The
skills gap is getting wider.
According
to the Job Preparedness
Indicator research conducted by the Career Advisory Board in late
2011, only 14 percent of hiring managers felt that job candidates had the
requisite skills to fill open positions.
At the Career Advisory Board, which is presented by DeVry University, our mission is
to help job seekers and careerists advance, so we decided to go to the front
lines and assess what career counselors thought about this. This summer, we worked with the National Association of Colleges and Employers, an organization that
connects career services professionals with HR professionals, to conduct a
series of phone interviews and a formal survey with college career center
directors.
In this
research initiative, we explored some of the challenges directors face in their
mission to help students land and succeed in jobs. These obstacles include working with
administrations that don’t understand the value of the career center, being understaffed,
and assisting diverse students.
As a result
of their current circumstances, career centers have had difficulty ensuring that
graduating students are “marketplace ready.”
Indeed, less than 25 percent of directors felt that most of their students
had the tools and skills necessary to find a job.
Here, we
delve deeper into the directors’ most pressing concerns and share topline
thoughts on how we can collaborate to narrow the skills gap.
College Administrations Underestimate the Career Center’s Value
Overall,
college career centers have a perception problem. Many administrations view them purely as
immediate “placement centers” and marginalize their role in shaping America’s future talent pool. Unfortunately, this attitude negatively
impacts student perception, and they may not use the career center as
expeditiously as a result.
In our
conversations, many of the directors claimed that although administrators are
generally supportive of their efforts, this support is overshadowed by
bureaucratic processes, budget cuts, and a lack of appreciation for the full
range of available student services (assessment, employer matching, resume
help, interview coaching, job fairs and educational programming – to name a
few!). Our formal survey especially
echoed directors’ financial concerns: nearly thirty-two percent felt that their
administrations were not particularly helpful with respect to funding support
for the career center.
Unfortunately,
without strong and well-funded career centers, schools’ hard-won and
well-educated students will become percentages in the growing nationwide
problem of youth unemployment.
Directors
must develop a value proposition of “total career preparation” and proactively
market the breadth of center activities to school administrators. They should aim to get a seat at the table in
discussions around school mission and overall leadership strategy.
Using
benchmarking data from the schools who are most successful in transitioning
students from college to career, directors must advocate best practices and
lobby for an earlier and more forceful introduction to students (for example,
implementing a mandatory career services module for freshman orientation and/or
making 1-3 career center visits a graduation requirement). Only this type of integration will ensure a
solid understand of the essential steps to launch a meaningful career, and
sufficiently motivate students to undertake them.
Career Services Centers Are Understaffed
When asked about
their greatest need with respect to helping students, 42 percent of the
directors said more staff. Several had experienced budget cuts that made
it difficult to support existing programs – let alone launch new ones. Extra personnel in the career center would
make it possible to provide more one-on-one student counseling and follow-up,
expand educational programming, and enhance marketing efforts.
Hopefully,
greater visibility within the administration will result in the strengthening
of career center ranks. Career centers
can also work with third-parties to offer free online and on-campus career
readiness bootcamps and mentoring initiatives, and connect with local industry
via meet-and-greets with students.
Private
sector organizations can use their recruiting dollars to sponsor relevant
software licenses for assessments, mock interviews, and other tools. And finally, if career centers must do more
with less, they should develop scripts for typical conversations like the
initial student consultation and handouts for frequently requested information
such as occupational research resources.
Meeting the Career Needs of Diverse Students Is
Difficult
An
incredible 85 percent of directors feel that they are not as effective in
helping diverse populations such as adult students, international students,
disabled students, minority students, and veteran students land jobs and
prepare for successful careers.
One idea
for directors to facilitate the advising and hiring of diverse students is to
form programs that pair current students with similar alumni who are currently
employed. Such mentorships would provide
insights that are unique and expressly relevant to a particular student group.
In order to
better customize the approach for each student group, career centers need to
create systems that will efficiently track students’ progress through the
career center, and the services that are being used. This will provide critical data with respect
to what is working – and not working – for each group.
The skills
gap is a complex issue, and certainly career center directors and their staff
can’t solve it by themselves, or overnight.
Nevertheless, they are a critical piece of the puzzle, and with some
targeted effort, improving student career readiness is absolutely within reach.
