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I last wrote on Brightspyre and its foray into specializing job boards for universities. That was when they signed a single campus. Now I hear they’ve signed on the complete set of campuses of NU-FAST (khi, lhr, isb and pwr). Not a bad start, as they’ve already got over 14 job posted on the site from companies such as Jinn Technologies, Bentley, Tekenable, Digital Prodigy and Orgoo as well as Cogilent Solutions (the owners of Brightspyre).

Since the last post, i was curious as to what were the benefits to be had from having a university specific job board. Usman Bangash (Manager BD - Brightspyre) and Ahmed Jawad (CTO - Cogilent Solutions) were kind enough to answer these questions for me.

Year Round Recruitment vs Single Recruitment

In their view, the need comes from the industry which has to carry out year-round recruitment to attract the best talent out there. While job fairs were a good start in capturing graduates as soon as they were about to hit the markets, they are organized once, and at best, twice a year. That is the gap which is primarily fulfilled by this service. Also, the search for talent has become such a cut throat business, that it is no longer realistic to just select candidates as they are about to exit the university. Now, prospective talent has to ‘courted’ right from the start to ensure that organizations get the right person for the jobs they have in mind. Otherwise, they are snatched up by the competition. Previously, this was done by members of an organization who were teaching at any university, who locked sights on the best and brightest and gave them overwhelming reasons to join their firms after graduation and would keep in touch till they did.

Equality for students

Secondly, while job fairs and interview sessions that organizations hold within the universities are beneficial, it was learnt that the first step of CV filtration, done by the university faculty, often only forwarded resumes of ‘pet students’. While I did not want to take this fact at face value, thinking back to my university days confirmed this when students who were in favor with teachers would be getting interview calls or special placements, while the rest were left to fend for themselves. Having an online system, essentially allows for equality among the students, giving everyone an equal shot of scoring their dream jobs.

Promoting intranet usage on-campus

The next need, was for the universities to promote their own intranet and website usage. Having a job widget, which carries job adverts specifically targeted to their own university at select pages is expected to create a rise in page views of the university website/portal, which in most cases, are only used as an online brochure and do not have much useful information for students.

Ease of Access for Alumni

And lastly, alumni support. While it is often disregarded, most alumni, when in hiring positions, would choose graduates from their own universities than from anywhere else, essentially because they believe students coming out of these institutions would carry the same values and virtues they themselves were imparted with. While i do not dispute this fact, I believe job portals such as the ones brightspyre provides, would allow these alumni to first target their own alma matter before branching out, effectively reducing the overall ‘equal opportunity hiring’ organizations have been building up for quite sometime. However, these job boards are just bringing a hard truth to the surface and not, in my opinion, creating any negative vibes which do not already exist.

Overall, a very good effort and I wish them luck in this endeavor. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing quite a few new things from them in the times to come.

Note: If anyone would like their alma matter to have a specialized job board, and are on good terms with the university administration, give these guys a holler and setup a meeting. Not only would you be helping increasing the local economic activity, but also increase the chances students sharing your alma matter to prosper! Remember, no good deed ever goes un-rewarded.