What happens after college matters – to graduates and their families. As a result of a college education, graduates should be prepared to begin their careers or enter more advanced education for specialized fields. Some companies are providing just what graduates need in order to find employment, and one of those is AfterCollege, a San Francisco-based company, started by a Stanford graduate, Roberto Angulo. I am honored to serve as an advisor to the company.

AfterCollege is committed to matching graduates and interns to potential employment opportunities and meeting companies’ needs to find knowledgeable and skilled employees for their job openings. Because AfterCollege is committed to matching the right graduate to the right job, it is very focused on the analytics associated with matching student to job opportunities. That means that AfterCollege addresses one of the critical outcomes of an undergraduate education – the right employment opportunity.

Besides its increasingly sophisticated analytics, AfterCollege works closely with a student’s faculty member. We know from students’ self-reports that a faculty member is the second most influential person in their career-related decisions, after their parents, of course. What may surprise many is that the same self-reported data place the university’s career center much lower in its relative influence on them. It is the self-report data that have confirmed AfterCollege’s commitment to work closely with faculty members. Metrics collected by AfterCollege show that faculty members read its emailed messages about jobs. That makes these influential people even more effective in supporting a student’s career decision-making.

AfterCollege is working hard to target jobs that it sends to a student who signed up for that service, and comments from users indicate that AfterCollege’s service is being well-received by those students. The company has made a practice of improving its analytics such that the right job is targeted to the right student. And the analytics confirm the successful targeting of jobs to students with students’ own positive responses. One student recently said, “I like the analytic-driven approach that AfterCollege seems to use.” Another user of AfterCollege pointed to its access to employment opportunities by saying, “So far, this is the site that allows me to apply to jobs I haven’t found at all on other sites.”

We depend heavily on colleges to provide the learning experience that prepares students for career success. Thankfully, there are companies like AfterCollege that have made a point of understanding how students make career decisions and what employers need from students. Luckily AfterCollege’s analytics and its faculty-driven focus are making it easier on both.