Firsthand

Excellent Client Experience

Pluspunten:

The software works really well and has helped thousands of students and alumni at our university connect to have meaningful conversations. What most impresses me about Firsthand is the dedication the entire company has to help their clients solve solutions. This spring Firsthand helped my university deliver a virtual career fair for the first time. This event would have been otherwise canceled, and hundreds of teaching credential students would have missed out on the opportunity to connect with potential employers. [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] and his team worked tirelessly to support us. They were innovative, problem solvers, that were not afraid to dive into a new project with us. I would full-heartedly recommend Firsthand to any university.

Minpunten:

I have no cons to report. My experience was positive all around.

A Platform That Has Extended the Value of our Organization

Opmerkingen: Overall, as mentioned previously, the platform has been invaluable. We're very happy with what it is doing for us and our organization and the potential it creates for connecting members with like-minded professional aspirations or skill sets.

Pluspunten:

With Firsthand, our organization was able to launch what we call the Delta Chi Mentorship Network. This created an opportunity for us to connect our members throughout North America with one another to offer coaching or mentoring and to seek professional guidance and advise. It has been invaluable in expanding the experience associated with membership in our organization. Thus far, the user-friendly interface has been one of the biggest selling points.

Minpunten:

As we continue to seek ways in which we can contour the platform to our needs, we've seen limitations in the way we, without the assistance of tech support, are able to customize the platform. For some of the pages, we've had asks about enhanced visual customization, from using images as title banners, etc. Currently, we cannot do that.

A platform with great potential

Pluspunten:

-Very easy account registration process. -Intuitive user interface - mimicking a 'tinder' approach to mentoring. - Takes out a lot of the fear of being rejected when it comes to networking. Makes it very easy and 'risk free'. - Flexibility for students to select what sort of outcome or conversation they want with their mentor. - Convenient scheduling tool to allow students to find a time to speak with a mentor without having to play - diary 'ping pong' between them and advisor. - Dial-in option easy to speak with advisor and retains students privacy of personal number. - Access to global network of advisors.

Minpunten:

- Very U.S centric, so less relevant for those seeking mentorship within a U.K context. - Could benefit from a wider range of mentors across different roles / industries / sectors. - Webinar content appears to be more targeted at more experienced hires - could benefit from more content focused on early careers.

An excellent way to engage your community

Opmerkingen: It has been great, for us it's a really cost-effective way to engage with our most engaged alumni, to promote engagement with the school since the time our cohorts are studying and make sure that employability and visibility of our graduates also keeps very high.

Pluspunten:

Firsthand is easily one of our best sources to source people that are very committed to our brand and values. It also provides a better student experience to RSMers that can find fascinating people and get to know about their journey after university and how to get there.

Minpunten:

The internal e-mail tool is fantastic to engage people however, it is VERY limited in the customization and branding that you can use. This tool only has very basic text options to engage your community which is a shame because the response rate is great.

Firsthand Platform

Opmerkingen: Firsthand has helped us streamline our mentoring program, but it could still use some improvements. The customer support should be a little better and faster. Also, I feel like the users should have an option as to whether to contact the admin or the user support directly through the platform.

Pluspunten:

The combination of features is helpful for different purposes other than mentoring, but it especially drives those one-on-one mentoring connections.

Minpunten:

The current registration process is a little long and tiresome. Additionally, it needs to be more customizable, which I know the developers are working on, but the original product we started using over a year ago was very rigid.