How Career Services and Employers Can Partner to Get Students Career Ready (feat. Leonelle Thompson)

Eric Stetson, Director of Engagement and Enrollment at FourBlock and a retired Army officer, shares best practices for how career services teams can support student veterans.

In the episode, Eric highlights:

• The unique challenges student veterans commonly face as part of the career exploration process 
• What career leaders should know about best supporting veterans in career development
• How career teams can help veterans translate the wealth of skills they have from military service into the language of the civilian workforce
• Best practices for providing nuanced support and resources for veterans 
• Immediate strategies that can be implemented to increase support for veterans as part of career services
• And more

Eric served in the US Army for 24 years before retiring in 2015. Now he works for FourBlock, a nonprofit organization that prepares transitioning veterans and military spouses for careers in corporate America.

Resources from the episode:

• Eric’s LinkedIn profile
• Warrior-Scholar Project
• American Corporate Partners (ACP) for mentors 
• Student Veterans of America (SVA) for student peer-to-peer networking and support 
• Candorful for interview training for veterans 
• Military skills translator tool
• O*Net Military crosswalks
• My Next Move

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Chris Entringer, Career Services Coordinator and Enrollment Advisor at Northeast Iowa Community College, shares how he and his team work to support retention.

He emphasizes the importance of building relationships, collaborating with other departments, and being proactive in reaching out to at-risk students.

In this episode, Chris also shares:

• At a high level, how career services can support retention (and why their role is so critical)
• What career services (and retention) looks like in a community college
• What his team’s integrated model looks like and how it supports their efforts to improve retention at NICC
• Several specific strategies his career center uses to improve retention
• And more

“It’s so important to get those referrals and really be a part of all the processes that you do for retention. I think career services should have a piece in that puzzle,” Entringer said. 

Resources from the episode:

• Chris’ LinkedIn profile
• NICC career services email (checked by the team): careerservices@nicc.edu
• NICC Career Hub website

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Nancy Bilmes, Director of the Center for Career Development at the University of Connecticut, shares how her team has built and scaled a Career Champion program to include over 800 participants. 

These faculty, staff, alumni, and employer participants learn about current career-related trends, resources, and language to have more confident and meaningful career conversations with students. 

In our last episode with Nancy Bilmes in January 2023, Nancy shared how her team built their Career Champion program. In this follow-up episode, Nancy shares:

• How her team has scaled the program to over 800 participants through various strategies, including academic liaisons, faculty fellows, presentation and meeting follow-up, first destination referral outreach, and more
• What outcomes they’ve seen, including survey results that indicate Career Champions refer students to the career center about 25% more often than non-Career Champions
• How they’re continuing to engage Champions and what new channels they’re leveraging
• And more 

Resources from the episode:

• Nancy’s LinkedIn profile
• Nancy’s email: nancy.bilmes@uconn.edu
• Example of a Career Champion newsletter (October 2023)
• UConn's virtual career center website (powered by uConnect)
• Career Champions resources page (which includes their champion intake forms)

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Ang Richard, the Assistant Director of Career Education at Boston University, shares her thoughts on how career services can prepare Gen Z for the world of work. 

In this episode, Ang shares:

• Information on who Gen Z is (and some common misconceptions)
• How employers can better hire and retain Gen Z employees
• How career services leaders can communicate those best practices to their employer partners
• How career services leaders can prepare Gen Z for the world of work (in a high-touch, personalized way!)
• How career teams can better reach Gen Z students while they’re still in school
• And more

Resources from the episode:

• Ang’s LinkedIn profile
• Ang’s personal website
• Ang’s 2023 TedX talk: “Sense of Belonging: Students' Challenges Should Be Effortless Joys”

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David Kozhuk, founder and CEO of uConnect, talks about why he thinks higher ed should be investing more in career services. 

In this episode, David shares:

• His thoughts on recent criticism surrounding career services
• Why he thinks higher should be investing more in career services (not less)
• What the evolution of career services has looked like over the last 10 years
• What the future of career services looks like
• Why he started uConnect
• And more

“[Career services] is what students are motivated by. It's what they ultimately need to lead more meaningful lives and careers. The career path you embark on immediately after college, the first job, has such a significant impact on a person's long-term career path and quality of life,” Kozhuk said.

“So if you're a higher ed institution and you're thinking about students as your customers, and students are telling you that's the reason they're enrolling in higher education, that’s why you should be investing in career services.

There's lots of value in making sure all of your students, or as many students as possible, are walking away from their experience feeling like they benefited tremendously and they got the outcome that they were looking for.” 

Resources from the episode:

• David’s LinkedIn profile
• David’s email: david@gouconnect.com 
• Ryan Craig’s “Abolish Career Services” article
• David’s rebuttal to the “Abolish Career Services” article
• Michael Horn’s podcast episode: “Goodbye College Career Services & Hello 1-on-1 Coaching with Real Talk to Get a Job”
• Whitepaper: “Peeling The ‘College Career  Services Office Onion’: Why They Are Terrible* What To Do About It “
• David’s article about the evolution of career services

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Join us for a recap of our 2023 episodes of the Career Everywhere podcast! 

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Michael DeAngelis, Senior Associate Director of Communications and Technology for the Career Center at the University of Pennsylvania, talks about three ways his team implements Career Everywhere.

Those three tactics include:

1. Starting a Career Champions program

Launched in Fall 2023, Penn’s new Career Champion program empowers faculty and staff on campus to have meaningful career conversations with students. DeAngelis and his team have built an entire resources page on their virtual career center dedicated to Career Champions, with training videos, resources, faculty and staff profiles, and a regular newsletter. 

2. Strategically sharing student stories

The University of Pennsylvania provides summer funding grants to students who need financial help for summer internships, volunteering, research, and other opportunities. In addition to helping award those grants, DeAngelis and his team also ask every student recipient to provide a blog post about their internship or other experience. After funding over 150 students last year, the Penn Career Services team had enough blog content to last them an entire year.

3. Producing the CS Radio podcast

DeAngelis, a theatre major, is right at home behind the mic and hosts a popular podcast for Penn Career Services called CS Radio. Featuring career-related discussions and interviews with students, faculty, staff, alumni, and more, the podcast boasts about 200 episodes. DeAngelis said many students have come into the office after hearing an episode, and he also mentioned that the podcast is popular among parents.

Resources from the episode:

• Michael’s LinkedIn profile
• Michael’s email: jmdeange@upenn.edu 
• University of Pennsylvania’s virtual career center (powered by uConnect)
• Career Champions program resource page
• Student story examples
• CS Radio podcast

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Dr. Ellen Awad, Associate Dean for Student Life at Hope College, talks about how to help students connect their co-curricular experiences to career. 

In the episode, Ellen shares:

• The importance of connecting co-curricular activities to career development
• How to help students articulate the skills and competencies they learn in these activities
• The need for students to reflect on their co-curricular experiences and think about how they can apply what they've learned in different contexts
• How career services can partner with student life to support students in making these connections
• Examples of how she has helped students synthesize their co-curricular experiences and apply them to their resumes and job interviews
• The common skills gained in co-curricular activities, like communication, teamwork, conflict management, and goal-oriented thinking
• Why it’s so important for career services leaders to create space for students to reflect on their experiences and think about the significance of their involvement in co-curricular activities

“Our graduates need to not only be well-versed in what they majored or minored in, but they also have to be able to function with other humans in this ever-changing world in a way that they can take from one space to another, to a different setting, to a different context, and be more agile,” Ellen said.

“And they have to be creative in how they approach the work and be able to really apply what they've learned in their co-curricular experiences to whatever work setting they eventually find themselves in.”

Resources from the episode:

• Ellen’s LinkedIn profile

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Amanda Morgan, Associate Director of Career Services for the Academic Success and Career Center at Washington State University, shares how WSU blends academic advising and career coaching.

In the episode, Amanda talks about:

• Why (and how) WSU’s Academic Success and Career Center office is set up to blend academic advising and career coaching
• How they’ve created an optional University 100 course for students that’s all about career exploration
• How they train academic advisors across campus on how to have career conversations with students
• How they use uConnect’s Labor Market Insights module to help students with career exploration (and how they train academic advisors on how to use it in advising appointments)
• What advice she has for other career leaders who want to work more closely with academic advising
• And more 

“Naturally, these two conversations (academic advising and career readiness) go hand-in-hand. I was just looking at a NACE report, and it said 50% of career centers really see academic advising and career services as two different entities,” Amanda said. “I can see why, depending on university structure. But here at Washington State University, we really see those two conversations going hand-in-hand.”

Resources from the episode:

• Amanda’s LinkedIn profile
• Amanda’s email: a.morgan@wsu.edu 
• WSU’s virtual career center (powered by uConnect)
• WSU’s labor market insights tool

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Kelli Smith and Lexie Avery, both of Binghamton University, share how their team has successfully engaged more first- and second-year students with career services.

In this episode, Kelli and Lexie talk about their four-phase strategy, why it’s so important to engage students early and often, and how they’ve increased first-year engagement from 28% to 71%.

The four-phase engagement strategy includes two phases for freshman year and two for sophomore year. The first two phases are all about building awareness around career services and exposing students to career early and often. The second two phases put more of the onus on the students.

The four phases include:

Phase 1: Awareness

In phase 1, the career team works to build awareness (outside of normal things like speaking at orientation or being a stop on an admissions tour). They leverage partnerships with academic advisors and groups like Residential Life. They have Student Career Influencer interns who weave career services into fun, creative experiences on campus.

Phase 2: Exposure

Phase 2 is about career services going into student spaces to meet students where they are and expose them to the career center. The career team goes into classes, presents to student organizations, participates in Residential Life programming, and more.

Phase 3: Engagement

Phase 3 is about encouraging students to engage with career services in some capacity, whether that’s coming into an appointment, reading blogs on Binghamton’s virtual career center (powered by uConnect), using Big Interview, or attending a program or event. It’s about students taking that step to initiate contact on their own.

Phase 4: Career planning

The last step is all about career planning. Do students have an exploration plan? Have they taken a career exploration course? Have they met with a career consultant to talk about career planning? Have they attended a program around creating an action plan? It’s about encouraging students to enter their junior and senior year with intentionality and a plan.

“We all know it can be very overwhelming when you think about all the different steps that are really important to take your time, to be thinking about your choices, doing the things that you need to do to be marketable over time. When we’re able to connect with students earlier, that's going to alleviate that anxiety but also help them become more successful,” Kelli said.

Resources from the episode:

• Kelli’s LinkedIn profile
• Lexie’s LinkedIn profile
• Binghamton University’s virtual career center (powered by uConnect)

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