Post 1 of 4 in a series on Strategic Planning in Career Services
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.
As a career services professional, it is easy to feel that everything demands immediate attention. Staff concerns, events planning, and the constantly changing needs of administration and students can make you feel like there are too many priorities, too many things to do, and too many fires to put out. How can leadership, staff, and offices ensure they remain proactive in their work and not reactive? By investing in strategic planning.
Strategic planning can help guide a career services office toward the highest impact initiatives, the work that makes the most of a career center's limited resources. It can help you to look beyond what is most urgent at the moment and toward what will have the most significant impact on students and the campus community. This is accomplished by examining your campus's culture, needs, and structure, creating long-term goals, and allocating resources to keep you focused on the most important and impactful work. By leaning into strategic planning, you can impact institutional goals, improve service delivery, and align metrics.
Institutional Goals and Buy-In
If a career center aligns its strategies with the institution's larger goals, it can ensure that its work lines up with the broader mission of the institution. By doing so, the career center can create deeper buy-in with staff and faculty across campus.
Improved Service Delivery
By engaging in strategic planning, career centers can improve the quality of their service offerings. Identifying the most effective practices, structures, and systems can help leaders focus on the initiatives that will benefit students most. It will also help leaders to choose initiatives and practices that most efficiently leverage limited resources.
Metrics Assessment
When creating strategic plans, leaders can identify metrics by which to measure the success of their initiatives. Defined metrics allow leaders to adjust their strategies, initiatives, and approaches to maximize the effectiveness of their efforts.
Strategic planning can help leaders proactively choose the most effective and institution-relevant ways of creating career readiness on campus. By doing so, leaders and staff can maximize the value they bring to students and deploy their limited resources more efficiently.
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Are you interested in learning more about The Career Leadership Collective's Strategic Planning Services? Schedule a conversation with Sharon Attaway, our Partner Engagement Consultant. Sharon@careerleadershipcollective.com
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