Career Threads is a micro-blog series that offers quick insights into trending topics in career services, jointly composed by the Consulting Team at The Career Leadership Collective, out of their experiences interacting with hundreds of career professionals and senior campus leaders.
This post was updated in January of 2025.
Learning outcomes are ubiquitous on the academic side of higher education but less common in career services. In this blog post, we will present a case for creating measurable career learning outcomes that you can use to track the success of career center initiatives and revise or improve programs and services. At The Career Leadership Collective, we've helped numerous institutions develop and implement effective career learning outcomes through our consulting services, and we’re eager to share some best practices.
What Are Career Learning Outcomes (CLOs)?
Career learning outcomes (CLOs) are specific, measurable statements that describe what learners should know. They are best defined on a macro level as a roadmap for assessment and also have micro-level usage benefits.
On a macro level, we recommend that each institution articulate a set of five to seven college-wide CLOs that they believe every student should accomplish prior to graduation for career success. A quick read of data from Gallup, the National Alumni Career Mobility Survey, and the NACE Career Readiness research can easily provide a set of high-impact career practices that shape your institution-wide CLOs.
From those findings, we recommend the following Career Learning Outcomes as a starting point for the high-impact experiences that your students need:
Career Design: Every student will explore career options and design a plan for their future.
Experiential Learning: Every student will engage in hands-on activities such as internships or research that complement their desired career paths.
Skills and Competencies: Every student will gain the skills they need to accomplish the work they will do in their initial chosen career path.
Connections: Every student will build relationships with alumni, employers, or community members who work in the career fields they want.
Articulation: Every student will be able to articulate their skills and experiences in a way that will appeal to a potential employer or graduate school.
Launch a Job Search Campaign: Every student will know how to launch an effective job and internship search campaign within their desired career domain.
What Career Learning Outcomes are NOT
Career Learning Outcomes are not initiatives. They aren’t programs. They aren’t service offerings. And they are not theories. Services, programs, and initiatives support Career Learning Outcomes. For instance, a cover letter review might help a student to be able to articulate their skills to potential employers, articulate being the CLO. However, the fact that the document review happened is merely an engagement input toward career development. What they learned is the output that helps them achieve Career Learning Outcomes. The ultimate utility of services, programs, and initiatives is to be the strategy for meeting Career Learning Outcomes.
Why Are Career Learning Outcomes Important?
Utilizing your institution-wide career learning outcomes to design and assess services and programming creates a comprehensive framework for evaluating the effectiveness of career services and identifying areas for improvement.
It guides program creation.
It informs assessments.
It clarifies goals.
Career Learning Outcomes can help your institution close gaps in your career success outcomes. Career Learning Outcomes are Leading Indicators. Leading indicators are metrics that can predict future events; they proactively identify, prevent, and control issues before they start. First Destination data is a lagging indicator. Lagging indicators are measurable factors that change after a related variable has changed; they confirm trends but don’t change them. We must look at leading indicators (CLOs) and explore their connection to lagging indicators (FDS rates).
Through our work with various campuses, we've seen firsthand how well-designed CLOs can transform career services and student outcomes. By aligning its career learning outcomes with the university's mission, a career center positions itself as a key contributor to student success and institutional effectiveness. This can lead to increased support and resources.
Shape Your Strategic Plan
In the Career Ecosystem Era, we believe institutions must first define and articulate the most essential student career success milestones to work strategically. This clarity will communicate to the campus community and prospective students exactly how that institution will develop every student’s career development and readiness.
Career Learning Outcomes are an essential foundation for any career ecosystem strategic plan. Faculty or academic departments will use career learning outcomes to infuse career assignments into coursework or discipline-specific career workshops. When faculty incorporate CLOs into their courses, students benefit from seeing clear connections between their studies and career readiness. Employers will gain clarity on the job-ready skills students are cultivating. Effectively communicated outcomes can increase stakeholder support, resources, and engagement. This quantifiable information also allows for the creation of comprehensive reports that demonstrate the tangible impact of career services on student success, not just "butts in seats."
Many institutions we've worked with have successfully used CLOs to strengthen partnerships across campus and demonstrate their value to stakeholders. Developing and implementing effective career learning outcomes can be a complex process, but it pays dividends in terms of student success and institutional effectiveness.
If you want to enhance your career services through CLOs, The Career Leadership Collective's consulting team is here to help. We bring years of experience working with diverse institutions to create tailored, impactful career learning outcomes.
Interested in learning more about The Career Leadership Collective? Schedule a conversation with Sharon Attaway, our Partner Engagement and Executive Search Consultant.