After publishing an experience, the next step is to find and match it with suitable projects so that your learners may complete them. Projects are created by employers which describe a real problem or an area of opportunity for their company which learners can work on via your experience.
Find projects perfect for your learners - locally or around the world
Easily communicate and negotiate project details
Automate & customize your matchmaking experience
General
Open marketplace
Riipen attracts companies from all over the world to post projects to its open marketplace so that educators can browse those projects and match them to their experiences at any time. Using the open marketplace is the best tool to get started finding the right projects for your experience, simply browse all the available projects, and submit a match request to any that you think will be a good fit.
Private marketplace
The portal your experience is in comes equipped with its own private version of Riipen's open project marketplace. This is where your portal administrators can bring in projects from their own private network of companies and those projects are made exclusively available to you and your experiences. You can browse these projects in the same way you browse the open marketplace and find the perfect project for your experience knowing that the companies and projects found here have already been screened and have existing healthy working relationships with your institution. This is a great way to ensure your learners get the very best projects from your known exclusive partners.
Double sided marketplace
While you are browsing the available projects in the either open or private marketplaces, employers will be able to browse both open and private marketplaces of the available experiences to them. Employers will be able to find your experience and match them to their existing projects in the same method you are browsing their projects.
Match requests & negotiation
Once you have found the right project, or an employer has found your experience and believes it is a great fit for their project, you will be able to use the match request tools and workflows to:
Propose a match between your experience and an employer's project
Have a private conversation with the employer where you can discuss all the above details, book meetings, and have video conference calls using the message center
Propose and negotiate changes to the project scope and details and easily see what has been proposed vs the original project description
Use double sided acceptance of the match request. This ensures that both you and the employer are completely satisfied, and can accept all the details before moving forward
Custom questions
To ensure you are getting the best possible projects submitted to be matched with your experience and to speed up the vetting process, you can use custom matchmaking questions. These are questions you set ahead of time on your experience which must be answered by employers as part of their match request submission process. You will be able to view their answers to the questions while you review their match request and project details. These are great for ensuring an employer or company meet certain criteria you have for either the project itself or their availability to mentor learners.
Examples of questions you may want to ask employers:
Are you available for a brief phone call to discuss the project scope and determine if it is suitable for this experience?
Have you worked with learners or interns before? If so, what was your experience?
Are there any specific resources or support that learners will need to complete the project successfully?
Are there any intellectual property considerations or restrictions for this project?
How often do you plan to communicate with learners throughout the project?
Will you be able to provide a dedicated contact person who is available for [weekly/bi-weekly] sessions to address students' questions and respond to periodic messages throughout the project?
You may apply restrictions to number, short text, and long text question types to ensure your question data is accurate and meets specific parameters. Learn more
Project proposals
Can't find an appropriate project for your experience in any of the available marketplaces? No problem. You can propose a project to any company on Riipen at any time and have it matched to your experience should they accept. You can do this by browsing your portal's company network to find companies you or your portal have previously engaged with, or you can search all companies across Riipen and find one that you think would be a perfect candidate to run the project you have in mind.
How to
Find projects in the open marketplace
To use the open marketplace to find projects:
Click on the "Find projects" button in the top navigation bar
Click "Open projects"
Your portal administrators can choose to disable the open marketplace and instead only permit usage of your portal's private marketplace. If this is the case you will be taken to your private marketplace as soon as you click "Find projects".
You are now in the open marketplace of projects and can browse and submit match requests. Use the provided filters and advanced filters to find the projects that meet your specific needs.
Don't hold out for the perfect project, companies are willing to modify their projects to meet your and your learner's needs. You will be able to propose alterations to the project during the match request process.
Find projects in the private marketplace
To use the private marketplace to find projects:
Click on the "Find projects" button in the top navigation bar
Click "Portal projects"
Your portal administrators can choose to disable the open marketplace and instead only permit usage of your portal's private marketplace. If this is the case, users will only have to click "Find projects".
You are now in your portal's private project marketplace and can browse and submit match requests.
Submit a match request
Propose a project to a company
To find a company and propose a project, follow these steps:
Click on "Companies" in your main navigation menu
Browse the companies and find the one you would like to propose a project to and click on it
Click the "Propose project" button
Follow the prompts in the step by step propose project process which include selecting the experience you would like to match the project to and drafting the project content
Click "Send request" on the final step
The company administrators will receive a match request between your selected experience and the proposed project. The match request will now follow the regular steps as any other match request.
Best practices
Most experiences on Riipen will receive one or more match requests from projects within 14 days of publishing, but you can often match with projects quicker by:
Ensuring the experience is written for employers to read rather than for learners or other educators.
Browsing the marketplace and sending match requests regularly.