Solution: Niceboard offered a solution with minimal administrative burden, meeting the college's criteria for ease of use, custom domain use, and clean interface.
Impact: The new job board resulted in a 30-40% increase in the number of jobs posted, while decreasing time spent managing the career center by 10%.
I probably spend 10% less time on managing the Career Center, but I get 30-40% better results in terms of the number of jobs being posted.
Challenge
Patrick Henry College, represented by Jeff Thornhill, Associate Dean of Student Affairs, faced inefficiencies in their career services.
Before implementing a job board, they relied on a Facebook page to post available jobs and internships. However, Facebook’s limitations as a career center quickly became clear: limited reach and a time-consuming process with jobs being sent in via email.
Jeff wanted to establish a more accessible career center for students and alumni to help them find relevant jobs.
The Facebook page became time inefficient because people would email me jobs and I’d have to post them manually.
Solution
In contrast to other higher education career center platforms that require significant administrative effort, Niceboard stood out for requiring only minutes to manage it.
The decision for Niceboard was based on several criteria:
- reduced administrative time due to the easy to use platform—for employers and admins,
- the ability to use a custom domain (.edu), and
- a clean and customizable interface.
Niceboard’s ease of management, user-friendly design, and backfill feature, which helps populate additional niche jobs for students, made it the ideal solution for the college.
After an internal focus group to evaluate Niceboard, the college received only positive feedback from stakeholders, making funding the project straightforward.
It provides a one-stop shop for our students and alumni as well as for employers.
Impact
Implementing Niceboard has not only streamlined career services but has also elevated the college's engagement with students, alumni, and employers alike.
- 30-40% more jobs posted: With Niceboard's user-friendly design and optimized SEO reach, Patrick Henry College has seen a significant uptick in the number of job and internship postings, hence improving alumni experience.
- Time saved: With a streamlined Niceboard-powered job board, Jeff spends 10% less time managing the career center. Tasks such as interacting with employers or posting jobs now take mere seconds, allowing staff to focus on other critical initiatives instead of playing email ping-pong.
- 100% alumni satisfaction: Students and alumni love their new career center. With the ability to support career resources such as an events calendar, and to maintain recruitment relationships, it further enriches the college's career ecosystem.
By choosing Niceboard, Patrick Henry College has transformed its career center from a basic Facebook page into an efficient hub for career opportunities.
The number one benefit of Niceboard is that it provides a central hub for our students and alumni to go to when they’re ready to look for an internship. Plus, it gives them access to more career resources, such as finding resume advice or looking for intern housing.