Why are we centring the student experience around an illusion?
I believe I was about six months into my previous role as Director of Co-op, Career and Experiential Education when I said to my team:
“What if we didn’t have a job board?”
Pause.
“We can’t do that…”
“Why?”
“Well… when an employer calls and wants to post a job just for our students… where would it go?”
Hm.
If only there were national platforms. Regional platforms. Places where jobs already live. Places that employers have already posted. If only they had already done the work for us… We can only dream… (I’m Gen X, sorry, sarcasm is my love language).
While we didn’t get rid of job boards then, we did simplify. We did decide on what we posted and what we didn’t. The question got us to thinking about how we spend our valuable resources. That’s what I hope to do with this conversation.
Let’s take a look back to see how we got to campus job boards.
I believe it started with bulletin boards and binders (that was even before my time).
Literal binders of job postings. Opportunities, faxed over to the career office. A job developer in the back office would hoot when their efforts had paid off, and that fax came through! That special new opportunity only available at their school!
I have heard folklore that students would come in, stare at a bulletin board or flip through binders of job postings. They would write down the information and apply. I’m assuming by pigeon.
When I started in co-op as an employer developer, twenty years ago, we had folders. We moved the job posting (printed off) alongside the applicants, manually from “posted” to “interviews,” then to “offers,” and finally to “accepted,” and I believe it went into a database somewhere — Excel? Access?
Then came websites. Then systems. Then platforms layered on platforms — each one to do better tracking, better access, better outcomes.
And yet…
We’re still:
- copying and pasting jobs
- mining and managing postings that already exist elsewhere to post for our students
- measuring volume instead of outcomes
- chasing students to apply
We’ve digitized the binders and folders.
But have we investigated the approach?
When you look at the job descriptions of your employer teams, do they look different than 20 years ago?
The job posting is the holy grail. Should it be?
Perhaps, somewhere along the way, we built something we didn’t intend:
An illusion of opportunity. That’s the way Chris Cooper, Unit Head, Engineering and Applied Science Co-op, University of Cincinnati, called it. It stuck.
At the University of Cincinnati, the birthplace of Co-operative Education, Chris and his team confronted this head-on.
As he put it, “Students started to believe the job search was curated… like everything they needed was inside our system.”
It reminds me of the “ever hired” or “ever posted” lists. The go-to lists of the people who have posted in the past. Yet the economy and jobs are appearing and disappearing so quickly. If we’re relying on the same employers to post, and that’s who we are reaching out to. Who are we missing?
Upon writing this, I typed in “Co-op Jobs” on LinkedIn, and 91 active jobs came up within 40 km (30 minutes) of my location. Just like that. No fax machines required. This is the entry-level labour market at our fingertips.
At the University of Cincinnati, like other schools, their job board was cluttered with outdated and imported opportunities and provided few clues to students as to what positions were available. To Chris and his team, students weren’t navigating the labour market. They were navigating their version of it.
And as our governments and schools push for scaling work-integrated learning, our resources struggle to keep up. That’s what was happening at Cincinnati: the internal system couldn’t keep up.
- Built for smaller programs
- Now supporting ~4,800 experiences annually
- Increased volume → decreased performance
Chris said it plainly:
“The system would just melt down. It wasn’t built for scale. For a week each term, you couldn’t do anything, you’d have to walk away.”
So, they made a decision.
They moved away from their internal system and began using a national job board, so they no longer have to repost or manage the job posting portion. The national platform manages that.
“We didn’t want to move to another system that just recreated the same problem.”
Instead:
- Students apply broadly
- Advisors track engagement (applications, activity)
- Outcomes are captured through required reporting
- Internal systems are simplified, not overbuilt
Most importantly:
“We wanted students to understand what the job search actually is.”
I am sure that as you are reading this, you are saying, “That would never work here… because…
Everyone thinks the same thing:
- Hire rates will drop
- Employers will disengage
- The system will break
But according to Chris:
“People were really afraid our hire rate would go through the floor.”
It didn’t.
“We’re on par with our previous hire rate. In some programs, we’re actually ahead.”
I understand the fear – hire rates are the metric that everyone talks about in co-op. Constantly. It’s what we track to know where we are. But is that about the job board?
I would say it isn’t.
It’s what we’ve built around it.
We tell students:
- “You need to network.”
- “You need to apply broadly.”
- “You have to do informational interviews.”
And then we train them to rely on:
- a closed system
- a curated list
- a controlled experience
That’s the contradiction. We didn’t remove barriers.
We created a bubble.
So, what if we change our focus? Instead of copying and pasting jobs, reaching out to employers who posted their jobs somewhere to ask if we can also post them on our site, managing portals, and counting postings, we looked at other metrics. What would that metric be?
We need more opportunities to meet the pressure of scaling. More postings. More influence on the system to talk to employers about how to use co-op. Based on our recent research with CEWIL Canada, we know that employers don’t know how to tap into the talent in their backyard. It’s not that they are hiding the job posting from you; they don’t know how to even give it to you. Or that you want it.
And if it ends up on a regional job board, great. Make sure they know what your student talent can do for them. Make sure they are aware that you are there to support them. Sell them on the benefits of being engaged as a partner in learning. Create a strategic partnership to build a talent pipeline that withstands the ups and downs of job postings.
Spending the time working on that makes more sense than copying and pasting jobs from one job board to another.
What would we measure if we started to focus on teaching the skill of job searching, building employer partnerships beyond the posting, and helping students navigate the complexity of the job market?
Because: A curated job board is not a labour market.
And copying jobs from one platform to another is not a strategy. Nor is it a good use of our resources.
For Canadians reading, something is interesting about our platform and processes as well. We are holding tight to our systems in the name of privacy, control and institutional ownership, and yet we don’t use the data in a meaningful way to even tell the story of what we actually do. We sit on massive amounts of data we don’t use.
So the question becomes:
What are we protecting?
Which brings me to the question, if your campus job board disappeared tomorrow…
Would your students still know how to find work?
Maybe the goal was never to build better job boards.
Maybe it was to build better job seekers.
Does this conversation push you to respond to these points? Do you have thoughts floating in your head? Are you yelling, no, no, no… great! That’s the point!
This is exactly the kind of conversation we’re having in the Disruptors Series.
🎙️ Next Session: Death of the Campus Job Board
📅 April 21, 2026
🕛 12:00 PM EST
Event Registration
Featuring Chris Cooper from the University of Cincinnati, who will share with us his experience of changing the way they do employer engagement beyond the job posting.
If you’ve ever questioned:
- where we spend our time
- what students are actually learning
- and whether our systems reflect reality
This one is for you.
We hope to see you there!
