Service delivery is our game. We are not a software company. Our Employer Specialists make a large number of outreach attempts every day to build strong partnerships for our partner campuses. Once we start to build a connection, our only goal is to handle the employer's request. We keep them informed throughout the process of finding potential candidates, while providing students with the exact process needed to notify the employer of their interest.

This is a year-round strategy. Although emails about our services can be helpful, they are passive and we use them as a last resort. Instead, we visit classrooms every semester to provide students with information on our services. After our quick info sessions, we proactively reach out to students almost immediately. Once we’ve made contact, our campus recruiters provide a career coaching service that is custom and ongoing for the student. We are generally in touch on a weekly basis. Referrals from faculty never hurt either!

Text messages are our best friend. Why? Because that’s how most students communicate. E-blasts to students don’t work. Do we use phone calls, Zoom, email, and other resources? Of course, but much of sending students targeted jobs, follow-up, and scheduling appointments is done via text.

Absolutely. Without faculty, our access to students would be limited. We start each semester by meeting with faculty and conducting a custom needs analysis. After hearing their insights and identifying the employers or jobs that seem to be a strong fit for students in their classes, we incorporate that information into our one-on-one conversations with students.

This is where we spend a lot of time. To start on the qualitative side, nearly all of our conversations with students, faculty, and employers are documented (case management). These conversations help colleges understand the journey from meeting a student to work experience. On the quantitative side, we are constantly updating the metrics we cover. For basics, we track our total outreach, number of placements, employer partners, and more. However, we like to dive deep with insightful metrics such as the number of times a student applied to a work experience opportunity versus the number of targeted opportunities sent their way, how many students are responsive and available for work experience, and much more.

From our experience, we are not duplicating work. Campus staff work well with our team as we fill a need that there is simply not enough time in the day for. While campus staff manage activities such as workshops, counseling, and advisory boards, our team is primarily focused on getting students connected to paid work experience that’s documented from start to finish.

In cases where a college does not have a dedicated team around employer engagement, Network Kinection has been able to handle that responsibility for them. However, for those who have dedicated staff, our services are not meant to be a replacement to job developers, career advisors, faculty or EWD professionals on your campus. In fact, in most cases we are working directly alongside those professionals as a supplement to their daily work. For 20+ years our team has done nothing but employer outreach and related activities. We have intense employer outreach operating procedures similar to those of staffing agencies leading us to increase employer connections roughly 10x for any given program at colleges.

Intense daily outreach + time = relationships. There is no easy way around it in the employer engagement universe. Our team has done nothing but engage with employers for nearly 20 years. Many of the relationships built are either still with their same employer or have stayed in the same community and moved on to a new employer. It is through those lasting relationships that our book of contacts has continuously grown. There are software programs, apps and other supportive technology that can serve well for data and management of contacts. However, there is no substitute at the moment for going the extra mile to meet in person, call and follow up with the employer community. If you ask any given human resources professional, many will tell you they are called 20-30 times per day from staffing agencies, community colleges, universities, candidates, workforce development boards and more. Our team has built strong relationships by listening to the employer, making sure their initial needs are met by the college system and then making them aware of the other beneficial services that the college can provide.

We keep the college involved throughout the whole process. If we already have the relationship, we start to involve the appropriate college employees right away to begin a partnership. If the employer is a new relationship requested by the college, we wait for the employer to let us know their needs and then immediately bring staff into the picture. Simply put, these relationships will be owned by the college, not by Network Kinection.

Typical contracts have been 1-3 years with a renewal option especially while involving placement into internships, jobs, etc. However, we have also worked on projects as short as one month where we needed to simply facilitate a small amount of internships or needed to re-vamp a career center’s protocols.

How much does it cost to fix your car? You don’t know until you have it looked at by a mechanic. It’s the same in our world. Please feel free to ask your NK representative what that may typically look like for the scope of work you’re thinking about. We will be happy to give you an estimate as you start to consider collaboration.

The Network Kinection Team usually contacts interested students within 2 - 3 business days.

Network Kinection is contracted to work with specific Career Education programs with our partner campuses. Let us know what discipline you’re considering changing to and we will be able to tell you if our services are available to you.

Our services are totally free, and you can use our services if you are enrolled at a community college we are currently contracted with. After that, we will typically work with alumni of the college who are seeking work up to 1 year after graduating.

No worries! Our services are totally free, and you can use our services if you are enrolled at a community college we are currently contracted with. After that, we will typically work with alumni of the college who are seeking work up to 1 year after graduating.

We work with employers to bring in internships and part-time / full-time jobs. Nearly all positions are paid opportunities with flexibility in their schedules.