience tells us you’ll add a few more adjectives to this list after previewing Career Forge | ERM yourself.

Schedule your 1:1 with Dale Stelter,
Director of Business Development

Onboard Career Forge | ERM now

Career Fair Plus (CF+) works directly with career services professionals year-round. We transformed our on-site recruiting software into an online hosting platform to facilitate the unexpected in 2020. We also revitalized the in-person features to incorporate data-driven insights when the percentage of in-person college career fairs soared nearly nine-fold" during the 2021-22 academic year.

Whether using a CSM or not, these career services departments are an essential and relevant link between employers and students. Here's why.

An imagined problem?

Citing a recent Inside Higher Education and Kaplan survey of over 2,000 students, Craig spotlights that only 280 respondents (14%) were happy with career services. However, reading the complete findings in context reveals that students weren't so unhappy, either.

In fact, 56% of students reported being happy with career services compared to other non-academic departments. However, respondents were also more dissatisfied with 14 other university departments than career services, including financial aid, the registrar, the bursar, counseling, and residential life.

Only 4% had difficulty connecting with their career center. When asked which departments or offices on their college campus they received bad customer service from, only 40 (2%) mentioned career services. Finally, 33% said career services would always need staff for students to meet face-to-face.

So, before we defund supposedly irrelevant career services, let's talk about what those wanting to shut them down are missing.

Why career services are essential and relevant

Craig's call to abandon campus-based career services ignores these professionals' vital contributions to the students, their institutions, and the economy.

Strong relationships with students can influence positive post-graduate interactions. Happily employed alumni are more likely to "be true to their school," by raising brand awareness, encouraging applications, and donating to capital campaigns.

Beyond the campus

A competent workforce is foundational to a strong economy; universities and colleges are a primary source of qualified employees for local, regional, and national employers. The career services teams are the conduit between the two.

Dual purpose

Career services give students a competitive edge in their job searches and the university a competitive advantage in fundraising. A recent Franklin Covey article quoting Forbes explained the critical role career services departments play in both students' career development and brand building,

Graduates who rate their experiences with career services as ‘very helpful’ are 5.8x more likely to strongly agree their alma mater prepared them for post-collegiate life, nearly 3x more likely to strongly agree their education was worth the cost, and 3.4x more likely to recommend their alma mater.

Moreover, graduates who have a positive experience with their career development office are almost 3x more likely to make a financial donation to their college or university after they graduate.

U.S. News reported, "Students who had a good experience with career services at college were more likely to say their school prepared them well for life and more likely to think their university was worth the cost."

What CSM technology can't do

Man (or woman) vs. machine is a classic conflict. Craig seems convinced CSM technology can replace career services departments. As a software engineer with a recruiting background and a co-founder of a SaaS company, I wholeheartedly disagree. (I'm also not convinced that the faculty will accept the additional work he suggests assigning them, but more on that later.)

People excel at solving uniquely human challenges

Unlike software platforms, career services teams can personally coach and guide individuals around employment barriers. For example, introverts, first-generation college students, and minorities often start their job searches behind the curve; they often lack generational networks, role models, or access.

Career teams help at-risk and high-performing populations. They explain various job paths for one's major or assist with complicated application processes. And they empathetically coach students to discuss career choices vs. family expectations. Handshake and Symplicity have 100 job openings, but these are words of wisdom or insights.

Career services that aren't career-related

Abolishing career services means dropping or reassigning those tasks. Craig proposes the latter by making professors responsible for student-employer engagement—and presumably everything else originating in career services departments, including:

• Major and career advising

• Aptitude assessments

• Mock interviewing feedback

• Workshops and speakers

• Resume and cover letter guidance

• Professional profiles for social media accounts

• Graduate school planning

• Job and internship referrals

• Objective advice

I want to pause here and ask a question: Which of your college professors, either while you were enrolled or later if you worked at a university or college, can you imagine adding any of the above tasks to their faculty job requirements?

Professors aren't career coaches

I also disagree with Craig's declaration that Handshake's success reveals "we desperately need [to abolish] career services" and reassign their tasks to professors. Yes, students see the students in their courses two or three times a week, but those aren't one-on-one interactions. Yes, professors hold advanced degrees, but a PhD in history or chemistry doesn't translate into career coaching. Or having the time to be a career coach.

Who has the time?

Full-time professors work 40 hours a week: teaching, holding office hours, attending meetings, participating in campus activities, and advising clubs or academic groups. They're also conducting research, publishing results, securing grants, completing continuing education, and designing curricula.

Which of these tasks should university administrators delete from faculty job descriptions? After all, they'll need time for "making connections between course performance and career opportunities, advising students, and building and maintaining field-specific employer networks," as Craig recommends.

Not professors

Colleen Flaherty reports on Inside Higher Ed's 2022 Survey of College and University Chief Academic Officers that 79% of provosts say their faculty are leaving at significantly or somewhat higher rates than in the past.

Burnout, relentless 70+ hour work weeks, zero work-life balance, and devaluing faculty are some of the reasons for unprecedented attrition. Economist Jadrian Wooten changed universities before his per-term student load went from approximately 850 before 2020 to a projected 1,300 post-COVID.

Where's the wisdom in demanding professors on the verge of quitting add 'career services advisor' to their job requirements?

What's the alternative?

And what if professors want to be professors instead of professors AND career services staff? According to Craig, "...faculty unwilling to stretch should consider switching to a profession that doesn't involve interacting with students whose primary concern is employment; try teaching elementary school."

According to Career Fair Plus, the better alternative is a new, career services and student-focused CSM.

A better way forward

According to a Gallup poll, college graduates who visit their school's career centers are more likely to obtain full-time jobs than students who do not use this service — 67% compared to 59%. They also report that their jobs are more fulfilling. Career services departments matter.

So, to paraphrase Craig, Handshake's success reveals the change we desperately need: an alternative to employer-driven CSMs. Something that raises the bar by focusing on career services and students instead of employers.

Technology like Handshake and Symplicity informs and manages initial connections; career services teams prepare students to maximize those opportunities.

Contrary to Craig's seemingly all-or-nothing position, funding career services doesn't negate university-wide support for students' career development. For example, professors can still recommend internships or share network connections without adding career service metrics to their annual evaluations.

Campus-based recruiting needs software that rewards career services teams and their budgets for their hard work in preparing students to seize opportunities presented in CSMs and at career fairs.

ER specialists often rely on a few tried-and-true methods to create and maintain employer relationships:

1. Job and internship fairs
2. Networking events and mixers
3. On-campus interviews and presentations
4. Industry-specific panels and workshops
5. Targeted email campaigns and newsletters
6. Personal outreach
7. Sponsorships

Yes, these activities are effective, and no one's suggesting abandoning them. However, shaking things up makes your university stand out. So, for the next five minutes (actually 4 minutes and 55 seconds, but who’s counting?), let's forget the traditional methods and discuss fresh ideas to connect with employers and engage them with students, thus strengthening their commitment to your career services mission.

Getting Employers' Attention

When traditional methods like email and phone calls aren't cutting it, it's time to explore innovative ways to reach out to employers and grab their attention. Here are three unconventional approaches to impress employers, potentially launching sponsorships and partnerships

Employer-Student Speed Mentoring

Organize a speed social media "mentoring event" where employers and students post back and forth about specific career topics. This fast-paced and interactive format gives students valuable insights from multiple industry professionals. At the same time, employers connect with potential talent and share their expertise.

Themed Surprise Packages

Send employers a carefully curated surprise package with themed items highlighting your university's programs, student achievements, and the value of partnering with your career services team. This tactile and memorable approach can help you stand out from the usual emails and make a lasting impression.

Virtual Reality (VR) Career Exploration

Create a virtual reality experience to transport employers and students into various industry-specific scenarios to collaborate on solving real-world challenges. This immersive approach showcases your students' skills and talents. Simultaneously, employers engage with potential candidates in memorable ways while better understanding the university's programs and resources. In addition, this innovative method can help strengthen employer and recruiter relationships and create a lasting impression.

These creative outreach tactics can help you break through the noise and capture the attention of employers, opening the door for further conversation and collaboration. After all, you can't stand out doing things the same way season after season or copying what everyone else is doing. Maybe start with forming some unusual alliances?

Embracing Unlikely Collaborations

Let’s discuss how embracing unlikely collaborations can work wonders for your career services team. These unexpected partnerships can catch the attention of employers, open doors to new opportunities, and showcase the diverse talents of your students. The key to making these collaborations succeed is to be open-minded, think creatively, and bring together individuals or groups with complementary skills or interests.

Here are a few tips for success:

1. Identify shared goals and objectives between different parties
2. Communicate openly and frequently to ensure everyone's on the same page
3. Encourage participants to step out of their comfort zones and learn from one another

But be cautious! Things to avoid include:

1. Forcing collaborations that lack a clear purpose or objective
2. Overlooking the importance of planning and coordination
3. Underestimating the time and effort needed for a successful partnership

Now, let's take a look at three fun examples of unlikely collaborations that led to fantastic results:

Art & Tech Mashups

Have you ever considered pairing computer science students with art majors for a joint showcase? It might sound like an odd combo, but this unique collaboration appeals to employers interested in both fields, creating new student opportunities and potential career services partnerships.

Themed Food Trucks Tours

Food trucks get attention. These giant restaurants on wheels offer various menus and cultural experiences; they appeal to a broad audience. Offer employers opportunities to sponsor food trucks for an on-campus lunch or TGIF party.

Or, if your university has a hospitality or culinary program, use the food truck roundup as the backdrop to introduce these students to potential employers, including the restaurant owners! You're introducing early talent to recruiters and building relationships with the local business community.

Volunteer-Based Partnerships

Consider strengthening your employer relationships with local non-profits by connecting university clubs and associations with volunteer activities. Campus organizations, including fraternities and sororities, often include volunteering in their membership or program requirements. Your career services team can help student groups and non-profits fulfill their missions while strengthening their early talent networks.

OK, we've explored how unlikely collaborations can create exciting opportunities. So let's shift gears and explore another game-changing approach: out-of-the-box communication. Clever thinking beyond the usual channels can help you engage employers in refreshing and unforgettable ways.

Out-of-the-box communications

So, why are out-of-the-box communications important? They help you stand out from the crowd and create memorable experiences for employers, ultimately leading to stronger relationships and more opportunities for your students.

Here's how you can make these innovative ideas work:

1. Don't be afraid to experiment with new platforms or formats
2. Keep it authentic, and let your university's personality shine through
3. Listen to feedback and be ready to adapt your approach as needed

But watch out for these potential pitfalls:

1. Losing sight of your target audience and their preferences
2. Focusing on being different at the expense of being effective
3. Neglecting to follow up or build on the initial interest generated by your unique communication methods

Here are three inspiring examples to get you thinking differently about communication!

Interactive Webinars

Instead of regular webinars, host interactive sessions where employers and students work together on real-world challenges relevant to their industries and majors. You’re showcasing students’ skills and facilitating relationships with employers, especially those who appreciate team members who take a hands-on approach.

Podcasts with Personality

Try a podcast series with students interviewing industry leaders in a fun, informal setting. The subject matter experts can share career insights while raising their company's brand awareness. In addition, students get a sense of what the organization is like; Career services staff connect with multiple people in the company setting up the podcasts.

Recruiter Social Media Takeovers

There's a good chance we've all heard of or even hosted student social media takeovers. Flip it. Invite recruiters to "take over" your career services' social media accounts for a day. Let them showcase select employees' personalities, show off their company culture, and share job openings while interacting with students on your social media accounts.

Harnessing the Power of Gamification

Think about adding gamification activities into your career services ER management approach. Tap into people's natural desire for competition, achievement, and fun! Consider starting with one or all of these three.

Recruiter vs. Student Challenges

Organize friendly competitions where recruiters and students team up or go head-to-head in various challenges, like solving real-world management problems with business school students or a hackathon for computer science students. These events foster collaboration, showcase student talent, and help recruiters connect with potential hires in a dynamic setting.

Interactive Campus Tours

Create a campus-wide scavenger hunt or virtual reality tour highlighting your university's programs, resources, and success stories. Invite employers to participate with coworkers, students, or career services staff!

Gamified Networking Events

Reimagine the traditional networking event with game design. For example, use an app to create a "networking bingo" where participants earn points for connecting with others from specific industries or job roles. Offering employers and recruiters productive and unusual ways to meet students solidifies your employer relationships.

Employers expect career services to facilitate better recruiting and hiring outcomes. Playing games injects fun and excitement into employer outreach and partnership development efforts.

Level up your employer outreach and partnership efforts with fresh, even daring (within reason, of course!) ideas and activities. People--employers and students--notice unique collaborations, inventive communication, and win-win situations.

Oh, and make sure you onboard with Career Forge | ERM now so you customize your employer relationship management platform before the Fall semester. After all, you need someplace to track and maintain all the new employer relationships from your new outreach!

In 1962, Everett Rogers¹, a professor of Communication Studies, published Diffusion of Innovations to describe his theory of how, why, and at what rate people (and organizations) adopt new ideas and technology.

Why does this matter to career services decades later? Because every time you implement new technology, you have to win over every type of adopter.

Understanding each technology adoption stage means better navigating the adoption process to ensure your team stays productive and attractive to students and employers.

In 5 minutes (and 20 seconds), you’ll discover how the technology adoption life cycle applies to implementing Career Forge | ERM, a new employer relationship management platform for university and college-based career services teams.

Roger’s Technology Adoption Curve and the iPhone

The evolution of the iPhone as an everyday consumer product explains the technology adoption lifecycle theory perfectly. Let’s start with Dennis Pearce’s² practical chart to illustrate the story we’re about to explore.

Apple introduced the iPhone on January 9, 2007³, to a building full of media and people representing the first stage of Roger's adoption curve: innovators. These tech-savvy visionaries were drawn to the new technology’s innovative design and features. Most importantly, they were willing to take a risk on a new and untested product.

Early Adopters started embracing the technology as they discovered its benefits. Unlike innovators, this group was less comfortable with new technology but still intrigued and open to using the iPhone. They were drawn to its sleek design and the convenience of having a phone and internet device in one.

iPhone usage expanded from Adopters to what Rogers defines as the Early Majority. This group tends to be more pragmatic and less willing to take risks. They needed to see this new technology as mainstream before buying it.

The Late Majority, who tend to be more skeptical and resistant to change, adopted the iPhone after it was on the market for a few years. Reluctant at first, they joined existing users based on positive reviews and proven advantages.

Finally, the last stage of the adoption curve is described as Laggards. These people accept new technology only when necessary. Our iPhone example could be because their old phone broke or it was incompatible with current needs, like taking good pictures or accessing the Internet.

By understanding the technology adoption lifecycle theory and how it applies to the iPhone, we can see how different groups of people adopt new technologies at different stages.

Sam, an employer relations specialist at a mid-sized private university in the southeast, is implementing Career Forge | ERM to elevate employer relationship management. He wants to humanize the interactions and automate the administrative tasks. Follow along as he applies his knowledge of the adoption life cycle to avoid pushback and achieve broader acceptance and better outcomes sooner.

Innovators = Tech Savvy & Curious

Who are your tech-savvy people, eager to experiment with new technologies? Or maybe it's only one person. Either way, they are your innovators and the ideal place to introduce new software, including Career Forge | ERM.

In our example, Sam recognized the need for a better employer relationship management platform and took the initiative to research and identify potential solutions. When he discovered Career Forge | ERM, he worked closely with the Career Forge team to implement the platform and provide feedback. As a result, Sam earned the "Innovator" title, setting the stage for broader adoption. (Pro tip: you can join Sam at the Innovator stage. Onboard Career Forge | ERM this summer before the Fall recruiting crush.)

Early Adopters = Willing and Pragmatic

At this point on the Adoption Curve, your team members follow the innovators' lead and embrace the technology. Additionally, they start encouraging others to do the same.

For Sam--and you-- these Early Adopters are critical. They help you build momentum and enthusiasm about the new software. Customizing Career Forge | ERM and identifying influential early adopters eager to help colleagues learn the platform can accelerate adoption.

Remember, faster widespread adoption means employer relations, engagement tracking, and ROI reporting improve sooner.

Early Majority = Comfortable with Cutting Edge

Your journey along the technology adoption curve revs up when the Early Majority group embraces the new technology. As your Innovators and Adopters demonstrate Career Forge | ERM's value to more people, interest in the productivity benefits grows. This is also where you manage concerns or barriers to adoption that might prevent people from embracing the software.

Sam's story offers good insights at this stage. Moving into the Early Majority phase, certain team members were reluctant to test drive the new platform, let alone use it full-time. In response, Sam hosted training sessions and workshops demonstrating the platform's capabilities, showcasing its benefits, and calming fears over a steep learning curve. Simultaneously, the Career Forge team addressed feedback on technical issues potentially discouraging people from fully embracing the platform.

As a result, the platform continued gaining traction, and more people used it regularly. Moving through the Early Majority stage, the career services team successfully built a community of actively engaged users, improved employer relationships, and positively impacted job search outcomes for their students.

Late Majority = Proven Effectiveness

As the name suggests, this point of the adoption curve means the bulk of the population (or, in this case, a career services team) has already adopted the new technology. The Late Majority group is typically more skeptical and conventional regarding new technology. They usually wait to use the software until it's widely accepted and proven effective.

And they challenge leaders like Sam. Staff resistance, even if only one person, complicates the potential benefits and potentially jeopardizes long-term success. Fortunately, Sam used the reporting and analytics in Career Forge | ERM to demonstrate the platform's significant, positive impact on employer relations.

The software showed Sam that a once highly engaged employer was participating in fewer and fewer recruiting events. So, he reached out. A productive phone call later, Sam updated Career Forge | ERM with the new recruiter's contact information. Because no one told Sam or his team about an internal staff change, their correspondence went to an open but unattended email box. When he also learned the employer was searching for a marketing intern, he connected the company recruiter with a promising candidate the same day. Seeing the new technology in action motivated the Late Majority to learn the platform.

Laggards = Reluctant Joiners

The Laggards, people resistant to change and who might only adopt new technology if forced, are the final segment of the adoption curve. Regulations, employer requirements, or peer pressure could push Laggards into using new technology.

At first, the Laggards on Sam's team hesitated to use the Career Forge | ERM platform. They were used to their old ways of tracking employer relationships and needed to see the value in using a new tool. Until one of them noticed their career services colleagues were producing much more detailed reports on their interactions with employers using the platform. They had accessible, clear records of communications at the company and individual point of contact levels.

Finally, when the Laggards realized they could add custom properties to the platform to effortlessly organize and manage their employer relationships, ultimately helping them achieve better student job search outcomes, they accepted the technology.

The tangible benefits convinced Sam's Laggards to fully adopt Career Forge | ERM.

Roger’s Technology Adoption Curve and Sam's story prove that building momentum with Innovators and Adopters fosters a community of engaged users. Encouraging these two groups calms uncertainty among the Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards still uneasy about the imagined challenges of learning new technology.

In addition, showcasing the software's benefits spurs broader adoption and achieves better outcomes for your team across the early talent network. Let anyone hesitant to use the platform see the immediate benefits adopters are enjoying.

Don’t miss your opportunity to upgrade ER before Fall recruiting. Onboard Career Forge | ERM this summer.

¹ https://ondigitalmarketing.com/learn/odm/foundations/5-customer-segments-technology-adoption/

² Dennis Pearce, https://www.informationweek.com/social/how-to-revive-social-business-adoption

³ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone/#:~:text=MACWORLD%20SAN%20FRANCISCO%E2%80%94January%209,one%20small%20and%20lightweight%20handheld

• Abstract
• The Employer Relations-Career Services Ecosystem
• Advancing from CRM to ERM
• The Usual CRM Players
• Salesforce
• HubSpot
• Nutshell
• Less Annoying CRM
• The Long-awaited Solution: Career Forge | ERM
• Starting Lines, Finish lines, and Bottom Lines
• It's Your Turn! Join the Career Forge | ERM Waitlist Now

Abstract

Several factors are converging to create a unique opportunity for career service leaders to champion employer relations and student engagement in career planning:

1. Rapid technological advancements are opening new job markets and requiring skills that didn’t exist a few years ago.
2. Remote work requires students to prepare for flexible career paths.
3. Growing emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) empowers career services to promote underrepresented students equally.
4. Parents, guardians, and students, increasingly more conscious of earning back skyrocketing tuition and unmanageable student debt, expect career services to essentially ensure jobs after graduation.
5. Increasingly, school administrations want frequent reports on how career services engage with employers.

Career service professionals need to develop and implement strategies to drive student success, protect institutional reputations, and support long-term fundraising. Strong employer relations are key to achieving all three goals.

And the right tools are crucial to managing these relationships effectively. This paper examines how and why software impacts these employer relationships and why career services teams need platforms designed for their specific tasks instead of generalized sales management applications.

“I can say with confidence that career services is a field on the rise.”

~David Kozhuk¹ Founder and CEO, Employer Development and Relations uConnect

The Employer Relations-Career Services Ecosystem

Employers spend time and money building their brands on university and college campuses. They devote resources to funding sponsorships, hosting small events, volunteering, organizing lectures, and championing other marketing efforts.

Career services teams inspire these branding activities by building and nurturing productive employer relationships. They generate student interest and participation with the knowledge about each company gained from ongoing conversations with recruiters and hiring managers.

Customer relationship management software is the typical bridge between career services teams and employers. These platforms organize contacts, collect data, and track departmental ROI--but for B2B or B2C sales activities. Unfortunately, the applications ignore much of what career services staff do and, therefore, what they need from their software.

Employer relations are fundamental to successful student job search outcomes. Therefore, career services staff need relationship management software that prioritizes this fact and facilitates recruiter engagement as the primary vehicle for delivering students to their career goals.

Enter Career Forge | Employer Relationship Management (ERM), a comprehensive technology focused on career services teams building employer interactions that unlock job search results that CMS solutions can’t.

Advancing from CRM to ERM

Customer Relationship Management Platforms (CRMs)

CRMs collect and track information to facilitate moving people from “lead” to “customer” by focusing on closing the deal as quickly as possible. These platforms are built with sales and customer-centric language to capture standardized data about customers, not the unique elements of interacting with employers and recruiters.

A robust CRM can offer a wide range of functionalities, including:

• Deal tracking and management
• Lead tracking and management
• Customer segmentation and targeting
• Marketing automation
• Sales forecasting and reporting
• Contact management
• Social media integration

Conversely, the complexity of most CRMs can confuse users, waste time, and reduce productivity, not to mention stress budgets with after-purchase expenses, including:

• Integration costs: connecting a CRM to existing systems and workflows, like email marketing software, can be complicated and time-consuming. This is especially true if you need an IT expert or implementation consultant to complete the setup.
• Customization costs: revising code, adding different graphics, changing workflows, etc., are not cheap. In fact, it might feel like you’re paying twice: once to purchase the CRM as sold and a second time to rebuild it to meet your needs.
• Training costs: depending on the complexity of the platform and your team’s technical skills, you may need to invest in extensive training programs or hire a certified trainer.
• Add-on costs: you might have to buy additional tools and features to fully leverage CRM capabilities, like marketing automation or social media integration.

CRMs manage and analyze customer relationships in the context of the sales processes. In contrast, Career Forge | ERM is the industry’s first Employer Relationship Management platform. The technology is purpose-built for career services teams to build and manage employer relationships.

The software facilitates stronger relationships with employers, leading to more job postings, high-value interviews, and ultimately, increased and better outcomes for students.

We’ll explore Career Forge | ERM after reviewing four leading CRMs.

“Most employer relations staff are stuck using spreadsheets because using an off-the-shelf CRM is overwhelming.”

~David Nicol CEO, Career Fair Plus

The Usual CRM Players

Salesforce

Company Overview

Salesforce² is a market-leading, cloud-based CRM platform with 7,400+ employees. Founded in 1999, the company offers a comprehensive set of tools for managing customer relationships, from lead generation to deal closing. The platform is primarily aimed at larger businesses but sells solutions for small and medium-sized organizations, too.

The Customer 360 product suite unifies sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT teams with centralized customer information. Salesforce has multiple subsidiaries, including Tableau Software and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The company is publicly traded with a market capitalization of over $300 billion, reinforcing its position as one of the largest CRM providers globally.

Feature List

Salesforce's feature set includes lead and opportunity management, sales forecasting, workflow automation, email integration, and mobile apps. It also offers a marketplace of third-party integrations and apps.

Pricing

Several pricing plans exist for small businesses, sales companies, service providers, marketing firms, and commerce organizations. Each sector has Starter, Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited pricing plans ranging from $25/user/month to 2 https://www.salesforce.com/ $300/user/month (billed annually). The advanced enterprise plans offer custom pricing; additional features and services are available for an additional cost.

Customer Support Model

Customer support options identified on their website are:

• Standard Success (a.k.a., Do it Myself)
• Premiere Success (a.k.a., Show Me How)
• Signature Success (a.k.a., Do it with Me)
• Professional Services

Costs vary by plan. All licenses include standard support; Premier Support is 30% of net licensing fees. Potential customers must contact Salesforce directly for Signature Support and Professional Services costs.

Implementation & Configuration Process

Salesforce has a reputation for being complex and difficult to set up, requiring a significant amount of time and sometimes added costs. The process typically includes discovering customer needs, configuring the CRM, migrating data, integrating systems, training users, and providing post-implementation support for career services department success ranging from tens of thousands of $s to hundreds of thousands.

Notable Advantages and Disadvantages Based on User Feedback

Extensive customization and integration capabilities make the platform highly adaptable to various business needs. However, the software’s complexity can be overwhelming, particularly for small organizations with limited resources. Finally, Salesforce pricing is often too much for most employer relations groups.

HubSpot

Company Overview

HubSpot³, per their website, “...is a CRM platform with all the software, integrations, and resources you need to connect marketing, sales, content management, and customer service.” Founded in 2006, HubSpot provides CRM solutions for businesses of all sizes. In 2022, HubSpot reported 7,433 employees and total assets worth 2.54 billion USD.

The publicly traded company headquartered in Cambridge, MA, boasts 3.1M+ social media followers and more than 167,000 customers worldwide.

Feature List

Hubspot's feature set includes relevant functions in their Marketing, Sales, Service, CMS, and Operations hubs. Customers can automate lead generation, marketing, and data quality. HubSpot also offers a range of customer service tools, including support tickets, customer feedback, and a knowledge base.

Pricing

For Individuals & Teams, prices range from Free basic tools to $800/month to manage 2,000 marketing contacts. Businesses & Enterprises can choose the same $800/month (+ mandatory $3,000 Professional onboarding fee) just mentioned or $3,600/month (+ mandatory $6,000 Enterprise onboarding fee) to manage up to 10,000 marketing contacts.

Customer Support Model

Hubspot offers a range of customer support options, including phone, email, and chat support. It also has an extensive knowledge base, community forums, and training resources. However, access to these resources depends on their pricing level. For example, customers using free HubSpot tools are limited to community support; enterprise accounts can access the community forum, email, chat, and phone support.

Implementation & Configuration Process

Hubspot is known for its ease of use and quick implementation process. The simple, navigable layout lets customers start in a matter of minutes and eventually customize it to fit specific needs.

Notable Advantages and Disadvantages Based on User Feedback

Hubspot's most notable advantage is its all-in-one platform that allows users to centralize all aspects of their customer relationship management, especially lead tracking and conversions. However, costs increase fast, forcing many users to abandon HubSport for more affordable platforms. Additionally, for career services, the abundance of bells and whistles makes it hard to determine which plan is best for employer relations.

Nutshell

Company Overview

Nutshell⁴ is a private, cloud-based CRM software for small and mid-sized businesses. The Ann Arbor, MI-based company, founded in 2009, positions itself as "built for growing businesses."

Feature List

Nutshell's feature set includes sales automation, contact & pipeline management, reporting, email, forms, collaboration, integrations with popular productivity tools, and marketing functions.

Pricing

Customers can choose one of two no-contracts, no-hidden-fees pricing plans: Nutshell at $16/user/month or Nutshell Pro at $42/user/month. In addition, Nutshell Marketing is an add-on with monthly rates on contacts.

Customer support Model

Free live support is available to all its customers via phone, chat, and email, even during free trials.

Implementation & Configuration Process

Nutshell promotes fast implementation, highlighting “No IT department required” on its website. Users can customize their dashboards to optimize straightforward and intuitive contact management.

Notable Advantages and Disadvantages Based on User Feedback

Feedback suggests a toss-up between Nutshell's no-IT-required implementation and the unlimited CRM contacts, data storage, and no-user caps as Nutshell's biggest advantages. Regarding disadvantages, some users say the platform can be slow and lacks some advanced features other CRMs offer. And for career services, the CRM can be too hard to tailor to employer relations and sales processes.

In the 2022 State of Student Success and Engagement in Higher Education survey of 7,500 students, administrators, and faculty, 82% of respondents defined student success as work/career readiness⁵

Less Annoying CRM

Company Overview

Less Annoying CRM (LACRM) is a cloud-based CRM that US News and World Report ranked as Best CRM three years in a row. The company dedicated to powerful CRM software for small businesses was founded in 2009 in San Francisco, CA, and calls St. Louis, MO home. The platform gives small businesses options for customer relationship management tools other than Excel spreadsheets or complicated CRMs.

Feature List

Less Annoying CRM's feature set includes centralized contact, calendar, task, lead, and pipeline management. In addition, multiple users can take advantage of the 100% web-based design for easy customization and mobile access without installing or synching an app.

Pricing

Less Annoying CRM offers an all-inclusive, direct pricing plan of $15/user/month. That's it: no contracts or hidden fees. No additional costs either: support, updates, cybersecurity, and two different kinds of backups are free. In addition, the 30-day free trial delivers full access to every feature and service.

Customer support Model

Live phone and email support come with every subscription, as does open access to the Help Center and API documentation.

Implementation & Configuration Process

LACRM is purpose-built for fast, DIY setup and use. "Powerful customization without needing an IT degree," according to their website.

Notable Advantages and Disadvantages Based on User Feedback

Customer testimonials tout the overall simplicity, including easy integration with popular productivity tools, no confusing buzzwords, stress-free navigation, and fixed vs. scaled pricing. Designed for small businesses with 1-50 users, the software might not meet the needs of larger organizations or those with more complex sales processes. Another disadvantage is the lack of sophisticated tools that employer relations teams need, like drip campaigns.

“Career Forge | ERM changes everything! The long-overdue platform's features directly match what career services professionals need, especially those of us specializing in employer relations.

_I've worked in employer relations (ER) for 20+ years, confronting the ever-present challenges of tracking employer outreach. Yet, despite participating in multiple CRM demos and trials, I couldn't find management software built for ER professionals, our individual tasks, or specific goals. Instead, the CRM platforms are stuffed with irrelevant features and functions we have to navigate--and pay for!--even though we don't need them.

_Career Forge | ERM eliminates all that wasted time and money. And in these days of ROI, the simplified, accurate tracking and reporting might be my favorite part of the solution!”

~Sue E. Brien Assistant Director, Employer Development and Relations Duke Engineering Master’s Program

The Long-awaited Solution: Career Forge | ERM

Maintaining employer and recruiter relationships is a human-first activity. Which is why career services teams need a human-centric software solution to facilitate personal interactions, streamline communication, and build engagement. Using Career Forge | ERM, your career services team can:

• Access crucial employer information fast
• Build human and data-driven relationships
• Never miss a touchpoint
• Monitor employer engagement against specific goals
• Guarantee seamless data handoffs during staff transitions

With software built for employer relations instead of salespeople, your team creates better recruiter-student connections faster and more cost-effectively.

Company Overview

Career Forge | ERM is one of two technologies from privately held Career Soft, LLC. Founded by four former recruiters in 2012 and based in Orlando, FL, the company introduced Career Fair Plus (CF+) as a stand-alone enterprise recruiting platform to empower in-person recruiting events with automation and analytics. More than a decade later, CF+ is a premier platform that universities, colleges, and employers in all sectors rely on to host virtual, in-person, and hybrid career fairs and recruiting events.

Years of supporting career services and their student-focused missions revealed the costly risks the departments take, forcing CRMs to meet their software requirements. From lost productivity to missed engagement opportunities, sales-oriented software doesn’t accommodate the early talent ecosystem. Career Forge | ERM does.

Feature List

The software shifts the paradigm from CRM to ERM by focusing on employer relations teams instead of sales teams. Career Forge | ERM recognizes these teams as the fundamental starting point and necessary link between students and employers in the early talent network. With intentionally-built employer relations features, career services teams, and specialists can immediately:

• Automate outreach
• Streamline workflows
• Simplify communication
• Track employer engagement levels and satisfaction
• Evaluate recruiting activities
• Assess partnership outcomes
• Generate actionable insights
• Report accurate data to stakeholders

Pricing

$44/user/month if billed annually or $49/user/month if billed monthly. Both pricing options have a $1649 onboarding fee and include open access to all features and unlimited customer support.

Customer Support Model

If you know Chick-fil-A, hearing that our customers describe us as the Chick-fil-A of recruiting software companies tells you everything about our support. Our career services teams, recruiters, and students have a buffet of customer support options:

• Live and recorded training webinars
• Direct email
• Live chat
• Online success centers

After all, building the industry’s only technology human enough to facilitate better relationships between career services teams, students, and recruiters means offering live, responsive, patient, and empathetic support.

Implementation & Configuration Process

Upgrading from sales-focused CRMs to Career Forge | ERM is seamless because real people lead and support you. Onboarding goes like this:

1. You send us your data (it’s secure!)
2. We upload it for you
3. You preview your private Career Center space in the ERM
4. We adjust (if necessary) and invite your admin(s) to join
5. You choose your subscription level (we can help you decide)
6. We train you
7. You make awesome employer connections!

The Career Forge software engineer and customer success teams behind the screen know what’s missing from CRM technology. That’s why we’re simplifying your professional life by filling the gaps currently complicating and making employer engagement work hard.

Notable Advantages and Disadvantages Based on User Feedback

Career Forge | ERM is the anti-monopoly platform disrupting the assumption that career services have to force CRMs to meet their employer relationship management needs. The ERM helps career services teams identify trends and make strategic decisions. Using a feature-rich software platform built intentionally for them improves recruitment. Students get time and power back from a relevant user experience; career services work on a more equitable business model.

Making a business case for early adoption is challenging. Career services teams have to prove transition costs, even minimal, are more valuable than the costs of using a mismatched, inefficient CRM.

Illinois Institute of Technology set enrollment records after focusing recruitment strategy around career preparedness⁶

Starting Lines, Finish lines, and Bottom Lines

Career services teams forcing an off-the-shelf CRM to manage their employer relations are starting at a disadvantage. Those platforms track customer interactions through the sales cycle. Yes, customization is an option, but only with enough money and time to reconfigure the program to manage employer relationships.

Career services teams need employer relationship management software to cross the finish line faster and on budget. Until now, however, no such product existed.

The bottom line is simple: CRMs are for sales teams; Career Forge | ERM is for employer relations teams.

Salesforce, HubSpot, Nutshell, and Less Annoying CRM are all cloud-based CRM platforms designed to help businesses manage and grow sales funnels.

• Salesforce is a market leader and offers a comprehensive feature set. Still, it can be expensive and has a steep learning curve.
• HubSpot is a popular all-in-one marketing and sales platform, but its CRM features can be less robust than dedicated ERM software.
• Nutshell offers a user-friendly interface and responsive customer service, but some users find it lacking in advanced features.
• Less Annoying CRM is a simple and affordable platform that is easy to use but may not meet the needs of larger businesses or those with complex sales processes.

As a result of trying to offer a seemingly infinite selection of sales workflows, CRMs often require an expensive consultant to get you up and running.

Career Forge | ERM is the original ERM and built for Career Services.

¹ https://www.gouconnect.com/career-everywhere/why-higher-ed-should-invest-in-career-services-not-abolish-it/

² https://www.salesforce.com/

³ https://www.hubspot.com/

⁴ https://www.nutshell.com/

⁵ https://www.instructure.com/state-of-education/higher-education

⁶ https://www.gouconnect.com/career-everywhere/how-illinois-tech-drove-record-enrollment/

I've worked in employer relations (ER) for 20+ years, confronting the ever-present challenges of tracking employer outreach. Yet, despite participating in multiple CRM demos and trials, I couldn't find management software built for ER professionals, our individual tasks, or specific goals. Instead, the CRM platforms are stuffed with irrelevant features and functions we have to navigate--and pay for!--even though we don't need them. Career Forge | ERM eliminates all that wasted time and money. And in these days of ROI, the simplified, accurate tracking and reporting might be my favorite part of the solution!"

~Sue E. Brien Assistant Director, Employer Development and Relations Duke Engineering Master's Program

As a career services professional, which of these frustrations with relationship management software impact your work and mood the most:

• Sales-centric design
• Irrelevant buzzwords and labels
• Useless workflows
• Daunting configuration implementation
• Insufficient training
• Ineffective or expensive technical support

And how well, or easily, does your current software help you fix these problems?
If you're using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, that answer is probably "not very well."

So, let's talk about these seemingly perennial challenges and how you can eliminate your frustrations using software that starts with an "e" instead of a "c."

TL;DR– There's a common misconception that a CRM solves all business relationship management problems. While it is true that a CRM facilitates customer relationships for sales teams, it is not a user-friendly or productive way to build and maintain relationships between career services teams, employers, and recruiters.

Career Forge | ERM is the ORIGINAL Employer Relationship Management software.

I'm Ready for a Demo

"E" vs. "C": Why Career Services Need an ERM Instead of a CRM

The phrase "using the right tool for the job" is so cliche that it's easy to forget it's true. University- and college-based career services teams need an ERM instead of a CRM to overcome workflow challenges and manage their relationships with employers and recruiters.

OK, but what's this ERM?

Career Forge | Employer Relationship Management (ERM) is the industry's first innovative recruiting technology purpose-built for career services teams to build and manage employer relationships. Suddenly, you're streamlining workflow to track effective interactions with employers and recruiters instead of pushing to close a sale.

Forcing sales software into career services departments

"One size fits all" is another common saying that's so true, it's easy to ignore the potential damage until it's too late. No amount of five-star reviews can transform a software designed to manage the sales cycle into an employer relationship management tool. Sales and career services teams need intentionally different technology because they have inherently different goals.

The CRM problem: Sales is about closing deals Your goal: Building productive employer and recruiter relationships

CRM is focused on closing deals. Career Forge | ERM focuses on highlighting relationships that need attention.

CRMs are built to manage and analyze customer relationships in the context of the sales processes. The software collects and tracks information to facilitate moving people from "lead" to "customer" by focusing on closing the deal as quickly as possible. Fortunately for career services teams, however, Career Forge | ERM highlights developing and establishing relationships. The software manages interactions with employers, so you get a clear view of who is actively involved, at risk of drifting away, or has been out of contact for too long.

Positively engaging these individuals and repairing critical relationships ideally leads to more job postings, high-value interviews, and ultimately, increased and better outcomes for students.

The CRM problem: Sales industry buzzwords and labels Your goal: Improving communications with employers and recruiters

CRMs are built with sales and customer-centric language. Career Forge | ERM uses familiar career language.

Many university or college career services departments invest in a CRM system intending to improve communications with employers and recruiters. However, these sales-driven platforms have terms and activity labels that don't match career services vocabulary or task descriptors. Bridging the gap means buying expensive customization or accepting an extended learning curve, both of which are problematic and defeat your original purpose of building better relationships with employers and recruiters.

CRMs are designed to capture standardized customer data rather than the unique elements of interacting with employers and recruiters. Career services teams must tailor communication to each group's needs and interests. A one-size-fits-all approach does not work in relationship management.

I Want Better Employer Relationship Management

The CRM problem: Infinite, irrelevant workflows Your goal: Easy implementation with applicable features

As a result of trying to offer a seemingly infinite selection of sales workflows, CRMs require heavy configuration that feels like clutter for career services users. Career Forge | ERM exclusively manages employer engagement, requiring little to no configuration that streamlines the user experience.

Career services teams don't use or need pre-configured sales workflows to attract and engage employers. You don't want department members wasting time navigating useless features, especially when searching for critical information. Career Forge | ERM is built to get your team where they need to be on the platform in the fewest clicks possible.

The CRM problem: Implementation and training can be expensive Your goal: Succeed without blowing up your budget

Comprehensive CRMs often require an expensive consultant to get you up and running. Career Forge | ERM is already built for you.

Many CRMs, because of their complexity and sales-centric designs, generate significant implementation costs, including:

1. Integration costs: Connecting the software to your existing systems and workflows, such as your email marketing software, can be complex and time-consuming. Especially if you need to hire an IT expert or implementation consultant.

2. Customization costs: Revising code, adding different graphics, changing workflows, etc., are costly. It might feel like you're paying twice: once to purchase the software as sold and a second time to rebuild it to meet your needs.

3. Training costs: Depending on the complexity of the platform and your team members' technical skills, you may need to invest in extensive training programs or hire a certified trainer.

4. Additional tools and features: You might have to buy additional tools and features to fully leverage the platform's capabilities—or just the features that work for career services, like marketing automation or social media integration.

Don't get lost in the crowds when they discover Career Forge | ERM! Join Now.

The CRM problem: CRMs support is intended to help salespeople sell Your goal: Find technical support designed for career services

CRMs support staff focused on sales teams. Career Forge | ERM is designed, built, and supported by former recruiters and software engineers who know career services. You don't want to explain questions or the reasons behind them; you only need to know where to click or what type to get the desired result.

You don't want staff wasting time explaining recruiting terms and processes to a technical customer service representative; you need fast responses with accurate answers.

Maintaining employer and recruiter relationships is a human-first activity that needs a human-centric SaaS to facilitate personal interactions, streamline communication, and build engagement. Your career services team can use Career Forge | ERM to

• Tailor technology to the unique needs and interests of employers and recruiters
• Ensure real-time communication
• Efficiently manage data
• Prioritize empathy and understanding across all interactions

With these benefits, you're effectively guiding employers to their preferred candidates quickly and cost-effectively.

There’s a subtle shift from the current department-centric student support model to a broader strategy of integrating career services into campus life. There’s value in this change, but unless we also advance from a transactional to a relational mindset, it won’t matter.

Simply subscribing to a different job board or a popular sales-driven customer relations (CRM) platform doesn’t equate to career development. Each participant in the early talent network—career services, students, and employers—should focus on replacing transactional task management with building relationships at scale.

I’ll get to the how later. For now, I want to start the conversation about why this redirection is necessary by following Kozhuk’s lead of looking at the history driving today’s changes.

About 40 years ago

Kozhuk explains that career services’ original role was meeting in-the-moment needs like leading resume writing workshops and building students’ interview skills.

Over time, priorities shifted to building students’ confidence and competency during job searches. Offerings expanded to mimic real-world experiences like networking practice and mock interviews. Innovative software applications automated the crucial discovery process of finding post-graduate work.

Now-familiar job boards like Handshake and Symplicity premiered as seemingly magical solutions to effortlessly connect employers and students. Other technology solutions further informed advising, skill assessment, and overall operational changes.

I agree with Kozhuk that career services operations are changing again. However, I disagree with the implication career services are well-equipped to lead the charge toward campus-wide integration. Here’s why.

“We can’t solve our problems with the same thinking that created them.”
~Albert Einstein

We need a new starting line

Career services are establishing themselves as an organic part of campus life. They’re considering engaging or preparing faculty, staff, alums, employers, and parents for meaningful career-planning conversations with students. Adding multiple stakeholders to the career development process also bolsters career services staff working with limited resources. It makes sense. Career services are ideally positioned to guide students beyond securing first jobs to setting career goals. What doesn’t make sense, however, is the starting point to successfully fully “embed career into the overall student experience.”²

The goal is good; the mindset is wrong

Campus-based career services can’t make this paradigm shift until they rethink their historical and current transactional focus. Big job boards like Handshake and Symplicity streamline the application process, but they can’t support the complexities of career development. These platforms are necessary but insufficient because they emphasize speed and algorithmic matches over meaningful engagement.

Relationship building is the essential foundation of integrated campus-wide career services. And the accompanying software has to facilitate relational activities rather than task completion. Comprehensive student career development requires career services to evolve from primarily information hubs to fostering experiences and long-term engagement across the early talent network. This shift is the only way to build relationships between job seekers, career advisors, and employers at scale.

Implementing a relationship-building paradigm

In my rebuttal to Ryan Craig’s call to abolish career services, I reject his assertion that job boards like Handshake and Symplicity replace career services professionals. As a software engineer with a recruiting background and a co-founder of a higher education SaaS company, I’m a big fan of technology. And I strongly recommend using technology as designed. Don’t force it into ill-fitting applications unless you want to:

• Spend more on customization.
• Hire implementation consultants
• Spend excess money and time on onboarding
• Train endlessly
• Miss collecting relevant data
• Waste hours searching for workarounds instead of working

Subscribing to giant job boards or customer relationship management (CRM) systems doesn’t mean your career services team is well-equipped to take on the university-wide integration Kozhuk says is everywhere. But a software solution built exclusively for career services changes everything.

Implementing and maintaining

CRMs manage and analyze customer relationships in the context of the sales processes. These platforms collect and track standardized customer data instead of addressing the unique elements of interacting with employers and recruiters. Sales-oriented software doesn’t accommodate the early talent ecosystem, resulting in lost productivity and missed engagement opportunities.

In March 2023, CF+ launched the innovative product suite Career Forge, replacing checklists and reminders with relationship-building tools for the early talent network of career services (CS), students, and employers.

The first solution, Career Forge | ERM, is the industry’s first Employer Relationship Management platform. The technology is purpose-built for career services teams to create and grow employer relationships instead of only facilitating sales tasks. Why? Because relationships build trust, which increases employer engagement with career services and students, leading to:

• More job postings
• Increased numbers of high-value interviews
• Better student outcomes

The cornerstone Career Forge product is a long-overdue direct competitor to Handshake, Simplicity, and 12Twenty. Innovative Advising and Experiential modules spur relationship building; reimagined Jobs and Events modules power long-term career development for early talent.

Anticipated release is within 9-12 months, but you can secure your spot in the advance notice group now. Join the notification list for Career Forge | ERM product upgrades and advance release announcements. Signing up for the CF+ newsletter puts beneficial industry, Career Forge, and CF+ at your fingertips.

Campus career services are evolving to prioritize lasting relationships over repetitive transactions. Tools like employer relationship management systems represent the next stage, emphasizing nuanced interactions among all stakeholders. The goal is to create and maintain an environment that supports students’ career development at every touchpoint of their undergraduate journey.

People excel at solving uniquely human challenges. Give your career services team the career-services software built to solve career services challenges in uniquely human ways.

¹ https://www.gouconnect.com/career-everywhere/the-evolution-of-career-services/

² https://www.gouconnect.com/career-everywhere/the-evolution-of-career-services/

Imagine you're a college senior or recent graduate in the early talent job market. You’re not asking for much career-wise: an engaging job with good pay, a positive work culture, growth opportunities, and maybe a short commute. If you’re like most people in this situation, you’re entering keywords and enabling filters on job search sites like Handshake, Indeed, or LinkedIn.

Equal parts nervous and optimistic, it dawns on you: using these technology platforms to find a job feels a lot like using a dating app to find romance. In both instances, you're looking for a personal, tangible connection, a relationship suited especially for you and your goals. So why is finding a match so difficult? Isn't software supposed to simplify our lives?

Well, the problem is generic matching. Job boards typically group employment opportunities into broad categories like 'Marketing' or 'Engineering,' much like dating apps group people by age or location. The deeper, essential details don’t figure in the equation at this early stage.

Job board math doesn’t work when you’re looking for work

You uploaded your resume, finished the "tell us about yourself" questions, and WOW, two weeks later, you’re interviewing for one of the highest percent matches. Except it’s a terrible match that only aligns with two of your interests. Why? Because of math.

An algorithm is a mathematical set of instructions designed to perform a specific task. Software engineers craft these rules to sift through massive amounts of data, supposedly simplifying your life.

On a job board, the algorithms are your digital matchmakers. You put in your qualifications, experience, and skills, expecting these coded Cupids to send the right opportunities. Except they can't because numbers don't recognize the nuances that turn a calculated match into a desirable real-life career opportunity.

Job board algorithms primarily focus on keyword matching. If your resume includes the term 'project management,' you'll get project management roles. But what if you hate long meetings and prefer hands-on work? The algorithm doesn't care. It's like being matched with someone who loves rock climbing when you're afraid of heights. It's a setup for failure.

The algorithm's design overlooks the subtleties that differentiate you from other candidates. Maybe you excel at teamwork but dread group evaluations. Perhaps you crave creative freedom because you loathe micro-management. These complexities that make you unique get lost in binary logic and data sets. A soulless equation doesn't cut it when searching for something as personal as the perfect job.

Job hunting succeeds on connections rather than data points. Career services build the confidence and trust for students to seek–and employers to request–these meetings.

The Power of Personal Referrals

We've all heard so many stories about friends fixing up friends whose first dates turn into happily ever afters. Sure, every introduction doesn't become lifetime bliss. Still, people who understand the nuances of your personality and preferences are much more likely to make a strong match than an algorithm from a software engineer who's never met you.

Job board math is particularly frustrating for recent college graduates and early career job seekers because it takes time to

1. Acquire the differentiating skills and experiences that get you (i.e., your resume) noticed in a sea of algorithms.
2. Establish the types of professional relationships hiring managers trust.

A direct referral could be the reason you get an interview or, better yet, land the job. Friends or co-workers can tell employers the unique characteristics and competencies you bring to the table, like a knack for spontaneous problem-solving or how you inspire team performance by lightening the mood ahead of looming deadlines.

Computer algorithms, and thus job boards, can't replicate what personal and professional relationships contribute to your job search.

Job boards fail employers, too.

Hiring managers and HR teams pour time, effort, and cash into posting jobs, sifting through resumes, and interviewing candidates, most found on job boards. And if these candidates aren't a match, the company's back to square one, managing turnover, retraining, and dealing with an exploding recruiting bill.

There's another reason job board math doesn't cut it as a sole source for candidate searches: the algorithms can't identify a student's mastery of in-demand soft skills. According to Novoresume, the top ten skills employers want are:

1. Time Management
2. Communication
3. Adaptability
4. Problem-solving
5. Teamwork
6. Creativity
7. Leadership
8. Interpersonal Skills
9. Work Ethic
10. Attention to Detail

Hiring is more than filling a vacant seat; it's investing in human capital. No employer wants to realize six months later that their new hire who aced the technical tasks can't collaborate on a lunch order. A poor fit can drag down team morale, hinder productivity, and create a ripple effect that goes beyond that one bad hire.

Algorithms on big job boards reduce candidates and employers to keywords and filters. They do a poor job of measuring soft skills and work potential. Students and employers deserve an affordable pathway to establish trust throughout job searches and hiring.

Break up with job boards and connect with Career Forge

Please don't misunderstand me; software is a good thing. I'm a software engineer and co-founder of a SaaS software company. But what we do is only worth it if it facilitates what you do.

Algorithms can unintentionally create barriers. Or raise doubt in the candidate or employer’s mind. People, on the other hand, and especially career services, build trust across the early talent network.

Career services, students, and employers need technology solutions to manage human interactions instead of supporting transactional tasks.

Career Forge is the only network designed for career services to support event management, advising, experiential learning, first destination & outcomes, intuitive reporting, employer relationship management, and job board engagement.

When wrangling spreadsheets for employer relationship management is too tiring, and it's taking too long for big job board algorithms to find your perfect job/candidate match, try Career Forge.

If you’ve had it trying to force spreadsheets and sales-based software to work for career services, you’ll like what you read next.

If you’re shopping for technology to facilitate better employer relations, you’ll appreciate this heads-up about complicated pricing and total implementation costs.

And finally, if you’re one of those unhappy career services teams using Salesforce that doesn’t want to pay the 9% price hike, you might cry tears of joy discovering Career Forge | ERM.

This employer relationship management software, built exclusively for career services, delivers more benefits for fewer dollars than Salesforce and Hubspot—ridiculously simple pricing.

Speaking of ridiculously simple pricing…

We started this article as a direct pricing comparison between Salesforce, Hubspot, and Career Forge | ERM. Then, we discovered you can’t compare complicated, layered matrixes to a single cost model.

So, let’s start with the thankfully _UN_complicated Career Forge implementation costs. After that, it’s your call whether or not to keep reading the confusing Salesforce and Hubspot pricing matrices.

Career Forge | ERM

Your implementation costs for the first Employer Relationship Management (ERM) platform designed to forge powerful connections and elevate student job search outcomes are:

1. $49/month/seat billed monthly OR $44/month/seat billed annually (and NO contracts either way!)
2. $1695 one-time onboarding per career center

So, while there are only two cost factors, there are lots of benefits, including:

• Freedom to choose subscription level and billing frequency
• NO mandatory long-term commitments
• Not having to force transactional-based software to track relationships
• Scalability and fast access to crucial employer information
• Not battling spreadsheets to organize employer data and contact information
• Fast access to crucial employer information
• Advanced configurations and customization
• Never missing a touchpoint
• Monitoring employer engagement against specific goals
• Guaranteed seamless data handoffs during staff transitions (yours and employers’)
• White glove data assessment, transfer, and formatting
• Live, personalized training
• Unlimited, responsive customer support (sometimes from company co-founders and software engineers!)

And, of course, features to simplify your workload

• Automated email logging
• Contact tracking
• Task creation & assignment
• Custom fields
• Analytics and reporting

Robust benefits, convenient features, and easy budgeting; you won’t hurt our feelings if you bail on this article to request a 15-minute call or reserve your demo.

Searching for Salesforce Implementation costs

Salesforce is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology with multiple software solutions. According to Ascendix[2], a CRM and Salesforce consulting company, the average costs for each Salesforce implementation depend on how you buy the Salesforce license:

• Directly from Salesforce
• Subscribing via a Salesforce Partner
• Combining Salesforce and an AppExchange app

For conversation’s sake, let’s purchase the Salesforce CRM Sales Cloud directly from the source.[3]

First, you decide which of the 13 “solutions” solves career services challenges, even though Salesforce didn’t design any specific options for career services.

Next, you choose one of five subscription levels for that solution. You can view pricing for four; the costs of the fifth service level are behind a “contact us” gate.

Then, you see seven features before you expand nine more line items to reveal up to 12 sub-options for a total of 115 features divided across the four licensing levels for one solution.

Are you as confused as we are? Or are you frustrated and worn out trying to decipher offerings? Let’s press on anyway.

Salesforce support

Do you want Standard, Premier, Signature, or Professional support services? All licenses include Standard support, but Premier is 30% of your net licensing fees (which you haven’t calculated yet). Interestingly, or discouragingly, only your account exec can reveal your Signature and Professional support costs.

How will you decide? Start by determining which 24 support features are necessary, nice but not required, or irrelevant.

Salesforce add-ons

You guessed it, another decision maze. Seventeen[4] more options, but who’s counting? Prices range from $5-$100/user/month, $1250/month, $30,000/org/month, and $27,000/annual. It’s unclear which add-on works with which of the original 13 solutions, especially “Sales Cloud,” the option we tried to price in today’s conversation.

The (possible) bottom line

There are too many Salesforce configurations–albeit very few relevant for career services–to compare potential total implementation costs to the direct and all-inclusive Career Forge | ERM’s $1649 one-time onboarding fee + $49 per month per seat billed monthly OR $44 per month per seat billed annually.

So, we don’t know the fiscal bottom line, but we do know Salesforce is complicated pricing for salespeople, and Career Forge | ERM is simple pricing for career services people.

Get software that makes sense and costs less.

Searching for Hubspot implementation costs

When your head stops spinning from the above scavenger hunt, you can start again to untangle Hubspot (HS) implementation costs.

Like Salesforce, HS is a sales support platform. In their own words[5] Sales Hub

• “...Gives sales leaders total visibility into sales metrics--without waiting in line for help from an admin or analyst.”
• “Helps you store, track, manage, and report on each action a customer makes throughout the sales cycle.”
• “...monitor[s] deal metrics…”

What’s missing? The Sales Hub description doesn’t include managing the employer relationships crucial to the career services mission of students’ career development.

The HS pricing matrix is more complicated than Career Forge | ERM but less intimidating than the Salesforce pricing we reviewed. In a fair attempt at an apples-to-apples comparison, let’s look at the HS Sales Hub solution (vs. separate software “hubs” for Marketing, Customer Service, CMS, Operations, or CMS–any or all of which might have some functionality you want or need).

Here’s a summary level of the decision maze you’re facing[6]:

1. HS Sales Hub
   1. Professional includes five users
      1. Starts at $450/month (billed $5400 annually)
      2. $90/mo per additional user
      3. $750 required one-time onboarding fee
   2. Enterprise includes ten users
      1. Starts at $1200/month (billed $14,400 annually)
      2. $120/mo per additional user
      3. $3000 required one-time onboarding fee

Features

As for functionality, there are 104 sales-centric features available for Professional, Enterprise, or both. HS advises you to “see all features and limits.” Good news: you can purchase add-ons to increase the limits on six features. Less good news: the additional costs range from $25-$500/month.

Apparently, HS realizes understanding their cost structure is challenging because they offer a DIY price calculator. Arguably convenient, but what if you unintentionally enter incorrect data? Or the algorithms don’t recognize a recent price increase?

Surprise parties and presents are awesome; unexpected implementation costs have short- and long-term consequences.

The (possible) bottom line

Like Salesforce, there are too many Hubspot configurations–albeit very few relevant for career services–to compare potential total implementation costs to the direct and all-inclusive Career Forge | ERM’s $1649 one-time onboarding fee + $49 per month per seat billed monthly OR $44 per month per seat billed annually.

So, we don’t know how much you’ll pay for HS, but according to Forbes,[7] “...when compared to other CRM competitors, HubSpot is without exception far more expensive.”

You need Career Forge | ERM because

• Your career services team needs a hassle-free technology solution to manage employer relationships.
• You want definite pricing to make a responsible, no-surprises purchase.
• You don’t have weeks or months to navigate onboarding and training.
• Third-party consultants and implementation specialists aren’t in the budget.

Get software that makes sense and costs less

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/salesforce-raise-prices-some-cloud-products-august-2023-07-11/

[2] https://ascendix.com/blog/salesforce-implementation-cost/

[3] https://www.salesforce.com/editions-pricing/overview/

[4] https://www.salesforce.com/editions-pricing/sales-cloud/?d=cta-body-promo-588

[5]https://www.hubspot.com/comparisons/salesforce-vs-hubspot?hubs\_content=www.hubspot.com%2Fcomparisons%2Fbest-crm&hubs\_content-cta=-white

[6] https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/sales/enterprise?hubs\_content=www.hubspot.com%2Fcomparisons%2Fsalesforce-vs-hubspot&hubs\_content-cta=hsg-nav\_\_link-active&products=sales-hub-professional\_1&term=annual

[7] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/hubspot-crm-pricing/

TL;DR–Career Forge | ERM is the end of your battles using finicky spreadsheets and cumbersome CRMs to manage your Career Services Employer Relations!

Schedule your 1:1 with Dale Stelter because you're done managing employer relations with bulky spreadsheets!

What’s an ERM?

That’s the first of many questions we’re answering these days (more below) about the only employer relationship management (ERM) platform built exclusively for career services.

What is Career Forge | ERM?

Career Forge | ERM is one of two technologies from Career Soft, LLC, founded by four former recruiters in 2012. You know our original platform, Career Fair Plus, the stand-alone enterprise recruiting platform for elevating in-person, virtual, and hybrid recruiting events with automation and analytics.

Career Forge | ERM is every career services team’s escape route from bloated customer relationship management (CRM) software. You can finally replace sales-based tracking with employer-relationship monitoring and reporting.

Q&A and Free Demos

First, let’s talk about the free, 30-minute demos where you ask the questions. I'll wait here while you save your seat:

Every Other Tuesday (12:00 pm Eastern )

Every Other Wednesday (3:00 pm Eastern)

Next, today’s Q&A, all original and shared according to the order asked on a recent demo (join the next one 👆👆👆). Thanks for your thoughtful questions and comments!

Let’s dive in for a closer look…🤿

Participant: Where do you source contacts from? Are they verified? Do we source the contacts and then add them?

Dale Stelter: We upload your contacts during onboarding for you to maintain going forward.

Participant: Are there ways to add tags? Also, can a contact or company have multiple account owners if you have a distributed team?

Dale Stelter: You can add tags to contacts and companies. A contact or company cannot have multiple account owners, but we noted the idea for development discussions! Thanks for the suggestion.

Participant: Can contacts be linked, like when a contact leaves one company and joins another?

Dale Stelter: Contacts link to one company. If a contact moves to another company, you can assign them to the new company or create a new contact record, in which case their previous record remains with their original company.

Participant: Do you get a notification on the due date for a task?

Dale Stelter: Each ERM user receives a daily email listing that day’s tasks plus any overdue items. Career Forge | ERM users love this feature! They tell us it’s immensely helpful planning their time.

Participant: How many users can you have in the system per school?

Dale Stelter: As many as you choose!

Participant: Does this integrate with Gmail or Outlook so that sent emails are collected?

Dale Stelter: Yes, we integrate with Gmail and Outlook, so any emails you send or receive automatically add to the contact and the company's activity feed.

Participant: How far along is the Handshake Integration?

Dale Stelter: We’re nearing the finish line and are proud that Career Forge | ERM, the first ER platform built for Career Services, will have a built-in Handshake connection.

Participant: And what would that look like? Would it be two-way or import-only?

Dale Stelter: One way—for now. Career Forge software engineers (a.k.a. magic geniuses) are developing a custom integration so you can choose which employers, contacts, and engagements to export into Career Forge | ERM.

Participant: Is "per user" the same as "per school"? We have multiple users on our Employer Relations Team.

Dale Stelter: A user is a unique login based on an email address under the school's career center in Career Forge | ERM. Decentralized schools may have either one instance of Career Forge | ERM that allows them to share data across all their career centers, or they may prefer that each career center have its own instance to silo information. Either way, the subscription cost is the same! Let’s get together and set up your best option!

Participant: In activity, can you see attachments? i.e., if you send an employer a document or resume of a student.

Dale Stelter: Stay tuned. The ability to view attachments or files you send or receive in the activity feed for that contact or company is coming soon.

Participant: We have multiple career centers at our university. Will they need to buy seats to access/add information?

Dale Stelter: If you want to share information across career centers, each user needs a separate seat and login credentials to access Career Forge | ERM.

Participant: Can tags be applied to both employers and contacts?

Dale Stelter: Yes. You can customize properties for employers and contacts.

Participant: Can reports be pulled on tags?

Dale Stelter: Yes, Custom Properties are excellent filters to pull the exact information you want in your reports.

Participant: Can you run reports on interaction history? For example, “Show me a list of all interactions with employers conducted in Spring 2023.”

Dale Stelter: Soon, but for now, you simply create a custom property, tag the employer as Spring 2023, then run a report to collect those employers and manually review interactions.

Participant: Does the ERM allow you to select multiple employers or contacts and update their custom properties simultaneously?

Dale Stelter: We’re working on finding the best way to add that feature. We send regular feature updates, sometimes daily, to all Career Forge | ERM users. If you onboard now, you’ll have first access to every new feature.

"We are SO EXCITED about this - I literally ran across the room to grab my purse and credit card. :)”

OK, that last comment isn’t a question, but it’s flattering, and our software engineers deserve these kinds of kudos.

Based on your feedback, they envisioned and launched an industry-changing product that we're innovating daily.

Stay ahead of the crowd, and explore Career Forge | ERM now.

Schedule your 1:1 with Dale Stelter because you're done managing employer relations with bulky spreadsheets!