March 2002

Career Services held a vendor demonstration at Montana Tech February 13, 2002, to evaluate the Experience.com product. After the demonstration, participants compared this with MonsterTrack.com, another service that they had previously had demonstrated.

Schools Attending Meeting:

Flathead Valley CC
MSU-Bozeman
MSU-Billings
COT-Billings
MSU-Northern
Montana Tech
COT-Butte
COT-Helena
UM-Western
UM-Missoula
COT-Missoula

Schools Not Attending Meeting: COT Great Falls Dawson CC Miles CC

Conclusions:Experience.com was the majority choice as best suited to meet the service criteria. Vendor products are similar in basic services (resume referral, job/internship posting, employer referral, report writing, interview scheduling, technical support and management information system/database of students and employers), but have a different business model. MonsterTrak, offers a lower base price ($2,500), but generates most revenue by charging employers to post jobs and view resumes within the system. MonsterTrak also "owns" all jobs.

Experience.com allows flexibility in posting/not posting vacancies and does not charge employers to post jobs/view student resumes within the system. There are two versions. Smaller schools will likely need the basic system while larger schools will need the full system.

  • $1,500 for the basic version with job postings and resume referral or
  • $5,500 for the full product version with the interviewing component and

Advantages:

    • All schools can interact at the basic level thus sharing jobs from a commonly accessible pathway to the respective databases.
    • Approved employers could, from one location, submit a job to any/all schools.
    • Approved employers could search for student resumes at any/all schools.

Consortium: The majority of schools agree, in principle, that a consortium could better serve MUS students and employers. Factors to be considered:

  • Each campus in MUS is unique and best understands the needs of its students and employers;
  • Differences in the types of employers that certain campuses predominately deal with;
  • Long-standing employer relationships;
  • Schools need to consider how to best serve all of our students and employers;
  • Professional school faculty have close corporate relationships (job postings, student resumes, on-campus interview opportunities) they may not want to share.

Possible Advantages

    • A centralized location for employers to post jobs that students could view at all campuses;
    • A centralized location for employers to search for qualified candidates for all their recruiting needs without calling 14 campuses;
    • Flexibility: schools/employers/students can participate at varying levels as part of a consortium.
      • employers could post jobs at one or all schools,
      • students could search for jobs posted at one or all schools,
      • schools could allow participation in their on-campus interview program by students from one or all schools.

Financing. To finance this project, schools participating hope that their administrations and OCHE will identify revenue sources, either from within the system or from an across-the-board student fee, to allow this valuable service to become a reality. This is a new service for most schools and not figured into their base budgets. To implement a new service of this magnitude, revenue sources will need to be identified and dedicated for this purpose.

It was the consensus that, because of the nature of most MUS schools (size, location, employer base), charging employers to post jobs and view student resumes would negatively impact existing employer relations. To offset small local/regional employers' concern about costs associated with posting jobs and viewing Resumes, campuses could subsidize selected employers' participation by offering "grants" and paying the fee out of the Career Services budget. This "grant" money would come from the cost savings realized between $2,500 (Monster) and $5,500 (Experience full product version).

Recommendation:Experience.com is rolling out a new product in Summer 2002. It combines the best of the existing product with their recent acquisition (Career Connections). The group recommends that we examine the new product when it becomes available and make a final recommendation to OCHE about which schools would like to participate in an MUS consortium for implementation before fall semester.

There are also liability issues that may be different from a consortium concept level versus an individual school participation level and contracts that legal counsel(s) would need to review before formally entering into such an arrangement.