With over 47,000 students attending New York University, the Career Services Center is busy helping students prepare for interviews, learn to write resumes and find full and part-time jobs and internships. To serve students quickly and efficiently, center employees and university students themselves use a 4D Server database created by the Acumen Group, a 4D developer based in New York City. The multi-user database is located at various sites on campus to give students immediate and around-the-clock access to current job listings.
Before implementing the database, the center tracked students with a paper filing system and with multiple, separate databases running on an IBM."With those multiple databases, we couldn't generate the required statistics in an expedient manner and that's when we moved to the Macintosh, recalls John Johnson, Associate Director of the Career Services Center. After moving to the Macintosh, the center tried both FileMaker and FoxPro, neither of which was able to fulfill its diverse data management requirements. Reports Johnson,"FileMaker wasn't expansive enough and it didn't have the relational quality to effectively meet our needs." Adds John David, VP of Technology at Acumen,"FoxPro would be loading indexes across the network and that would slow the whole system down, so it was very important to have a true client/server architecture. 4D was a perfect fit. It's robust and it's quick to develop in. 4D also allows you to put together a good relational structure. It's very powerful, yet simple to use."
The Career Services database performs two main duties: to help students find jobs and internships, and to help the center manage massive amounts of data. At any of the many Macintosh Color Classic terminals, students register by typing their information in the database, or by sliding their ID cards through a badge reader which automatically enters their data. After registering, students can search the database for jobs that fit their exact specifications. For example, they can enter the number of hours per week they'd like to work, location of the workplace and any special skills such as foreign languages they would like to use on the job. The database searches through thousands of job and internship listings to find appropriate matches."The database gives students such a variety of jobs that they can search through based on their criteria, instead of looking through a book of a hundred jobs and being saturated with information, states Johnson.
To prepare for a job, students can also sign up for any of the numerous seminars conducted by university professionals, including career planning, resume writing and interviewing. For additional help, students use the database to schedule meetings with career counselors. The database prints students a reminder notice for all meetings and seminars. Johnson has found that the notices, which were not printed before the introduction of 4D Server, have significantly reduced students' no-show rate.
Because of the number and diversity of students at NYU, the database had to be self-explanatory and intuitive to use."Not everybody is computer literate," acknowledges Johnson."We've got people coming in here who don't even know how to use a mouse and that's why it was so important to create this in a user friendly way."
It was equally important that the employee side of the database be fast to learn because many employees at the Career Services Center are students who typically work at the center for only one or two years. Notes Johnson,"The student workers love the database because it is so fast and frees them up to do other things." Adds Trudy Steinfeld, Director of the Career Services Center,"The student and university community response to the database has been overwhelmingly positive. We have a system that is terrific on the management and operational side, and is equally easy and fast on the student user side."
The Career Center staff uses the database to manage nearly every aspect of the center, including updating job opportunities, registering recruiters, scheduling interviews with students, planning career fairs and tracking attendees. All correspondence with recruiters and students is written and archived in 4D Write. Career counselors track every student they have counseled and keep statistics about the number and type of counseling appointments and seminars they have conducted.
When registering in the database, students have the option to include their resume information, which the center sends to employers seeking students with certain talents or skills. Before using 4D Server, center employees had to search through files to locate the resumes manually, a tedious task which consumed hours. The database locates appropriate resumes in less than a minute.
One of the most important database functions is its powerful reporting capability that allows the center to accurately analyze its services. With 4D Server, the center reports to university administration on a variety of subjects, including the number of students who take advantage of the services offered, the types of companies recruiting on campus and the jobs and salaries available. The center also prints job placement reports to compare itself and its students' success against other universities."The beauty of this is we were always limited to the amount of information we could have before. Now, we give accurate information as opposed to guessing," states Johnson.
Most importantly, the database helps the Career Services Center serve the students better and more efficiently. The client/server architecture of 4D Server allows many users to search for jobs, schedule appointments, correspond with companies and report on data simultaneously and quickly. The result is that the center can find more jobs for more students. Notes David,"This reduces the length of the line and students get immediate help. It puts students in more control and takes the burden off the staff at the center."
Steinfeld attributes the Career Center's improved service to 4th Dimension. In fact, NYU is so pleased with the database that it has teamed up with Acumen to resell the application to other universities. Notes Steinfeld,"There really is nothing on the market like 4D. When I've demonstrated the database to other potential users, they've been blown away with its power and flexibility."
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