How Monash University Is Scaling Connections Between Students, Faculty, and Work Experiences

⚙️ The Challenge: Inconsistent, Infrequent, and Manual Communication

 
Picture this: You’re tasked with coordinating and facilitating more than 2,000 internships across every faculty – undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. – for the largest university in Australia. Oh, and the internships vary in length – between four, six, and 12 weeks – across five teaching periods per year. All the while, you’re focused on providing students with valuable work experiences while they study.

Managing these partnerships and communications falls to Paul Martin, director of Monash Talent, and his internship team. “We manage everything from the student applications to the start of their internship, through to the day they finish,” says Paul. “But the whole process was very manual and there was no real-time feedback. We weren’t providing a real experience for students due to challenges in scale and resourcing.”

Paul’s team would work with each faculty in a slightly different way, meaning students from different departments would have inconsistent experiences. Although the team was getting students to their first day of work, neither the students nor the host companies would engage much with Monash University over the course of the internship. The team needed to streamline the internship process to gather real-time feedback and bring the Monash University brand to the forefront of the entire experience.

💡 The Solution: A Powerful Journey Connecting Stakeholders and Delivering New Insights

“My mind went straight to Enboarder and how I might be able to provide a great onboarding experience from a university perspective for the student and the host of the internship,” says Paul.

That’s when Sarah Banks, continuous improvement manager at Monash Talent, took the reins and drove the design and implementation of Enboarder. “The ability to deliver personalized, timely, bite-sized content and collect meaningful insights was really perfect for what we were looking to achieve,” says Sarah.

The team decided to run a pilot with the summer cohort first, and Sarah was tasked with mapping out the student and host journey. She outlined all the touchpoints in the existing journey and where Monash wanted to get to. Once the content was approved, it was time for her to get into the Enboarder system and build the workflows: “It was so easy to build and work with, and exciting to see such a change compared to what we were doing before.”

As the team looked to build excitement for the new journeys with stakeholders internally at Monash, they created a self-guided demo of Enboarder that could be launched from a QR code. “They can launch themselves into it and see several sequences that we might send out to hosts and students. That was a really great part of the launch as well,” says Sarah.

Not only has the team streamlined the internship experience at Monash (and shown incredible innovation with this new use of Enboarder!), but the data Paul and his team have been able to glean from Enboarder is game-changing. In fact, form data from Enboarder is a key input powering a real-time dashboard that allows faculty and leadership across Monash University to understand how a Monash industry experience (internship) develops real-world skills and work experience for students.

For example, “At the start of the student journey, we ask the student to rate themselves on nine key employability skills – cultural competence, creativity and innovation, etc. They also rate themselves at the end of the internship and we ask the host to rate the students as well,” says Paul. His team can then take that data back to Monash faculty to improve curriculums.

Students are engaging with the content Paul’s team sends out much more frequently because they’re able to set their communication preferences from the start: “The use of text with students is actually really effective,” says Paul. “While on placement, students have to manage their personal emails, a work email, and their university e-mail, so the only device that we can reliably get quick responses and rapid feedback from is their mobile. We get great information. It’s almost real-time.”

👑 The Results: Soaring Engagement and Plans to Scale

Now Monash is consistently gathering the information needed to measure and improve students’ workplace readiness. “What’s the difference between doing a four-week, six-week, or 12-week internship versus a co-op? What impact does that have on your employability? These are insights we wouldn’t have at a university-wide level without Enboarder,” shares Paul.

Sarah agrees, and adds that the data “shows what we’re doing with students is really improving their job readiness, which is important for the university. But it’s also a really great tool for us talking to companies because we can say, ‘Look at the high caliber of students that are also rated highly in employability skills by organisations they have worked with’.”

Host companies are also sharing very positive feedback about the internship experience – specifically the big consulting firms. “One in particular is really excited that we’re using the same technology they use in talent acquisition,” says Paul.

But beyond the technology, it’s Enboarder’s consultative, strategic approach the team appreciates most. Other tech customer success managers might make you feel like a number, but Paul says that with Enboarder “every catch-up has a great outcome and there’s a relationship build. All the way through, we’ve had the best experience, which is what’s driven our success.”