What’s missing from your website’s employer partnership page?

Industry partnerships connect schools and their surrounding communities and can bring in important institutional revenue through donations, sponsored research, and training programs. But for many schools, your employer partnership webpage isn’t attracting partnerships, nor is it appealing to students who often see industry partnerships as a signal of employer validation. My colleagues and I audited websites from 50 randomly selected research institutions and found that on average, universities utilize only 5.5 of 14 critical website features.

Here are three things you can do to stand out from your peers and ensure you’re attracting the right employers, and in return, capable applicants who value those partnerships.

1. Promote metric-centric information and resources regarding current employer partnerships

Our research shows that fundamental metrics like monetary and outcomes-focused indicators are most important to institutions. The same notion can be applied to employers, as company leaders desire to see metric-focused outcomes regarding partnerships.

Our research website audit notes enterprise metrics (e.g., funding, awards, centers) as necessary webpage elements. Only 14% of audited institutions effectively communicated their broader research impact in terms of economic engagement. Ensuring that the webpage communicates employer partnerships’ broader impact is important, too.

The employer partnership page should clearly advertise metrics and quantitative information that simultaneously convey the partnership benefits for employers.

Explore the top skills requested by employers across the U.S., U.K., and Canada

2. Include qualitative information on current partnerships and their impact on students, the community, and the company. 

Consider adding student, faculty, and employer testimonials that speak to the value of the partnership. A key detail that profiled webpages typically left out was highlighting the significance of these unique offerings. This can be done through compelling testimonials in plain language.

Highlighting testimonials from students not only attracts like-minded applicants but proves partnership value to the employer as they see it as a success story within a business.

If the partnership page is geared towards a specific program (e.g., employer partners for an MBA), make sure that the type of research, skills, and course offerings of the program are clearly advertised for the employer so that they can see where their mission and work fits in. It helps potential partnerships to see examples of the ways in which partners can engage with the student body and institution as a whole.

3. Ensure that the employer partnership webpage is aesthetically pleasing and accessible via one click on the main menu.

Our research proves that showcasing eye-catching metrics and one-liners is imperative to presenting a viable and successful webpage. General web user data finds that webpages have approximately 20 seconds to successfully catch a visitor’s attention. Webpages should clearly advertise an “Employer Partnerships” tab on the school or program homepage that links visitors straight to the necessary information they seek. In addition to a broad employer partnerships tab, incorporate a drop-down menu from the employer partnerships tab that is labeled “For Employers” and/or “For Students” to specialize the information and better organize resources. Specialized and targeted recruitment of employers will expand the potential partnership pool.

As employers continue to show demand for unique partnerships with higher education institutions, it is important to ensure your employer partnership webpage is a desirable place full of attention-grabbing information and resources to attract employers.

While these highlighted tips are integral to develop a stellar partnership page targeted at an employers, they can also help you attract capable, career-focused, students. Students appreciate quantifiable data on topics such as employment after graduation, internships and awards presented to students, and how the community is impacted by said partnerships. They will also gravitate towards organized jump links like “For Students” and look to their peers and alumni testimonials to speak to the real experiences students have had thanks to the partnerships.

There is no understating how valuable a strong employer partnership can be, both for your program and for students. I hope that through an evaluation of your webpage and through implementation of these tips, you will feel more confident in your ability to secure meaningful employer partnerships.