Cishella Durling: Hi everyone! Welcome, to another episode of the Student Affairs Podcast series. My name is Cishella Durling, and I'll be your host today. I'm excited to introduce you to Kelly Atwood-Holt, who's the Associate Director for Employer Engagement at the University Career Center here at the University of Louisville. Kelly, thank you so much for your time today. We're going to go ahead and dive right into this interview where we're going to talk about Symplicity, which is the platform that the Career Center uses. So, my first question is, what is Symplicity and why did the Career Center choose this platform?

Kelly Atwood Holt: So, Symplicity is a very robust platform, it's not just a job board, but it does include jobs; it does include employers (so students can research those employers), events, career coaching as well. And so, there's a lot of opportunities that students can use in the platform. There were a lot of reasons that we chose it, and it was a very long process for the implementation to make sure that we did it in the best way possible.

But two reasons, two most significant reasons for that: one, it would unify career centers across the campus. So, there are three career centers here at UofL and we were all using different platforms. So, one of the reasons was to come together and be able to unify that for all of our students and all of our employers. Another reason that we've wanted to do this is that, in the strategic plan, there is that all undergraduate students will have experiential learning before they graduate, and this system is really the best for effectively tracking those opportunities.

Cishella Durling: Awesome! So, what are some of the features on simplicity that users should be aware of when engaging on that website?

Kelly Atwood Holt: So like I mentioned, with the jobs, and this is all jobs, so this is not just, you know, part-time jobs or just on campus jobs; it's not just full-time positions when people are looking at when they're getting all the closer to graduating, what that next step is going to be, but it's everything. So, it does include on-campus and off-campus, including federal work study positions; it also includes internships, co-ops, research, and full-time jobs as well. So really, anything that a student or alumni might be looking for is going to be in there. So, in those jobs, they can search for those as well and they can use those different filters to help them with that.

Also in the events, so this is where we have—and this is all types of events—so career fairs, which most people are aware of what those are, but also workshops. So, the career centers, we have workshops that help students as they are in different places in their career journey, that we can provide them with information on how to develop professionally and how to go about that.

And then we also have info sessions, that’s when we bring employers on the campus, as well. There are some resources. So, our pathways, which Center for Engaged Learning uses for tracking some of our experiential learning opportunities, also the document or content library where you can put tip sheets and different helpful information for students.

Now, the University Career Center, we use Big Interview, so you can find that on our website. But there is a section in here for mock interviews, where student can create their own mock interviews and practice those. Like I said, the Career Explorer- students can answer some questions and it will give them some ideas and maybe some interest areas they want, as well as it's connected to O'Net, so they can actually research actual fields and different career fields. And then with our career coaching, that's where students can use this to actually request an appointment with their career coach. And that is across all three offices and those can be virtual, in person, or on the phone. And so, they can make those requests and manage those right here.

Cishella Durling: Wow! Those are some great features that the website has, and they seem to be very easy to navigate through. It looks great as far as I can see, the layout of the website is very accommodating and appealing, too. So, I think it looks good and I think students are going to have an easy time navigating through it. So, if a user does struggle with anything, navigating the website, or comes across any issues, how can they get the help that they need?

Kelly Atwood Holt: Yes. So, first is going to our website. So, on the University Career Center website, as well as the other career centers, we have information to help students. It gives them links to the platform as well as in different areas, like under appointments, that we have some details on how to log in and how to request an appointment; career fairs, how to see a career fair, RSVP if you'd like, and see who's coming and what they're recruiting for. Because obviously, if they're not knowing how to get in, we want to make sure that they have information outside the platform that they can use to help navigate that. And then once they're in Cardinal Careers, once they're in Symplicity, then we have in that document library, content library, we have some tip sheets for them there as well. But they can always call, they can always call the Career Center or email and we can provide them with service on how to how to navigate the system.

Cishella Durling: Awesome, that's wonderful! And it definitely was a good choice for the university to collaborate with the other university career centers and utilize this as a platform.

It's streamlines everything so that students, any users, really, have one place where they can look and find a whole library of resources that will help them as they're looking for their careers or trying to find mentors, and learn more about what they're trying to do here at the University of Louisville. So, thank you so much time for your time today, Kelly, I appreciate you carving out some time to sit with me and go over and navigate Symplicity.

We're going to go ahead and wrap this up with, did you know that the Career Center offers virtual workshops? Be sure to check them out at louisville.edu/career/resources/students/virtual-workshops and you can actually see that on the screen as the well. Alright everybody, thank you so much for stopping by to listen to another episode of the Student Affairs Podcast series.

We're going to go ahead and wrap this up and we'll see you next time!