Designed as a stand-alone feature in InPlace, Opportunities enables placement personnel, students and employers to work together fluidly. The involved parties can find, promote, interview and secure students with industry experience opportunities – be it a placement, internship, volunteering spot or careers event. You can read more about the benefits of Opportunities available in version 4.4 and version 4.5 of InPlace.
In this blog, we bring you a closer look into the working methods we’ve been adopting with our clients to build Opportunities. In particular, we focus on our collaboration with QUT.
A customer-centric approach to innovation
You may know that InPlace solutions was born 8 years ago, following a project QuantumIT (our founding company) completed with La Trobe University, Melbourne. Since then, we’ve developed our InPlace product set working with input and feedback from our university clients. At InPlace we follow a client-centric ethos when it comes to innovation. Our feedback from clients informs the product roadmap, so we can prioritise the projects that will deliver greatest value to our users.
As mentioned briefly, we’ve worked with several clients to develop the Opportunities feature over the years. One in particular has been Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
QUT anticipate higher student satisfaction
In 2013, QUT identified the opportunity to give their students practical industry work experience and ‘real world’ skills to enhance their academic qualifications. The agreement was made between QUT and InPlace to develop ‘Opportunities’. Initially, the idea was to be able to advertise industry opportunities to students so they could pick and apply for internships or placements in their spare time.
Fast forward five years and QUT have evolved their curriculum design thanks to InPlace, with work integrated learning now a core part of every degree. Opportunities has transitioned into a multi-purpose solution in its own right, enabling Placement Coordinators, students and employers to fluidly advertise, apply to, schedule, accept, and offer industry experience of every kind: placements, internships, volunteering, careers events and more. All in InPlace.
QUT’s WIL 2020 Project Manager, Matthew Muller, shared his feedback on the improved Opportunities:
“The new Opportunities workflow will guide our Work Integrated Learning (WIL) Officers, academics and students through a simple process. The workflow efficiently collects the information required, and automatically connects all students to the most appropriate WIL activity available for them.
This provides the best outcome for both students and opportunity coordinators. Plus, it requires less time and effort by the WIL team to manage applications and create placements.
We anticipate this improved first step for students to increase the overall satisfaction with their WIL experience at QUT. Our WIL Officers and academic staff are also impressed with the new experience that Opportunities provides. We are eagerly anticipating our upgrade in the coming months.”
How can I get the new ‘Opportunities’ feature?
The enhanced Opportunities functionality is now available in our latest releases of InPlace, versions 4.4 and 4.5. Opportunities is available as a licensed feature to all clients and their employer partners.
To make the most of the fantastic new functionalities, we recommend you make the forthcoming software updates!
Find out more
To find out more how Opportunities can improve your employer-university work processes, get in touch today.
