NACE-aligned outcomes loop. Free for students. Triage that respects your team size.

The NACE Standards and Protocols for the Collection and Dissemination of Graduating Student Initial Career Outcomes Information define the first-destination data points (employment, continuing education, military, service, seeking, not seeking) and the methodology for reporting outcomes within six months of graduation. JobCannon does not file NACE reports for you; we contribute the assessment-baseline-to-outcome data that lets your career services team trace which student profiles converted to which destinations. Over four cohorts the platform identifies which assessment patterns predicted strong first-destination outcomes at your institution, which improves career-coaching prioritisation and major-advising substance.

Especially well. Liberal-arts students often arrive at career services in junior year with no strong career conviction and a major (English, Philosophy, History, Sociology) without an obvious vocational ladder. The platform's strength is showing which of the 2,536 careers their personality, interests, and skills actually match — Career Match output for an English major might surface technical writing, content strategy, learning experience design, journalism, and law-adjacent paths the student had not considered. The conversation moves from "what can I do with English" to "given who you are, here are eight realistic paths and here is the prerequisite work for each".

Complementary. Handshake and Symplicity are CRM-and-job-posting platforms — they manage employer relationships, on-campus recruiting, application pipelines. JobCannon is the assessment-and-discovery layer that surfaces which jobs to consider; the student then applies to those roles via Handshake or Symplicity. Many universities run both; the integration is at the workflow level (career services advisor mentions a Career Match path, student searches that path on Handshake) not at the API level. We do not replace the application-management surface.

Yes, with caveats. PhD students and master's students take the same assessments; Career Match outputs include academic-track, industry-track, and policy-track roles relevant to their field. For STEM PhDs considering academia-versus-industry, the Big Five and EQ data is particularly useful. For humanities and social science PhDs facing the academic job market, Career Match surfaces a wider set of realistic non-academic paths — research consulting, policy analysis, foundation programme work, museum and archive roles — without the platform pretending the academic market is healthy. We do not give academic job-market advice; we give pathway data.

Year one: incoming first-year students take baseline assessments during orientation week. Year two-three: students update Career Match each semester or as career conviction shifts. Year four: graduating-senior cohort completes a final assessment alongside first-destination intent capture. Six months post-graduation: NACE first-destination data feeds back to the platform via career services upload. The platform identifies which assessment patterns predicted which first destinations at your specific institution. Over four cohorts the model converges on your institution's specific patterns and informs first-year orientation prioritisation, advising approaches, and which student profiles need earlier outreach.

The triage value is even higher. A two-person team serving 1,800 students cannot meaningfully meet every student. The platform produces a triaged list of which juniors have weak career conviction and need an outreach email this month, which seniors have completed Career Match but never had a 1:1, and which students are self-serving and just need to know career services exists. Two career counsellors can run a meaningful programme for 1,800 students if the platform handles the triage; without triage, they end up serving 200 students well and 1,600 students invisibly.