career center

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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Manny Contomanolis, Director of the Mignone Center for Career Success at Harvard University, shares how career services professionals can become thought leaders on campus.

Manny discusses why thought leadership is so important and provides strategies for becoming a thought leader, such as asking hard questions, leveraging external trends, and being a good storyteller. He encourages career leaders to make time for thought leadership and to seek support from others in their network.

He also emphasizes the need for career leaders to stay up to date on external trends and to connect them to their institution's goals and values.

“The ability to pull that information together, to curate it, to tell a story that's of interest to faculty, senior leaders, and other stakeholders and make it relevant to the particular institutional setting, and related to the activities that the office is undertaking is incredibly powerful, and is a very visible sign of thought leadership,” Manny said.

He also shares how career services leaders can use their thought leader status to advance the work, mission, and goals of the career center.

“One of the tangible ways thought leadership contributes is the way the office and team are positioned in the broader way that the university is thinking.

For example, being pointed out as a center for excellence, as the office that accomplishes what needs to be done and does it well. All of these things influence funding support. They influence relationships and where career services can be involved or brought into discussions, especially when they go beyond just career services to impact and touch on other areas of university life.

It's that feeling of pride that the office feels collectively, and that individual team members feel for being part of that organization,” Manny said.

Resources from the episode:

• Manny’s LinkedIn profile
• Harvard University virtual career center (powered by uConnect)

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How should faith and work intersect? Today we have a special guest, Paige Wiley, joining us. Paige brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, having worked in various settings and ministries and now working within the team at Made To Flourish as the Associate Director of Engagement. In this episode, we explore the importance of understanding one's vocation and how it connects to our faith, as well as the anxiety and questions that arise when it comes to discerning God's will in our careers. Paige shares insights from her recent project on bridging the gap between college and the next phase of life as well as the fascinating concept of “skills mapping” for churches and how it can be utilized to foster community and discipleship. Listen now to this thought-provoking conversation about work, calling, and the journey towards finding purpose in our daily lives.

THREE KEY TAKEAWAYS:

1. The importance of integrating faith and work: There is a journey to understanding the connection between faith and work. Work is not just a means of evangelizing or giving money to the church, but a valuable way to live out God's design and contribute to the restoration of all things.
2. Addressing vocational anxiety: There is increasing anxiety among college students about their future careers and which has increased the need to make a meaningful connection between work and identity. There is a common fallacy of viewing God's will as a specific target or destination, which can contribute to stress and anxiety. For this reason we need to talk early and often about faith and work to alleviate vocational anxiety.
3. Utilizing skills mapping for church community and discipleship: Skills mapping is a process that helps churches understand the vocational skills and passions of their congregation, and can be used to create support groups and facilitate connections among individuals with similar professions or roles. We want churches to engage with people across different life stages, including young adults and older adults, to foster community and discipleship around the work that we do, paid or unpaid.

#FaithAndWork #CallingAndVocation #BridgingTheGap #SkillMapping #ConnectingCongregations #SundayToMonday #IntegratingFaithAndLife #SupportingProfessionals #ThirdThirdOfLife #ChurchBeyondSunday

GUEST BIO: 

Paige Wiley grew up in a Christian environment where work and faith were presented as separate entities. This upbringing shaped her curiosity about the intersection of work and calling. While studying communications and media at Kansas State University, Paige was heavily involved in her campus ministry and also worked at a career center, helping students discover their career paths. This experience intensified her interest in understanding why people choose a certain profession and what drives  their vocational choices. 

QUOTES:

"At the end of the day, my belief was that work is part of this necessary evil that we have to do in order to either evangelize to our coworkers or to give our money to the church."

— Paige Wiley

"Within redemption, we get to see how work is a way of loving and serving our neighbor, and this allows us to see glimpses of heaven."

— Paige Wiley

“One of the ways that I like to frame it is: A good shepherd knows his sheep, and the skill mapping survey is really meant to ask folks where they're at. Instead of asking to put more on their plate, ask, “What's on your plate? What are you doing? Where are you already on mission, where are you already serving?””

— Paige Wiley

RESOURCES:

Made To Flourish

Skill Mapping

Worked Up - Paige Wiley & Luke Bobo

Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work - Tom Nelson

Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work - Tim Keller

Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will - Kevin DeYound

Whatever You Do: Six Foundations for an Integrated Life - Luke Bobo

God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life - Gene Veith

Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life - Bill Burnett and David J. Evans

KEYWORDS:

church, congregation, vocational skills, passions, survey, pastors, integration areas, discipleship, worship services, good shepherd, understanding, work and faith, college ministry, career center, calling, impact, public university, private ministry, theological ideas, anxiety, college students, future, identity, God's will, interviews, Sunday church service, congregation story, support groups, community, discipleship, data, youth pastors, early integration, work, discernment, careers, follow Jesus, resource, college students, young adults, Made to Flourish, skill mapping, purpose, information utilization, redemption, glimpses of heaven, already not yet, construction, education, retiree, grand plan, thirds of life, older adults

CHAPTERS:

[00:06:10] Faith and work: wrestling and finding fulfillment.

[00:08:10] God at the center, wrestling with work theology.

[00:12:51] College students struggle with identity and anxiety.

[00:15:14] God's will as a problematic treasure hunt.

[00:17:46] Gathering to discuss faith and work after college.

[00:22:20] Made to Flourish offers a skill mapping process.

[00:26:28] Interviews explore Monday life of congregation members.

[00:29:26] Connecting educators, healthcare workers, entrepreneurs, and parents. 

[00:32:46] Is God with me in career choices?

[00:34:38] Dream job for Paige Wiley.

Kerry Spitze and Steve Russell, both of Bowling Green State University, share how their career services team and the entire campus (from the top down) are implementing life design and design thinking.

Life design, like Career Everywhere, is all about helping students think about their careers and life after college as early and purposefully as possible. To implement life design campus-wide, Bowling Green is taking a top-down approach with support from the university president and collaboration between different departments.

For example, BGSU has created two key centers to support the life design implementation and provide coaching and support to students throughout their college journey: The Radbill Center for College and Life Design and the Kuhlin Hub for Career Design and Connections. Both centers use design thinking principles to help students prototype their career ideas and gain practical experience through internships and other opportunities.

In addition to helping more students plan their careers in a holistic, personalized way, the implementation of life design has also had a positive impact on student retention and enrollment at Bowling Green.

“Every time a new student comes to our campus, they're going to take a tour just like they would of any other institution. And if they went anywhere else, they would stop at some point on their tour, and someone would say, ‘There's our career center. That's where you go to find internships and jobs.’ And then they would move on. So if we have that, we don't differentiate ourselves at all to that student,” Russell said.

“If we can develop something deeper that really showcases how we're different, it serves our enrollment goals. And those enrollment goals are the lifeblood of an institution.”

Resources from the episode:

• Kerry’s LinkedIn profile
• Steve’s LinkedIn profile
• Kuhlin Hub for Career Design and Connections
• Radbill Center for College and Life Design

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Jackie Warner, the Assistant Director of the Center for Career Success at Thomas Jefferson University, shares how career services professionals can support neurodivergent students.

In this episode, Jackie talks about:

• What neurodiversity is
• What unique challenges neurodivergent students face when it comes to career development
• What accommodations career services teams can make for neurodivergent students
• How to advise students on whether or not they should disclose to an employer that they’re neurodivergent
• How to make programming more inclusive for neurodivergent students
• And more  

Jackie said the biggest thing career services professionals can do to better support neurodivergent students is to be an ally for all disabled students and to just be there for them.

“If a student tells you, ‘Hey, I really need to take notes, can you please take a break in between talking or talk slowly or just let me write that down,’ or ‘I really need to edit this while you're talking. So can you give me a moment to fix that?’ Or even, ‘Hey, I see you made notes on my resume. Could you email that to me?’ Those are really easy things that students might ask for,” Jackie said.

“And we might say, ‘Well, no, you're an adult and that's extra work for me.’ But we don't know why they're asking that. They could be asking that because they're neurodiverse. They could be asking because they have anxiety. Maybe English is not their first language.

That's an easy accommodation we can make for all of our students, is just listening to what they need and believing them.”

Resources from the episode:

• Jackie’s LinkedIn profile
• Jackie’s “support toolkit” PDF: Tips for Working with Students Who Are Neurodivergent
• Job Accommodation Network
• Queens College/CUNY Neurodiversity Hub
• Neurodiversity Hub
• Neurodiversity in Business
• Autism at Work
• UConn Center for Neurodiversity and Employment Innovation

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Julia Vollrath, the Associate Director for Campus Initiatives at the University of Florida, shares how her team is using data to track and improve student engagement.

In this episode, Julia talks about:

• What specific data points her team is measuring (and how they measure them)
• The most interesting things they’ve discovered in their data
• How they’re using the results to adapt their career services offerings (including the timing of their events)
• How they create a narrative around their data
• How they share their data with other departments and leaders on campus
• And more 

Specifically, Julia said her team likes to know how students engage with the career center—and in what order. For example, the career team uses their student data to figure out which of their services is a “gateway” service, i.e. a student’s first experience with the career center. Then they measure what students do after each of those gateway services. Do they set up a 1:1 appointment? Do they attend a workshop? Do they reach out to an employer?

From there, the team evaluates those student engagement patterns and pathways to see if students are getting the most out of the career center’s offerings. And if not, they make adjustments.

Resources from the episode:

• Julia’s LinkedIn profile
• Annual career engagement report
• Graduation survey results
• Florida’s career center website

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Mike Summers, Associate Vice President of the Gateway Career Center at Lafayette College, shares why he thinks career must be everywhere.

“Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. So we have to increase the social capital and access to all students,” Mike said.

In this episode, Mike talks about:

• How he and his team have implemented the Career Everywhere approach to career services
• Why it’s so important for career services to lead the charge
• What results his team has seen since implementing Career Everywhere—particularly in terms of improving equity and access
• And more  

Mike said that since talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not, he and his team focus on making sure opportunities for Lafayette’s students are more equitable. For example, this fall, his team is hosting what they call a modern mentorship networking event where they’ll teach students about what social capital is, how to build it, how to use it, and more.

“I’m really excited about that and it’s something I feel very strongly about, that we make things as equitable as we can. And that's one of the centerpieces of why it is so important that career is everywhere across this campus,” Mike said.

Resources from the episode:

• Mike’s LinkedIn profile
• Mike’s Twitter profile
• Mike’s email: summersm@lafayette.edu 
• Lafayette’s career center website (powered by uConnect)

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Beverly Johnson, Associate Director of Career Readiness at Arizona State University, shares how her team is engaging Indigenous students with career services.

Beverly talks about:

• The programming and initiatives her team has implemented to reach more Indigenous students
• What important cultural considerations to keep in mind
• How career services professionals can be good allies
• And more  

Having worked with Indigenous students for many years, Beverly digs into the feedback she and her team received from Indigenous students at ASU about why they weren’t engaging with career services. One big piece of feedback from students was a lack of Indigenous representation on the website, at career fairs, in workshops, etc. Beverly shares how they’ve improved representation, how she found allies across campus, and why it’s so important to consistently show up. 

Resources from the episode:

• Beverly’s LinkedIn profile
• ASU’s career center website (powered by uConnect)
• Indigenous People’s community page on the career center website

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Dr. Carissa Liverpool, Assistant Athletic Director of Student-Athlete Development for the Scarlet Knights For Life Program at Rutgers University, shares how her team is engaging student-athletes with career services.

Carissa talks about:

• The unique challenges student-athletes face in terms of career development and how to address them
• How her team uses technology to engage student-athletes, employers, coaches, and more
• Her best advice for meeting student-athletes where they are
• And more  

Being a former Rutgers student-athlete in softball, Carissa knows better than anyone that student-athletes are one of the hardest populations to reach. Between athletics, academics, a social life, and more, student-athletes are notoriously strapped for time. In this episode, Carissa shares her best tips and tricks for reaching student-athletes and connecting them with employers.

“You have to meet them where they are. If you know they are in a specific building, or they're taking a lot of the same classes as their teammates, navigating their time and being present where they are physically is very helpful. That number one. Number two, going to their competitions is really important. I think slowly building that relationship and that trust and that rapport, because at the end of the day, they are students. They're students first, and knowing that you're supporting their athletic abilities and their student abilities is important too,” Carissa says.

Resources from the episode:

• Carissa’s LinkedIn profile
• Rutgers Scarlet Knights for Life virtual career center website (powered by uConnect)

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Emily McCarthy, Senior Director of Career Development at the University of Arizona, shares how her team partners with the alumni office to support recent grads in their career development.

Emily talks about the services they offer recent grads (and why), what the partnership with the alumni office looks like, and how both teams partner to cost-share the uConnect platform to scale their support for students and alumni.

With the needs of current students and recent grads being relatively similar, Emily says it made sense for career services and the alumni office to share a virtual career center. In the episode, she walks through how the website is structured and what resources are available. She also shares her best advice for other career leaders looking to partner with the alumni office and/or cost-share technology.

“The career development office should not be the keeper of the keys and the holder of all the knowledge. We need to be thought leaders. We need to be educating our peers across the institution about what career means, what current best practices are, and what current industry practices are,” Emily says.

Resources from the episode:

• Emily’s LinkedIn profile
• Arizona’s virtual career center website (powered by uConnect)
• uConnect’s Identity Kits

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Monica Clem, Vice President of the National Career Center for Teach For America, talks about how the Teach For America (TFA) career center supports its 60,000+ alumni in their careers after the two-year teaching program.

Monica shares how her team uses technology (like uConnect’s virtual career center) to engage alumni, how the national and regional TFA teams work together to support alumni all over the country, and what career resources TFA offers to alumni.

As a former higher education career services leader, Monica also digs into the differences and similarities between higher ed career services and career services within companies or nonprofit organizations like TFA. She also discusses why supporting alumni is so critical, for higher ed and the corporate world. 

“College has become very challenging in terms of being affordable for a lot of people. And that has led to questions about the value of a college degree. And yet, those of us who work in this field know how valuable a college degree continues to be,” Monica says.

“So I think one way to really address some of those concerns is to tap into your alumni network. Not just for the purpose of mentoring or connectivity between students and alums, which of course is very important, but also for the purpose of engaging alumni with the resources the institution can provide to advance them in their careers.”

Monica also notes that organizations outside of higher ed face similar challenges with a tightening labor force and looming mass retirements of some of the largest generations of working-age people.

“I think a lot of organizations, when they think about long-term talent needs, are really tapping into some of their former employees. We call them boomerang employees,” Monica says.

“It’s about being intentional when employees leave your organization, thinking about if they’re leaving on a somewhat good note, like is this someone that could be interested in coming back to us in the future? And then continuing to keep them engaged. And again, adding value by treating them as alumni is critically important for organizations that have a long view of building a talent pipeline.”

Resources from the episode:

• Monica’s LinkedIn profile
• Teach For America Alumni Hub (powered by uConnect)

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