Love Lost, and What It Means to Move On (from JobMine to WaterlooWorks, That Is)

Hey engineering students!

I hope job applications have been going well for the most part, and hope the transition from JobMine to WaterlooWorks hasn’t been too bad.

Now, you’re probably questioning the title I used, so let me explain. When I’m talking about love lost – I’m not talking about the loss of a relationship with another human being. What I’m referring to is the love lost between the undergraduate student body, and the software they use to find employment. Yes, it’s official, we (the undergraduate student body) have ‘broken-up’ with JobMine, and our relationship with WaterlooWorks has just begun.

I’ll say it: I miss JobMine. I miss its functional (albeit outdated looking) UI. I miss its intuitive (relative to WaterlooWorks) design, and its simple navigation. I miss actually being able to delete files, and having applications returned to me once I’ve been rejected. However, most of all – I miss the JobMine glitch (#RIPJobMineGlitch2016).

While it certainly wasn’t a perfect relationship with long times spent apart due to JobMine’s sleep schedule (the system managed to get more sleep than me in 2B) – at least it was a consistent experience (more or less). From my understanding based on the students I’ve spoken with, and the concerns I’ve had emailed to me since the start of term – I am not the only one who feels this way about the new system versus the old.

Admittedly, being in a transitional period, we would expect some growing pains. So far, we’ve been seeing a lot of issues come up with WaterlooWorks – more than I expected. Issues ranging from simple UI gripes like having to scroll horizontally to see all job content (even on big displays), unintuitive searching (which often returns jobs outside of the scope of your program), unexpected downtime maintenance, and even 500 internal server errors: WHERE IT SPITS BACK THE ENTIRE STACK TRACE TO THE END USER (seriously, why??). Yeah, so while JobMine had its fair share of problems and ineptitudes – WaterlooWorks has its own set of issues as well.

On a more serious note: I want to collect as much student feedback as possible from the undergraduate student body, to have data backing proposed changes to the system. This includes what the new system is doing well, what it is lacking, and what features we miss from JobMine (I doubt they’ll bring back the glitch though – sorry). I will be putting together a survey of WaterlooWorks which I hope to distribute to all undergraduate engineering student through your class Academic and EngSoc representatives. Stay tuned.

If there are any issues you’ve witnessed with regards to the system, please report them to CECA via the feedback page on WaterlooWorks, or shoot me an email with the relevant information, and I will bring it to their attention.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns about WaterlooWorks, the co-op process, school, or just want to chat (I was serious about The Smashing Pumpkins in my last update) – please don’t hesitate to contact me at vpacademic.b@engsoc.uwaterloo.ca, or find me in the orifice at CPH 1327.

Cheers everyone! Best of luck with the job application process!