"Thousands of new opportunities posted—simplifying how companies engage with campuses and recruit emerging talent"

1. Why This Matters

Strong ties between industry and academia are critical for producing job-ready graduates and innovation. Before our solution, companies often struggled to navigate multiple campus systems, resulting in missed connections, delayed postings, and limited talent pipelines. By creating a centralized ‘Mitra’ portal, we streamlined this process, ensuring that businesses can easily post opportunities while universities and students access a wide array of internships, training, or job openings.

2. Context & Challenge

The Industry-Academia Gap

Prior to our solution, industry partners found it time-consuming and confusing to engage with different universities:

1. Scattered Portals: Each campus or faculty often managed its own job board or internship listings, forcing companies to replicate postings in multiple locations.
2. Fragmented Communication: No unified messaging system led to email overload, missed deadlines, or partial applicant tracking.
3. Verification Bottlenecks: Companies needed to undergo various approval or vetting processes, with little transparency on status or next steps.

Pain Points in Numbers

• Over 70% of surveyed companies wanted a single platform to post internships and jobs across multiple universities.
• High Administrative Overhead: HR teams devoted significant time to verifying each campus’s requirements or chasing missing documents.
• Low Application Conversions: Disconnected systems sometimes saw drop-off rates of 40% or more, as students gave up on cumbersome applications.

“We were repeating the same steps and re-entering the same info for each campus’s site. It was hard to know which postings were active, or if applicants were even seeing them.”

— Tania Suryani, HR Manager, Tech Startup

3. Approach & Design Solution

Our cross-functional team set out to centralize and simplify how industry partners engage with universities. The resulting platform—often referred to as the “Mitra Portal”—unified job postings, application management, and messaging into one cohesive system.

3.1 Research & Stakeholder Alignment

• Interviews with Industry Partners: Researchers (Alleya, Annas, Priyanka, Metaniawati) conducted in-depth sessions with HR professionals and corporate liaisons to map out common pain points.
• Campus Collaboration: We also engaged universities to understand their validation processes for new industry partners, ensuring compliance with academic standards.

3.2 Co-Creation Workshops

• Joint Sessions: Industry reps, campus career services, and our design team discussed how to streamline partner onboarding, job posting, and candidate selection.
• Key Feature Wish List: Central posting, real-time dashboards, unified communications, and automated verification were repeatedly highlighted.

3.3 Wireframing & Prototyping

• Low-Fidelity Sketches: Designers (Gupita, Elvaretta, Faris, Rizqie) mocked up a single-page experience for posting roles, managing applicants, and tracking approval statuses.
• High-Fidelity Prototypes: Showcased intuitive filters (e.g., skill sets, location preferences), integrated messaging, and a branded “Partner Profile” page for companies to showcase their culture.

3.4 Before vs. After Visualization

• Before: Multiple sites, repeated data entry, no unified application tracking, scattered communication channels.
• After: A single login for all postings, an intuitive applicant tracking system (ATS), clear status updates for partner verification and posted positions.

3.5 Pilot Testing & Feedback

• Beta Launches: Select industry partners posted internships and part-time roles, while universities tested partner verification flows and real-time dashboard analytics.
• Ongoing Refinements: Adjusted the user interface to highlight urgent postings, added a direct chat function for quick student-partner interactions, and introduced optional custom questions for each listing.

4. Results & Impact Metrics

Primary Metric: Thousands of Opportunities Posted

Within months of launch, hundreds of partners uploaded thousands of internships and job openings—many more than the fragmented approach had ever accumulated. This jump underscores the ease and scalability of the new portal.

+814 Verified Partners, 50% Increase in Application Completion, and 60% Improved Response Rates.

Secondary Metrics

1. +814 Verified Partners in Initial Rollout
   • Why It Matters: Clear, automated onboarding cut down on manual checks, ensuring only legitimate, high-quality opportunities appeared on the platform.
2. 50% Increase in Application Completion
   • Why It Matters: With fewer steps and a single sign-on approach, students successfully finished their applications, boosting the potential talent pool for employers.
3. Enhanced Communication
   • Why It Matters: Real-time messaging and notifications improved response rates by over 60%, reducing the waiting game for both companies and student applicants.

5. Key Learnings & Next Steps

5.1 What We Learned

1. Unified Design is Key: Industry partners crave simplicity; bridging multiple universities under one seamless interface dramatically boosts adoption.
2. Transparent Verification: Automated, step-by-step guidelines for partner authentication build trust and minimize admin overhead for campuses.
3. Continuous Engagement: Features like direct messaging, notifications, and analytics dashboards ensure ongoing usage rather than a one-and-done posting experience.

5.2 Future Plans

• Advanced Matching: Incorporate AI-driven algorithms that recommend postings to students based on skills, location, and career goals.
• Company Branding: Offer expanded customization for partner pages to better showcase corporate culture, projects, and success stories.
• Cross-Border Opportunities: Explore alliances with global industry partners, enabling students to access remote internships and multinational job openings.

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