3 ms·

I'm confused as to why a product like this is being sold (directly or indirectly) to the students. Do you know what the commissions for recruiting undergrads in

by cbhl 13y ago

I'm confused as to why a product like this is being sold (directly or indirectly) to the students. Do you know what the commissions for recruiting undergrads in CS/ECE/Software jobs is? With the right student body, the commissions alone could subsidize the software for students in every other discipline. Consider looking at Piazza's model. If you already said you'd license it to them... I'd get a lawyer. I'd also think about what the universities' software procurement policies are, and what sorts of things they might ask of you later. (Do they want a white-label product that they can rebrand? Do they have custom reporting needs for e.g. student aid programs? How much support and training will you need to provide, and how many people will you need to hire to pay for that? Do you want them to renew the license every two or three years and pay an annual fee, or are you going to sell them software one-off and let them tinker with the source themselves? Who retains copyright?)

calciphus 13y ago
It is a part of their education, not an exit-hire/recruitment tool. Many degrees and professional licenses require a certain number of hours of supervised work. The tool is to help students match to sites that can offer that work as efficiently as possible (as many as possible happy matches).
- cbhl 13y ago
  Can you email me? m9chang <A> uwaterloo dot ca I'm a student in an undergraduate Engineering degree program. My institution (the University of Waterloo) procured such software last year, but hasn't started implementing it yet. (A previous project to build a replacement to the existing software, "JobMine", failed; rumour is that it was due to patent issues.) I'd like to talk to you more in-depth, and make sure you're really sure about the whole "selling it to the school" thing. (From a business/procurement perspective, having the right reports, performance, and checklist functionality is the most important thing. Spending resources on decent UX in other parts of the product may result in you being outbid on RFPs and going out of business. Optimizing for the "best" match (it's "just" the stable marriage problem) might be too slow for the institution's internal processes. The disconnect between the procurer's needs and the needs of the people using the software is the reason why everyone sells LMS software that looks the same, feels the same, and is universally hated by students and faculty alike.)

by cbhl 13y ago

calciphus 13y ago

It is a part of their education, not an exit-hire/recruitment tool. Many degrees and professional licenses require a certain number of hours of supervised work. The tool is to help students match to sites that can offer that work as efficiently as possible (as many as possible happy matches).

cbhl 13y ago
Can you email me? m9chang <A> uwaterloo dot ca I'm a student in an undergraduate Engineering degree program. My institution (the University of Waterloo) procured such software last year, but hasn't started implementing it yet. (A previous project to build a replacement to the existing software, "JobMine", failed; rumour is that it was due to patent issues.) I'd like to talk to you more in-depth, and make sure you're really sure about the whole "selling it to the school" thing. (From a business/procurement perspective, having the right reports, performance, and checklist functionality is the most important thing. Spending resources on decent UX in other parts of the product may result in you being outbid on RFPs and going out of business. Optimizing for the "best" match (it's "just" the stable marriage problem) might be too slow for the institution's internal processes. The disconnect between the procurer's needs and the needs of the people using the software is the reason why everyone sells LMS software that looks the same, feels the same, and is universally hated by students and faculty alike.)