An introduction to CareerLaunch, the BYU Marriott implementation of uConnect
A Homebase for Business Career Services
At one time, students at BYU’s Marriott School of Business had to rely on the BYU’s central career office for career services and support. Ultimately, Marriott’s leadership realized that their business students required a distinct and specialized career services experience. And so, the decision was made to establish a dedicated career services department to support the undergraduate and graduate students at the Marriott School of Business. The Dean of Marriott hired Mike Roberts in the role of Assistant Dean and Director of the Business Career Center (BCC). It was decided that in order to organize and promote a full range of resources to the Marriott community, there needed to be a centralized hub, both to house resources shared with BYU’s central career services – like their Career Services Management platform, Handshake – and for those resources dedicated to Marriott students. Under Mike’s guidance, Marriott implemented CareerLaunch, the BYU Marriott branded instance of the uConnect platform, and created a home for business career services and all that they offer.
Since implementing uConnect, self-guided online engagement with career has been streamlined. Mike and his team use uConnect’s content management tools to segment career resources, data and information to make them more relevant and useful for both undergraduate and graduate students. Though the central access point of CareerLaunch, it’s simple for students to find tools and information curated for their individual interests. This new approach has produced impressive results. In just their first year of using uConnect, the BCC experienced an 82% increase in engagement with online resources.
82% increase in online resource engagment in just the first year of using uConnect
A Platform to Collaborate with Student Clubs and Faculty
Before Marriott had their own dedicated career services, many business-specific career events and opportunities were organized by the robust network of student clubs, or facilitated by Marriott’s distinguished faculty members. Knowing that clubs and faculty can play a huge role in influencing a student’s career pathway, the Business Career Center wanted a way to leverage their expertise, and also coordinate efforts to more effectively facilitate how various stakeholders were supporting the career pathways of business school students.
With CareerLaunch, students can explore student organization career-related resources and even RSVP to career events organized by the student clubs. By making CareerLaunch the central access point for student organizations, students are able to easily see a variety of resources from both student clubs, and career services available from the Business Career Center, in one place. To engage faculty, Mike and his team created Career Communities aligned to the Marriott School’s programs. Each community includes specific career advice and resources for that particular program – a great place for faculty to share their insights and expertise with the entire Marriott community and act as an extension to the BCC staff.
uConnect is our home base for engagement with career services…
and a strategic tool to promote how we, at the Marriott School, support career advancement, to students and key stakeholders.
Mike Roberts
Assistant Dean and Director
Marriott School of Management, Business Career Center
Improving Awareness and the Student Experience with Modern Marketing
Once the Business Career Center team at BYU’s Marriott School of Business implemented uConnect and incorporated career resources and information from the central career office, Marriott student clubs, and faculty, they started to focus on proactively promoting these assets to students and the greater community. With uConnect’s built-in marketing suite, students and stakeholders receive weekly alerts based on their unique interests. These alerts are automatically generated, and include curated opportunities, resources, news and events. As a result of hyper-personalized email alerts, Melinda Maughan, Director of Recruiting Operations at the BCC, reported an email open rate of 42%, more than 20% above the industry average. Melinda and her team have also set up automated alerts for faculty, Deans and advisors across the Marriott school to help them stay connected with all that’s happening in the BCC so that everyone on campus can better support students in their daily interactions.
42% open rate for the BCC’s email alerts, more than 20% above the industry average
Promoting Career Outcomes, Differentiating the Marriott School Brand
The CareerLaunch platform allows Marriott to promote their resources to prospective students as well. Making resources like student success stories and current employer partners visible to future students affirms Marriott’s commitment to career preparation and outcomes, and serves to further differentiate the Marriott brand among other business programs. Marriott made a strategic decision to open up the first page of their CareerLaunch platform to the public, so they could promote career outcomes to prospective students and parents as well. Prospective students can easily get a sense of available resources, employer partnerships, and experiential learning and internship opportunities to help them envision a career pathway and potential outcomes before they even enroll – with the goal of improving key enrollment metrics and ensuring students are purposeful in their engagement with career services once they do enroll.
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