By Jeremy Podany, CEO, The Career Leadership Collective
For more than a decade, the field of higher education has been experimenting with new and better ways to effectively achieve career success for its students due to three primary factors: 1. Macro ROI pressures, 2. Operational limitations of Career Centers, 3. Lack of true prioritization of the Career Center by Senior Leaders. Some of the attempts to innovate have shown encouraging results, while others have not. To date, the various innovations have been one-off in nature, and there has yet to be a codified set of principles that can define this emerging paradigm. I believe we are at the point in history where we understand how to, can, and should provide codification.
I recently wrote about The Emerging Paradigm of Career Services, discussing the distinct differences, limitations, and benefits between the residual paradigm known as the Career Counselor Era, the dominant paradigm known as the Career Center Era, and the emerging and most relevant paradigm, the Career Ecosystem Era. The background information presented in that prequel is critical for understanding the foundational principles of the Career Ecosystem Era.
Below, I will share why I believe the four foundations of the Career Ecosystem Era encompass:
A promise for every student of career learning outcomes through embedded milestones from an empowered community.
Foundation 1: A Promise for Every Student
An institution should commit to the notion that every student will experience career development and readiness.
Imagine you’re a vice president where the central career center has recently moved into your portfolio of responsibilities. You review the most recent career center annual report, and it shows year-over-year growth in the following: overall satisfaction with one-on-one career appointments, both employer and student attendance at career fairs, career advising drop-in and appointments, and more career workshops than ever in history. To top it off, by 6-months after graduation, 85% of your students had some type of employment or were in grad school. On the surface, this is certainly great news! Compared to the fires you are extinguishing everywhere else, the career center seems just fine and is one less thing you need to worry about.
Equating success to attendance growth and the estimated % of students who secured some type of next destination is the success delusion of the Career Center Era, the dominant career services paradigm today.
The big question you need to ask is rarely asked: What percentage of our students receive holistic career development and readiness during their time on campus?
Despite the dominant paradigm regularly accepting this delusion, I have worked with multiple Senior Leaders who have taken the time to reflect upon genuine student career success, and they come to realize that there is something missing. This realization leads to questions of vital importance for an institution’s mission, effectiveness, and reputation. Questions such as:
Which students are not using the career center services? Why? How does this impact their future?
What shall we conclude if, for example, only 25% of students responded to the first destination career outcomes survey? Can we accurately report that 85% have secured their plans?
And, are the first job outcomes reported actually desirable, quality, college-graduate-level job outcomes, or just reported jobs? For non-traditional students who were already working, are they new or better jobs or the same job they had before attending college?
How many students graduate without the self-knowledge, skills, and relationships required for career launching and ongoing satisfaction?
The first foundation of The Career Ecosystem Era starts with a higher standard: a college or university should provide all of its students with a career development and readiness education. One in five students, or even four in five students, who receive a full career development and readiness education is not enough. Given the cost of college, the modern professional demands placed on graduates, and the systemic inequities that higher education has struggled for so long to address, it is imperative that colleges commit to serving the career needs of all students and not allow space for students to become lost through the cracks.
A career ecosystem approach allows for the capacity to serve every student and believes in the necessity of building a culture of career success across campus; this is the first and most paramount foundation of The Career Ecosystem Era.
Foundation 2: Of Career Learning Outcomes
An institution and its academic units should craft a set of college-wide, context-specific career learning outcomes that define holistic career development and readiness.
Too often, colleges and universities either don’t have career learning outcomes (CLO's), or settle for unambitious goals related to attendance. Furthermore, in the Career Center Era, CLO’s are often articulated as goals for the career office, but they need to be institutions-wide and academic unit-wide career learning outcomes. The college administrator who wants every student who graduates to be ready for their future is everywhere, but few are achieving it through their practices. We have seen a rise in career-related items in presidential-level strategic plans. To make those Presidential goals a reality, CLOs must be collectively defined by a much broader group than the career center team and placed at a much higher priority level than an internal document in the career office. CLO’s build upon Foundation #1 of the Career Ecosystem Era, that every student deserves it.
Additionally, when career learning outcomes are context-specific, there is more buy-in and participation from the community. Your institution serves a unique population within a unique geographical context with unique industries, work cultures, and employment environments. Your institution has its own set of core values. Your institution serves a population with unique ambitions, talents, and hopes. Therefore, as you deploy nationally recognized high-impact career practices, your career learning outcomes need to be defined as context-specific.
It is no longer enough for an institution to measure only the lagging indicators of career outcome rates and initial salaries, which are good and needed but not the entire story and often flawed indicators of overall institutional goals and career success. Career outcome rates and average salaries have become the legs of the table and not the pretty buffet that sits atop. Too many institutions already provide career outcome rates and average salaries, and those data do little to distinguish one college from another.
Instead, institutions that fully enter the Career Ecosystem Era will illuminate their unique career ecosystem and articulate the context-specific career readiness skills, knowledge, tools, and experiences that every student will gain before graduation to prepare for their professional futures.
I invite you to ponder the logical conclusions regarding the benefits to your institution with enrollment, persistence, corporate donations, brand affinity, alumni giving, and much more when every student is career-ready.
Foundation 3: Through Embedded Milestones
An institution should integrate career learning into the student life cycle and develop unavoidable career milestones.
Colleges and universities can define career development and readiness for their students, but if they don’t provide universal education and experiences, they won’t be able to meet their CLOs for all of their students. In our current dominant paradigm, The Career Center Era, most colleges offer a wide range of opt-in career development and readiness experiences for their students, such as career fairs, industry events, and internships - all hallmarks of the Career Center Era. Too often, though, because these experiences are voluntary, students knowingly or unknowingly decide not to opt in.
On the other hand, institutions stepping into The Career Ecosystem Era embed career education experiences into the fabric of the larger student experience. These milestones are designed to be unavoidable and impossible to skip so that every student is guaranteed to have gone through them, just as it is impossible to walk through a door without stepping over its threshold. In The Career Ecosystem Era, career development and readiness is not a set of signature well-branded workshops that a student may decide to take advantage of or not. Instead, a career ecosystem integrates components of the broader career development and readiness curriculum, the substance behind their CLO’s, throughout the college experience.
There are many parts of the student life cycle in which institutions can integrate aspects of career development and readiness. First-year orientation, a first-year seminar or required career class, the declaration process for a major or minor, capstone courses, and academic advising meetings are only a few examples of places where sophisticated embedding is already happening. Not only does this build up on Career Ecosystem Era Foundations #1 and #2, but it multiplies the capacity of a career center team. The clearly defined career learning outcomes (Foundation #2) that the institution has crafted for its particular culture and context will guide the form, location, and content of these experiences as well
Every institution can develop and embed career education and experiences in a way that is tailored to its unique qualities and to the specific needs, values, and ambitions of its student population. Those pursuing embedded milestones have the biggest impact on students and reap the biggest rewards for their institutions. Without this foundation, colleges will likely have great marketing messages but mediocre to poor career development and readiness substance, keeping them in the residual or dominant era.
Foundation 4: From An Empowered Community
An institution should equip and empower a community of career champions composed of faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, and student peers with the assets and knowledge to incorporate career development and readiness into their individual contexts.
In The Career Ecosystem Era, career interactions go beyond the career center staff members. It’s simply impractical for a single office to accomplish all of the work of career success across a college campus. For that reason, to enact a career ecosystem mindset, a college must create a system that empowers and equips hundreds of career champions who interact with students.
Faculty, staff, and administrators can be equipped to easily manage career-related interactions with students for their specific contexts–the classroom, the club or organization, the sports team, and the residence hall. This will positively impact reflections, activities, assignments, referrals to the career center, and overall career conversations with students. Today, hundreds of campuses are pursuing this aspect of the career ecosystem. In doing so, colleges and universities will enliven their academics and inspire a generation of career-success-oriented students.
In this approach, the career center is not simply a place where a select few (often better resourced and already prepared) students stop in to review their resumés. Instead, the career office becomes a hub for training not just students but also professional development for student-facing faculty, staff, and administrators, giving them the tools they need to guide their students toward lifelong career success and purpose. This should not be construed as adding more to faculty or staff job descriptions, but on the contrary, should have the express purpose of making their jobs easier and more accomplished.
In summary, I invite you to discuss, personalize, and realize the four foundations and fully step into the emerging paradigm of career services, The Career Ecosystem Era.
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Want to learn more? Contact Jeremy about speaking opportunities or contact The Career Leadership Collective about assessing your career ecosystem.
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Jeremy Podany
Founder and CEO of The Career Leadership Collective
Jeremy Podany is the Founder and CEO of The Career Leadership Collective, a consultancy that has done business with over 1,000 colleges and universities since 2017 on the systemic career development needs of higher education. The Collective is the inventor of the National Alumni Career Mobility (NACM) survey and the EMBARK first destination data service, which were both acquired by Lightcast in 2023.
Jeremy enjoyed nearly 20 years working in higher education, primarily in career services. His inventions and consulting solutions have systemically helped thousands of university leaders and hundreds of thousands of college students with career education and career mobility.