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consulting

Business school AI strategy

An AI strategy for a business school: three moves in order, and a working prototype of the first.

at a glance

What it is
An AI strategy for a business school's careers team: three moves in a deliberate order, and a working prototype of the first.
My role
Proposed the strategy after a discovery call with the team, and built the prototype.
What I built
A short deck, with a list of what to skip, and a prototype: an advisor cockpit, employer and alumni pages, and a short list of fitting roles for each student.
Result
A working demonstration on invented data, so the first move needs nobody's permission to begin.

what i made

context

Careers advisors each cover a few industries and a group of students, and much of what they know sits in their head, their inbox and a spreadsheet. Good roles can be buried in one long weekly email sent to everyone.

thinking

  1. Nothing that needs institutional sign-off to begin.

    whyThat ruled out replacing the school's platform or needing data on day one, and pointed to a memory aid for the people already doing the work.

  2. Surface, organise and remind; never coach or contact.

    whyThe tool never contacts a student or an employer. The advisor does.

  3. Show the reason behind every flag.

    whyAn advisor who cannot see the reasoning will not trust it.

what i learnt

  • Group students by what they are doing (executing, stuck, undecided or disengaged), not by their CV.
  • The first move should need nobody's permission.

in detail

Three moves, each earning the next, and a prototype of them. Every record in it is invented, and a bar on every page says so.

The advisor's day: things worth doing, ranked by urgency, each with its reason.

Where to start today

One list each morning across students, employers and alumni, ranked by urgency, each item saying why it is there. Nothing on it contacts anyone.

An invented student's page: why they are flagged, their applications, and a suggested next step for the advisor.

One page per student

Goals, what was said last time, what to do next, and who has gone quiet, each flag with a plain reason.

Advisor hours by segment, spent so far against allocated by need.

The cohort, by behaviour

Students grouped by what they are doing (executing, stuck, undecided or disengaged), with where advisor time goes set against where need says it should.

An invented employer: open roles found publicly, the students who match each, and a suggested way back in.

Employer and alumni pages

Who the school knows at each company, when it last spoke to them and what to do next, with stale relationships flagged. Roles found publicly are matched to the students they fit, instead of one long email with everything.

Draft, never send

Anything written for an advisor is labelled as a draft, can be edited and copied, and has no send button.

Every person and company in these screens is invented, as the banner on each page says.

technical specs

  • No real student, alumnus or advisor appears anywhere in the prototype.
  • The demo clock is frozen so relative dates never go stale, and it runs offline with no external services.
  • Before real data it would need the institution's data agreement, its own single sign-on, role-based access with audit logs, and UK or EU hosting.
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