Getting Started with Candid Career+

 📹 Video Walkthrough

Prefer to watch instead of read? The video above covers everything in this article from start to finish. 

 

Welcome to Candid Career+! This guide will walk you through everything you need to know to get up and running with your platform. By the end, you'll understand how to navigate the Admin Dashboard, publish and manage content, customize your platform, and set up key features like menus, communities, and user accounts.

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Table of Contents

1. Your Platform's Front End
2. Logging In and the Admin Dashboard
3. Support Resources
4. Navigating the Admin Dashboard
5. Publish: Adding Videos and Resources
6. The Tagging System
7. Engage: Emails and Subscribers
8. Analyze: Platform Data
9. Customize: Branding and Banners
10. Menus
11. Manage: Communities and Content Categories
12. Widgets
13. Users and Permissions

1. Your Platform's Front End

When students (and you!) land on your Candid Career+ homepage, they'll see:

• A Primary Navigation menu at the top for browsing content
• A Search bar to find any video on the platform
• A Login / Sign Up option so students and staff can create accounts
• Your platform's branding — which can be customized with your institution's logo, colors, and fonts

Want to customize your branding? You can add your institutional logo, update fonts and colors, and make the platform feel like your own. Submit a support ticket! 

2. Logging In and the Admin Dashboard

As a platform admin, use the Login button on your homepage to access your account. If it's your first time, click Sign Up to create your account.

 

Once logged in, you'll be taken to the Admin Dashboard, your central hub for managing everything in your platform.

 

3. Support Resources

Before diving in, it's worth knowing where to get help. Right in the middle of your Admin Dashboard, you'll find two important resources:

Knowledge Base

Click Knowledge Base to search for how-to articles and videos on any platform topic. You can also chat with uConnect Assist for customized guidance — and if it can't answer your question, it will connect you with the support team. 

Submitting a Support Ticket

Need help from the team? You can submit a ticket two ways:

1. From the Knowledge Base — click Submit a Ticket in the top right corner
2. From the Admin Dashboard — click the Submit a Ticket form link

When submitting, choose the most relevant topic from the dropdown (e.g., select Platform Branding for logo/color update requests). Not sure? Just select Other.

Once submitted, log into the support portal to track your ticket's status.

Career Everywhere Community

This is a free resource available to all uConnect customers!

Use it to:

• Connect with other Candid Career+ users
• Attend live weekly trainings and office hours
• Access past recordings and additional resources
  
  

4. Navigating the Admin Dashboard

The left-hand sidebar of your Admin Dashboard contains all the main sections you'll use. Here's a quick overview:

 

Each section is covered in detail below.

5. Publish: Adding Videos and Creating Pages

The Publish section is where you add content to your platform.

Videos

Click Publish > Videos to add video content. You have two options:

1. Upload your own video if your team has created original content
2. Import from the External Content Library — a curated library of nearly 2,000 videos you can browse by keyword or by content partner

To import a video from the library:

1. Search by keyword (e.g., "resume")
2. Browse results and click Review to preview the video from its original source
3. Click Import Content — the video will be automatically formatted for you
4. Tag the video (see Section 6 below)
5. Scroll to the bottom and click Publish
6. Click View Post to verify it appears correctly on the front end

Landing Pages

You can also create custom landing pages for unique purposes — like a team page, an outcomes page, or a resource hub. Click Publish > Add a Page to get started and use the Block Editor to build it out.

6. The Tagging System

Tagging is one of the most important concepts to understand. Tags tell your platform where to display content and who it's for. Proper tagging ensures students can find what they need.

Every time you publish a video or resource, you'll tag it across three categories:

Tag Category 1: Stakeholder (Audience)

Who is this content for?

Select the user type(s) this content is intended for — for example, Students, Alumni, or Employers.

Tag Category 2: Content Type

What type of content is this?

Select the category that best describes the content — for example, Career and Professional Development Advice.

Tag Category 3: Topic/Location

Where should this content appear on the platform?

Select the page(s) where this content should show up — for example, Write Your Cover Letter and Resume or All Industries.

Editing and Adding Tags

You can edit existing tags or add new tags at any time from your platform. If you notice a tag is missing or needs to be renamed, you don't have to submit a ticket — it's something you can manage directly.

7. Engage: Emails, Subscribers and Forms

The Engage section is for managing your platform's email and communication features. These are optional but powerful if you want to stay in touch with students.

Key capabilities include:

• Email builder — create a custom newsletter or one-off email campaign
• Automated emails — send curated content to students based on their profile interests
• Subscriber management — upload lists of students or staff you want to email
• SIS Integration — set up a student information system sync
• Custom forms — build forms from scratch, like a student spotlight form or employer interest form

8. Analyze: Platform Data

The Analyze section shows you how your platform is performing.

• Overview dashboard — track key engagement metrics across a custom date range
• Pages — see your top-performing content
• Activity Insights and Subscriber Analytics — optional deeper dives into engagement

 

9. Customize: Branding and Banners

The Customize section gives you control over the look and feel of your platform's front end. From here you can:

• Update the homepage banner — swap out the default Candid Career banner for your own image
• Add an announcement banner — surface timely information for visitors
• Add office information — including hours, social media links, and more
• Manage menus — see Section 10 for a full walkthrough

 

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10. Menus

Menus control the navigation that students see on your platform's front end. You can edit all of your menus! 

To make changes, go to Customize > Menus.

Key things to know:

• Make sure Primary Menu is selected in the dropdown before making any edits
• Each block represents a menu item — you can open items to view details, reorder them by dragging, or remove them
• To add a new menu item, you can link to:
• A custom external URL
• A page within your platform
• A Community 
• To make a menu item a dropdown item, drag it slightly to the right beneath a parent item — it will indent automatically

 

11. Manage: Communities and Content Categories

The Manage section is where you edit the pages and organizational structure of your platform.

Communities

Communities are the pages on your platform's front end. Go to Manage > Communities to find and edit them.

 

Stakeholder Communities (like Students, Alumni, Employers) are also the user types that can create accounts in your platform. You can:

• Rename stakeholders (e.g., rename "Students" to "Undergraduate Students" and add a new "Graduate Students" community)
• Add new stakeholder communities
• Hide stakeholders so they don't appear as sign-up options or front-end filters
• Note: Alumni, Employers, Faculty & Staff, and Students are hard-coded and cannot be deleted

Front-facing community pages (like "Write Your Cover Letter and Resume") can be edited by searching for them in the search bar. Within each community, you can:

• Change the page name
• Edit the description text
• Update the header image or image layout
• Change the URL (use caution — changing the URL will unlink the page on the front end and treat it as a new page)
• Adjust visibility settings
• Use the WordPress Block Editor to add more dynamic content like accordions, buttons, or embedded content (optional)

Content Categories

Content categories are the labels applied to your videos and resources. Think of them as the "what type is this?" layer that complements communities (the "where does it appear?" layer).

• Resource Categories — labels for the types of resources in your platform
• Video Categories — labels for the types of videos in your platform

You can add, edit, or hide categories at any time. Keep in mind: students can see these categories as filters in the video library unless you hide them.

 

12. Widgets

Widgets are pre-built content sections that appear on your community pages — like a "Most Recent Videos" feed or a "Videos by Career Title" section.

To identify widgets on your platform:

1. Log into your platform
2. In the black toolbar at the very top of the screen, check the box for Show Widget IDs
3. Sections on your pages will now display their widget labels (e.g., "UC Video Pop-Up Widget #2")

 

Important things to know about widgets: 

• You cannot move or delete widgets yourself — submit a support ticket if you need a widget repositioned or removed
• The hero navigation buttons at the top of a community page act as anchor links to widgets below — they help users jump to relevant content sections on longer pages
• Those buttons don't have to link to widgets — you can also point them to any external URL (like an admissions page) 

Read this important guide on all things widgets!

13. Users and Permissions

Go to Manage > Users to manage who has access to your platform and at what level.

User Roles

Learn more about the details of permission levels in this article! 

Managing Users

To edit, remove, or reset a user's password:

1. Search for the user in the search bar
2. Hover over their account to see quick options
3. Or click into their profile for full editing options

Building a Staff/Team Page

Want to showcase your career center team on the platform? Here's how:

1. Make sure all team members are added as users first
2. Go to Publish > Add a New Page, name it (e.g., "Meet the Team")
3. In the right-side settings, select the Staff Page Template
4. Click Publish, then refresh the page — the template will load
5. Search for and add your team members, drag to reorder, and click Save
6. Copy the page URL and add it to your menu so students can find it

Learn more with these articles:

1. Staff Page Template and other Page Templates
2. Add and remove users from Staff Page
3. Add a page to a menu 

 

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What's Next?

Great work getting familiar with your Candid Career+ platform! Here are some recommended next steps:

• ✅ Complete the Block Editor Training in the uConnect Academy (Course C — ~30 min)
• ✅ Explore the Engage section via the Academy or Career Everywhere community recordings
• ✅ Submit a branding request if you'd like your logo and colors added
• ✅ Join the Career Everywhere community for free peer support, live trainings, and office hours
• ✅ Submit a support ticket anytime you need help — we're here for you!

 

Still have questions? Visit our Knowledge Base, chat with uConnect Assist, or submit a support ticket.