2004 NACE Excellence Awards
Educational Programming—College Winner
“Career Cyberguide”
York University
Sometimes it’s better to take career services information to the students instead of having them come to you. To do this and better meet its students’ needs, York University in Toronto developed the “Career Cyberguide.”
The demand for job-search information was great: From 2000 to 2003, the York University Career Centre experienced a fourfold increase in attendance for in-house workshops. This surge stretched center resources and prompted a change in career information delivery from a workshop format to a seminar/lecture format.
“The change to a seminar format failed to meet the needs of
students who required a more hands-on approach and personal assistance,”
explains Donna Robbins, director of the Career Centre. “Also,
students were only able to access job-search information based on
the workshop schedule rather than when they actually needed the
information.”
York University is a “commuter school” of approximately
50,000 students. With almost all students residing off campus, providing
services to those students or holding convenient on-campus career
sessions presented unique scheduling and resource challenges.
Robbins and her staff wanted to develop a way to get more and better job-search information to more students. On October 16, 2003, after a five-month development period, they launched the Career Cyberguide, a multimedia job-search resource. Online presentations by center specialists are based on the information components of the center workshops, and feature audio, video, and graphic elements of the live workshops in a streaming presentation.
The Career Centre staff taped workshops and divided them into 10- to 20-minute segments. Interviews with staffing professionals from employers help clarify student expectations and corporate recruitment strategies. Downloadable PowerPoint handouts and templates accompany each section, allowing students to work through the materials as they watch and listen.
The “Career Cyberguide” has allowed more students to access career information. In October and November 2003, 3,000 students accessed career information via the “Career Cyberguide,” compared to 218 students who attended workshops on the same topics during the same months in 2002.
“Before the development of the ‘Career Cyberguide,’
workshops had to be scheduled on our time,” Robbins says. “As
far as service delivery, the information is available when students
want it—24-7, online, and on their time.”
