Educators can send a match request to match their experience with a project, and if accepted, the project becomes available to learners within the experience to work on. Educators may also receive match requests from projects wishing to match with their experience.
Sending match requests
After you have found a suitable project you wish to match within the open or portal marketplace, you can send a match request by:
Click the "Request match" button on the project you wish to match with.
You can choose to create a new experience or select an existing one to match with this project.
Assuming you already have an experience, select your experience from the dropdown.
You will see a side by side comparison of the project and your experience. The red highlights indicate the key differences that you should review before sending the request. E.g. If the locations are highlighted, this might not be a good match since both parties are looking for matches located in different areas.
Click "Save & continue"
You can now propose additional details needed for this specific match.
You can suggest any changes to the project scope if you believe this would help make the project a better match for your experience. If the experience requires start and end dates specific to each project, you can also suggest dates as well as any milestones for the project at this time. The employer may choose to accept or decline these changes when they receive the request.
Click "Save & continue"
Introduce yourself to the employer and submit your request.
A match is not finalized until both parties have accepted the request including you the requester.
Viewing a match request
After having sent or received a match request, an educator can either:
Click the inbox icon in the navigation bar to view all requests
or
Navigate to their experience
Click on the "Requests" tab to view requests specific to that experience
Managing match requests
Sending messages
The best thing you can do when sending or receiving match requests is to communicate immediately with the employer. Riipen will create a conversation between you and the project administrators to facilitate this. You can view and send messages in this conversation by either:
Click the messages icon in the navigation bar
Click the conversation associated with the match request
or
Navigate to the match request as seen in viewing a match request
Click "Send message" in the sidebar will will redirect you to your match request conversation.
Proposing changes to a project
At any point after a match request has been sent or received, you may propose updated changes to the project details by:
Navigate to the match request as seen in viewing a match request
Click on the "Propose changes" button above the project scope details.
You will be directed to the project revision page where you can make changes. Once you've made changes, click the "Propose changes" button at the bottom of the page.
After proposing the changes, you will be directed back to the match request page. You can view your changes by clicking "Show changes" button next to the project scope.
The content you added to the project will be highlighted in green.
The content you removed will be highlighted in red.
Proposing changes to the project will reset any acceptance of the match request. If you or the employer had previously accepted, both parties will need to re-accept the changes.
Extending the expiry
Match requests expire within 21 days by default if they have not been responded to. Some portals however will have set a custom match request expiry length, which will be reflected in the expiry date.
You should always strive to accept or decline the request as soon as possible to let the employer know your decision so they can pursue alternatives if you aren't moving forward.
If however you are still in discussion with the other party as the expiration approaches and do not want to accept or decline immediately, you can extend the expiry of the match request by:
Navigate to the match request as seen in viewing a match request
Click on the 'Edit' link next to the expiry date.
Enter the number of days you want to extend the expiry date and click "Submit".
Accepting a match request
Whether you sent or received a match request, you must accept it in order for the match to be confirmed. Only when both parties have accepted the match request will the match be formed.
Navigate to the match request as seen in viewing a match request
Click the "Accept request" button.
Undoing a match request acceptance
If you have accepted a match request by mistake, or wish to no longer match with a specific project, you can undo a match request by:
Navigate to the match request as seen in viewing a match request
Click the "Undo" button.
You may only undo a match request acceptance if the employer has not accepted.
Cancelling an accepted match request
If you both parties have accepted a match request by mistake, or wish to no longer match together, the match request can be cancelled by:
Navigate to the match request as seen in viewing a match request
Click the cancel icon button.
You may only cancel an accepted match request if the associate project has not been started by a team of learners.
Cancelling a sent match request
If you have sent a match request out of error, or no longer need to match with the project, you can cancel a sent match request by:
Navigate to the match request as seen in viewing a match request
Click the "Cancel request" button.
Declining a match request
Employers are often willing to modify their project to meet your needs. Make sure you connect with them via your match request conversation before declining a request outright.
You can also propose changes to their project as part of the match request directly (see above)
If the project in the match request is not a good fit for your experience, and you and the employer have communicated and are unable to come to terms on what a good match may look like:
Navigate to the match request as seen in viewing a match request
Click the "Decline request" button.
Make sure you provide a reason for declining so the employer knows why.
Closing an experience
An experience can be marked as available or unavailable to further match requests, otherwise known as being open or close. By default upon publishing any experience it will be marked as open and thus employers will have the ability to submit match requests to the experience and you will be able to submit match requests to projects.
If you have matched with all the projects you wish to match with, you can manually close your experience by:
Navigate to your experience
Click the "Settings" tab
Click the "Marketplace" tab under the "Matchmaking" group
Under "Is this experience available for new match requests", select "No, don't allow projects to submit new match requests to the experience"
Click "Submit" to save
You can also have your experience automatically close on a specified date by setting your close date:
Navigate to your experience
Click the "Settings" tab
Click the "Marketplace" tab under the "Matchmaking" group
Enter the "Close date" you prefer
Click "Submit" to save