New Partnership with uConnect Brings Labor Market Insight to College Career Centers

As higher education embraces online instruction, virtual career services are more essential than ever. That’s why Emsi is proud to partner with uConnect: bringing the power of labor market data to the career planning process. uConnect, the creator of the first all-in-one virtual career center, now offers fully-integrated labor market insights on its career services platform. 

Read on for the full announcement, including how students can access these labor market insights. For more details, register for the upcoming webinar.

uConnect and Emsi partner to bring Labor Market Insights to College Career Centers across the Country

A meaningful connection between education and a career pathway is increasingly important to students. A recent survey conducted by Strada Education Network found students who had support in connecting their education to a career were more likely to feel their investment was worth it. Yet, fewer than 1 in 5 of students surveyed strongly agreed that their education would be worth the cost. Thus, a key role of the institutional career center is to help students effectively connect their academic experience to career. Unfortunately, while labor market data is becoming more common in higher education, it’s historically been used to support program development and institutional marketing rather than career guidance and advising.  

“We’re excited to partner with uConnect to empower student success.”

—Bob Hieronymus, Emsi VP for Partnerships

uConnect, the creator of the first all-in-one virtual career center, has partnered with Emsi, a leading provider of labor market analytics to colleges and universities, to release a set of modules to bring labor market data and insights into its career services platform. The labor market insights powered by Emsi include government and bureau statistics, job postings, online profiles and wage information data from governments supplemented by wage-included job postings. The data is pulled from multiple sources and dynamically presented to give students and career center staff up-to-date and relevant labor market insights at the point of decision.   

Labor market data has not traditionally resided in the career center, but uConnect and Emsi believe it should be a key part of the career planning process. Labor markets are rapidly changing with the transformation of industries. “Having location-specific insights about what skills are in demand and what companies are looking for in new hires can be a major competitive advantage for job seekers, as well as institutions increasingly concerned about setting their students up for success post graduation” said Bob Hieronymus, Vice President for Partnerships  at Emsi. “Hiring trends are constantly evolving, and the pandemic has only accelerated change. We’re excited to partner with uConnect to empower student success.”  

uConnect has developed the first and only solution to help colleges and universities create a single home for all of their career pathway resources across campus. The public-facing nature of uConnect provides much needed visibility into the career services available to students – both to internal and external stakeholders – integrating career planning into the campus culture. “We’re eager to bring labor market data to the fingertips of not only students and career center staff but to the broader campus community by way of our public-facing dashboards that seamlessly integrate into a school’s website,” said David Kozhuk, Founder & CEO of uConnect. “We aim to help career services staff scale their impact, by enabling faculty, staff, even parents and mentors in the community, to better support students along their career journeys and turn the career center into a go-to resource for everyone.” 

“We aim to help career services staff scale their impact.”

—David Kozhuk, Founder & CEO of uConnect

uConnect also integrates valuable tools and technologies commonly offered by university career centers including job boards like Handshake and Symplicity, alumni mentor tools like Peoplegrove and Firsthand, and career education resources like Vault Guides and Candid Career videos. The new labor market modules, combined with integrations of best-in-class career services technologies help provide a truly integrated and holistic career services experience for students.  

The modules are uniquely designed to stimulate engagement among students. Colorful graphics, and interactive elements make the user experience seamless and the data exploration process exciting and relevant. Users can filter by industries, occupation and location, with a keyword search option for enhanced specificity. Students can root their career decisions in data by understanding interactive employment trends. They can direct their academic experience towards a career by deep-diving into education levels, hard skills and soft skills. And they can better understand compensation standards using data about annual earnings across industries and geographies. The intention behind every feature of the module is to provide crisp, accurate and easy-to-read information about career paths, while building a natural curiosity about industries and employment trends at large. 

uConnect and Emsi strongly believe the time has come for fully integrated labor market and employment data into the career center experience. The increased attention and investment in career services is a symbol of the evolution of the role of career centers on college campuses for generations to come.  

Learn more about integrating labor market insights into the career center at uConnect’s webinar on February 25. Register today! 

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