Local Organizations Can Post Opportunities for Students on 'SchooLinks'

This fall, the Issaquah School District is launching a new career-readiness platform called "SchooLinks!" This platform will be used by all students across Washington State in grades 7-12 to complete their High School & Beyond Plan, a state graduation requirement. You can read more about the ISD's use of SchooLinks, plus the High School and Beyond Plan, on our website.

Our students will now use SchooLinks to explore local job, internship, volunteer, apprenticeship, job shadow, and other career exploration opportunities. Local organizations are encouraged to post opportunities on this platform (instructions below). In the past, local organizations completed a Microsoft Form with information about an opportunity, and the information would show up in an Excel spreadsheet. Our students could view these opportunities in the spreadsheet, which was posted on their school College & Career Center website. This will go away on September 30, and all opportunities must be posted to SchooLinks moving forward. 

As part of the High School and Beyond Plan, students are required to complete tasks on SchooLinks about once per month. Students will be encouraged to search SchooLinks for opportunities as frequently as they'd like! For example, if a student mentions wanting to start volunteering, they'll be guided to SchooLinks to search for volunteering positions that interest them. Our students start logging into SchooLinks in early to mid-September, and we'd love to have some opportunities populated on the Opportunity Board! So, if you have an opportunity to share, we suggest posting it as soon as you can.

To post an opportunity to SchooLinks, you must create an account, which will only take a few minutes. Follow these steps to get started:

• Create a SchooLinks 'Industry Professional' account, which you can do online. Instructions to create an account can be found on their website. Make sure you read the sign-up instructions for Industry Professionals.

• To post an opportunity to the Opportunity Board, you'll follow some steps, which you can review online (create an account in order to access this information). Be sure to include as much information as possible!

  • Note that in step 3, you have the option to:

    • 1) Post the opportunity to all school districts on SchooLinks (this is a national platform and is required for all WA districts to use). Opportunities are automatically sorted for students by 'distance from me,' so this option is fine if you want to reach more students than just those in the Issaquah School District. 

    • 2) Post just to your preferred partner district(s). If you want to become a 'preferred partner' in the Issaquah School District so you can post opportunities exclusively to our students, you can request to connect with our district in your member portal. You can also do this for other local districts. To do so, from the dashboard on the left side of your screen, select the 'Connect' tab then 'District Connections'. From there, find the district(s) you want to connect with and click 'Connect.' Your request will then go to the district(s) for approval. See screenshot.

• Be sure to update your profile with as much detail as you prefer!

Jobs, internships, apprenticeships, volunteering positions, and job shadows are critical to our students' career journeys, from discovery to exploration to preparation. Thank you for supporting student career development!