Since October 2015, more than 500 students and 30 organizations have joined DartmouthCircles, the Center for Professional Development’s new interactive platform.
A former trustee based in California introduced the new platform to Roger Woolsey, CPD director.
“I was looking for a more interactive platform that would assist students in finding employment opportunities, such as internships,” Woolsey said.
While CPD features a variety of tools to assist students in their search for employment opportunities, DartmouthCircles aims to fill in the gaps within this fabric of existing recruitment platforms, community outreach coordinator Eduardo Najera Ortega ’14 said.
On most transactional platforms such as Dartboard, organizations post information about new employment and internship opportunities, and students are expected to take the initiative to search for these opportunities and apply to them before the set deadline. Students then often have to venture beyond the platforms to acquire more information about these organizations and industries. However, on DartmouthCircles, the students and employers interact much more directly, senior associate director of CPD Monica Wilson said.
“Students want to communicate with employers directly to reduce their uncertainty about industries and about employers,” Woolsey said. “DartmouthCircles is a platform that helps both parties reduce their uncertainty.”
While DartmouthCircles allows students to get into direct contact with employers or representatives via the platform itself, it also enables employers to reach out to Dartmouth students. After students have created a profile and uploaded their resume, the platform will match the students with particular opportunities posted on the website. This aims to provide organizations by matching the opportunities they provide with students who appear to be the “best fit,” Wilson said.
Moreover, DartmouthCircles provides a substantial amount of information not just on the organizations, but also on industries in general. At the same time, as an online platform, DartmouthCircles encourages students to explore industries and network with recruiters regardless of their physical location, Najera said.
By raising the visibility of organizations and the opportunities they provide, DartmouthCircles is an “ecosystem” that facilitates student access to company information and helps students make more informed decisions about their employment, Najera added.
The information available to students is not limited to company profiles, but also pertains to general information about the various industries, Wilson said.
“DartmouthCircles also gives students more opportunities to engage with alumni and organizations for advice,” she said.
In addition, DartmouthCircles is a platform that only connects employers to Dartmouth students.
Employers solely focus on recruiting Dartmouth talent, which conveys the message that, “I want to be reached by you,” Najera said.
DartmouthCircles is a highly interactive and informative platform that is about “empowerment.” As the platform allows students to raise questions to the employers and receive clarifications, it will make students feel that they are not just another resume, he said.
Currently, organizations such as Delta Airline, EF Education First have already joined DartmouthCircles, but the platform is ever-changing, Wilson said.
“The landscape for employment has changed,” she said.
On Tuesday, the CPD held an information session about DartmouthCircles, which few students attended.
Out of nine students interviewed by The Dartmouth, three had heard of DartmouthCircles. Though previously unfamiliar with the platform, a few students expressed their interest as well as some hopes.
“The platform’s automatic job matching and precise job searches make finding jobs much more efficient,” Kun Li’19 said.
Although unsure about the formal a platform DartmouthCircles is, Tyler Rivera ’16 said that the platform interestingly takes the idea of an “employer coffee chat” to a virtual level.
Yifan Fang ’17, who hopes to work in design, said that platforms such as DartmouthCircles are useful when they include a larger variety of employment opportunities, such as those in the non-corporate professions.
