To empower RIT students and alumni to succeed in obtaining employment pertaining to their career objectives and personal goals.
• Processes tens of thousands of jobs interviews, student employment applications
• Paperless-ly manages its large on-campus recruiting program
• Streamlines reporting across departments with web services API
Respected internationally as a world leader in career-oriented education, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private, technology focused university located in upstate New York. As one of the nation’s premier career-oriented universities, RIT’s goal is to prepare students for the future by putting a special emphasis on learning through experience. Being a technology-based campus, students and faculty at RIT are accustomed to having the best and most innovative tools available. RIT is constantly relying on technology to differentiate itself and to help its eight colleges succeed.
Since 2006, Symplicity’s Career Services Management (CSM) system has allowed RIT to process tens of thousands of jobs, interviews, student employment applications and manage its large on-campus recruiting program. Without a sophisticated and reliable software application it would literally take thousands of staff hours and millions of dollars to perform all of these operations.
A critical part of the student experience at RIT is its cooperative education (co-op) program. Most academic programs at RIT require students to participate in a co-op program. Each year, 3,600 students complete more than 5,300 work assignments with organizations around the world. The co-op program is a core of RIT’s mission to provide students with real world experience to prepare them to handle challenges and opportunities once they graduate. This program also allows employers to identify and acquire talent as it is common for co-op experience to turn into full-time employment upon graduation. RIT was among the first universities to use cooperative education back in 1912, and today its co-op program is one of the largest in the world.
“Career Services Manager is the most complete tool on the market for schools to manage career services operations. At RIT we rely on CSM for student and employer activity data along with event management, job listing and on-campus recruiting. The career fair and kiosks modules allow us to scan student IDs. We track student activity through the collection of this data and it is an invaluable tool for our office.”
Jim Bondi
Assistant Director, Office of Co-op and Career Services
Rochester Institute of Technology
Since the university has a strong emphasis on preparing its students for their career, the Office of Cooperative Education and Career Services at RIT is a highly utilized resource on campus. The Office of Cooperative Education and Career Services is driven by a simple mission: to empower RIT students and alumni to succeed in obtaining employment appropriate to their career objectives and personal goals. One of the many ways that it fulfills this mission is by providing a very extensive career portal, and the backbone of this portal is powered by CSM.
Students and alumni access CSM through single-sign on, meaning they first login to RIT’s internal portal and then can seamlessly login to the various programs that the office provides. For employers, RIT provides an embedded login so that contacts can easily login directly from RIT’s employer portal. The portal provides extensive career-related data that students, alumni, employers, and faculty can access to facilitate their career search. In total students combine to earn approximately $30 million in revenue annually through co-op programs, thus having a system that easily and effectively enables employers to post opportunities and students to apply is critical for the Office of Cooperative Education and Career Services success.