Employers had no centralized way to identify and connect with students for jobs and internships, which meant career services staff were fielding one-off requests manually and unable to scale their support. Leadership asked me to design a system that would directly connect students with employer opportunities in a more efficient, scalable way.
To solve this, I researched existing platforms like Handshake to inform best practices, then designed a database structure to support employer-student matching. I created onboarding materials to help employers adopt and navigate the new system, and piloted the program with 15 companies before refining and rolling it out college-wide.
Within the first year of the college-wide launch, the program was adopted by over 120 employers and 800 students, resulting in 45 confirmed internships and hires. The system also delivered significant operational efficiency, with career staff reporting they saved roughly 10 hours per week that had previously been spent on manual matching — freeing up capacity to focus on higher-value student support and employer relationship building.