New Virtual Career Center connects students with employers, resources

A valuable new online resource is available to Central Washington University students who want to search for jobs, study industry trends, and begin mapping out their future careers.

CWU Career Services, in partnership with the Student Tech Fee Committee, introduced a Virtual Career Center at the beginning of fall quarter to provide students with a user-friendly, individually focused career-planning resource that has proven successful at hundreds of other institutions across the country.

The Virtual Career Center helps Career Services simplify the job search process for students by offering them a central access point to discover a wide range of career resources and services. The platform — which has been integrated into the Career Services webpage — was created in response to the fragmented experience U.S. college students are faced with while trying to navigate numerous websites and job-search tools simultaneously.

“There’s so much information out there, and this tool gives students a way to cut through all of the noise,” said Career Services Event Coordinator Kristen Paton, who helped launch the platform earlier this year. “We are still in the initial phase, and we’re still learning new ways to make it better. But we think this is a tool our students are going to find very worthwhile.”

The Virtual Career Center also provides tailor-made user experiences for alumni, faculty and staff, employers, and families. Student-specific search options include “News and Advice,” “Career Resources,” “Labor Market Insights,” “Featured Jobs,” “Featured Internships,” and more.

Students can use the Virtual Career Center to search for jobs and internships that meet their individual skill sets and experience levels. They can explore careers by college or by industry, and there are additional options to sort by communities, such as BIPOC, first-generation, international, veterans, LGBTQ+, and more.

An added bonus is that students don’t have to log in to search for jobs; they only need to create an account if they decide to apply for a position they find on the platform.

“You can create searches using a lot of different criteria, which is a really nice feature,” Paton said. “But the main thing for us is that it’s so user-friendly. Students can easily find what they’re looking for and then create specialized searches that they use at a later time.”

After rolling out the Virtual Career Center with a soft launch September 1, Career Services saw a significant increase in traffic over the next month. From September 30 to October 29, the Career Services webpage recorded more than 7,000 page views, 1,860 total users, and 3,076 sessions. More than half of those sessions lasted for more than 10 seconds and included two or more page views, resulting in an engagement rate of 62% over the first four weeks of the quarter.

That’s just one reason why Career Services Director Katrina Whitney is so encouraged about bringing this state-of-the-art resource to the institution.

“We are seeing a lot more job listings than we did before, and our students can sort the results however they want so they only see the posts that are relevant to them,” she said. “That way, they are only getting the information they want instead of all of the clutter that you sometimes find on other websites.”

Whitney explained that the main factors she and her team considered when selecting the partner organization for the Virtual Career Center were ease of use and accessibility for all students, whether they are in Ellensburg, online, or at the sites and centers.

She noted that the platform’s accessibility ties in well with CWU’s vision and our unifying value of student success.

“We felt like the Virtual Career Center would give all students a sense of belonging because it makes everyone feel connected, no matter where they are,” Whitney said. “It’s constantly changing, and the variety it offers will allow us to meet the needs of an entirely different population of students than we could before.”

Along with the extensive job search functions, the Virtual Career Center also offers a detailed overview of industry trends, salaries, and labor markets, along with a customizable selection of articles and blogs to help users maximize their career prospects.

Users can even find advice about creating an AI-compatible résumé, how to build a professional network, and how to prepare for an interview. Whitney said the platform will eventually allow CWU faculty and staff to contribute guest blogs or recommend articles that may be of interest to student job-seekers.

“We also want to engage with our alumni so we can go even deeper in tailoring the user experience,” she said. “There’s a lot more we can do with the site, and we want to be very intentional about the content we provide so it always feels fresh.”

The Career Services team’s goal for winter and spring quarters is to continue building awareness about the Virtual Career Center and doing everything it can to improve its functionality. They also want to encourage feedback from students as they continue to add new features.

“Right now, we just need more people to know about the Virtual Career Center so they can start using it,” Paton said. “We are going to include as many personal touches as we can so people can have the best possible experience.”

As the Virtual Career Center becomes further engrained in the Career Services workflow, the team hopes to find industry partners interested in supporting the ongoing success of the platform. Whitney praised the CWU Student Tech Fee Committee for agreeing to fund the project for the first year.

“It wouldn’t have happened without them, and we are so appreciative,” she said.

Keeping the Virtual Career Center going in future years will likely require corporate sponsorships and alumni contributions, and Career Services has already been pitching the idea to potential partners across the region.

Based on the early returns, Whitney believes the Virtual Career Center has already become indispensable as her department continues to evolve.

“We want to be sure we can keep it going because it offers so much value to our students,” she said. “There is such a great return on investment, and if we can show our alumni and industry partners how it benefits them, too, we believe they will want to get behind it.”