Career Experiences receives Handshake Spark Award

Intentional is more than a buzzword for the Metropolitan Community College Career Experiences department — it’s their North Star. Since restructuring three years ago, the department has focused on identifying student needs, resulting in national recognition from Handshake with the Spark Award. Handshake’s online platform brings employers, students and alumni and education career centers together to showcase career events and opportunities.

“Anything that a student would need to connect with on their professional journey — whether it’s a job, an internship, networking event, volunteer opportunity, career fair or information session— can be found on Handshake,” said Mervin Vasser, director of MCC Career Experiences.

The platform is currently used by more than 1,500 educational institutions, including four-year public and private colleges, community colleges and minority serving institutions.

The Spark Award recognizes the top 2% of institutions in each category that receive the highest levels of positive engagement, based on reporting, analytics and employer and student surveys. MCC was one of nine community colleges recognized from a pool of more than 300. The other eight community colleges hail from Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

MCC began using Handshake three years ago when Career Experiences and Career Services merged to better serve the College’s multigenerational students. From college-aged students who are eager to enter the workforce to working adults seeking new skills to start new careers, both student groups want to know they are making the right decision with their limited time. They also want to know that the career they are working toward is a good fit for them, Vasser said.

Career Experiences helps students find out by bringing valuable career learning experiences, resources and employment opportunities directly to students. Career Experiences hosts regularly occurring career fairs, professional development workshops and industry expert panels. They also offer services like resume and cover letter assistance, mock interviews, job shadowing and strategies for navigating employment and internship searches. The team's connection to employers and the students they work with helps them share timely opportunities and information between both groups.

“We want to provide students with a pathway and experiences while in school so that by the time they graduate, they definitively know what they do — and don’t want — to do. The best way to do that is by giving them access to these experiences across the College,” Vasser said.

Each of the College’s Academic Focus Areas (AFAs) — Business, Community and Human Services, Creative Arts and Design, Health Professions, Information Technology, Skilled Trades and Technical Sciences and Transfer — have a dedicated coordinator to help make that happen.

A gamechanger has been utilizing Handshake’s automatic enrollment, collections and targeting functions — tools that are intentionally used to remove barriers and help students discover opportunities more efficiently.

For example, automatic enrollment gives every MCC student immediate access to the platform, eliminating the drag of setting up an account.

“Breaking things down into collections helps students navigate Handshake easier so that they can find the opportunities that align with their career paths, or explore areas they didn’t know might be an option,” Vasser said.

Those coordinators work directly with faculty, advisors and employers to uncover gaps and develop intentional solutions. For example, Tyler Cannon, who is the Career Experiences coordinator for the Health Professions and Skilled Trades and Technical Sciences programs, connected with Holly Peterson from PML Construction. Petersen said the company was having trouble filling its carpenter apprenticeship program, which aligns with the MCC Construction and Building Science curriculum.

Cannon suggested the PML post the position on Handshake where the application was placed in a collection for apprenticeships in the construction industry. Cannon took it a step further by creating a direct email campaign through Handshake to notify students in the program.

In a month, PML received seven applications. Two students are currently working with PML and Peterson said they plan to screen the additional applicants.

“This program is giving us great traction and our community is lucky to and higher education institution like Metropolitan Community College,” Petersen said.

Career Experiences hosts career fairs, exploration days and speaker panels quarterly. Visit mccneb.edu/CareerExperiences to see upcoming events.