From Silos to Synergy: How Career Services and Enrollment Management Can Partner

Ashley Safranski:
So welcome, everyone. My name’s Ashley Safranski. I’m the VP of marketing here at uConnect. I’m super thrilled for today’s discussion, joined by fantastic panelists, and David as our moderator, really digging into the opportunities and the potential of a powerful partnership between career services and enrollment management. I think it’s a really meaty topic, so I don’t want to spend too much time at the top. And I’m actually going to go off-screen here, and then return at the end to help moderate Q&A. So David, I’m going to go ahead and turn it over to you to kick us off.

David Kozhuk:
That sounds great. Thank you, Ashley. Appreciate you and all the work that you and the team did facilitating the session today. I’m very excited to be here and talk about this important topic, connecting enrollment and career services. I’m joined by two wonderful guests, and I will ask them to introduce themselves to kick us off. So Rebekah Paré, you want to start things off?

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah. Thank you, David. Hello, everybody. My name is Rebekah Paré. I’m the Founder and Chief Strategy Officer for Paré Consulting. I specialize in helping universities turn career services into a strategic asset.

David Kozhuk:
Awesome. Thank you, Rebekah, and many years working in career services directly, so all of that experience is going to be great for today’s conversation. And Mike, tell us about you.

Michael Griffin:
Sure. Happy to be here. Thanks, everybody. I am Mike Griffin. I bring 25 plus years of higher education administration to the topic today in the private university sector and the public university, big systems too. So I bring a pretty wide lens to this topic. Over the past several years though, I’ve refocused on who the high school student is and how they navigate and transition from high school to college to career. So very focused on the career center, career services part of what we’re talking about today.

David Kozhuk:
Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you both again for joining us. As Ashley mentioned, I’m David Kozhuk, the founder and CEO of uConnect. We’ve been working with college and universities for more than 10 years, helping schools engage students in career services from the very beginning of the journey, ideally pre-enrollment, all the way through completion to inform and inspire more purposeful pathways. So excited to dive into the conversation. Again, we’re talking about connecting career services and enrollment, and we’re going to talk about high level what’s going on in the industry and get down to the nitty-gritty about tactics and strategies to implement more of a strategic partnership between career services and enrollment on your campus.

Would love to just start at a very high level. There’s more conversation on the interwebs about career services in playing a role in enrollment and the importance of embedding career pathway content and information into the perspective student experience. I’d love your perspective on what are the trends at a macro level that are sort of bringing this to the surface and sort of what’s different now than maybe five, 10 years ago where there was some discussion about it but not nearly at the level that it is today. Rebekah, you want to start?

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, David. Well, I feel we all know, over the last decade or two, we’re seeing, again, this increased desire for a better articulation of the return on investment with tuition rates going higher and higher and higher. Today, they are now over six figures per year for tuition at some schools. And I think what we’re seeing are legislators hearing from families a real concern about high student loan rates, about if students are going to invest this kind of money in higher education, what’s going to happen after they graduate? What kind of guarantees do we have that students are going to be employed and have a salary that will enable them to support their life and pay back their loans? And as a result of this tension, high tuition, high student loan rates, we’re starting to see this increased pressure on universities to show what happens after college, so increased accountability.

So there’s a number of things that are happening across the federal government, across state governments, where this pressure is just ramping up and ramping up and ramping up. It started, I would say, maybe 15, 20 years ago with states starting to add career outcomes as a metric for accountability. So for state institutions, had to demonstrate, provide certain threshold for career outcomes in order to receive that state funding. And now, we’re seeing things like states wanting to close programs that have poor outcomes. So we’re seeing attacks on the humanities and the arts, and in some cases, social sciences where students may not be graduating with higher salaries, enrollments are dropping in some of those programs, and it’s creating a lot of flags for a number of different people.

So we’re seeing a lot of tension in that space. So I think we have students and families who are going to college, they’re making a big investment, they want to know what they’re going to get on the other side. We’ve got the legislators really trying to advocate for these family members and really show that these universities are producing good graduates. And they’re really trying to hold universities accountable, because we’ve done historically a terrible job making that connection.

And now, with the more recent executive orders, we’re seeing pressure in terms of immigration challenges, where we’re concerned about what enrollment will look like for international students. We’ve seen the labor market flip, so our new graduates, young graduates who just leave school, usually they have a really low unemployment rate, that employment rate has jumped to 5.8% and is higher than the majority. Normally, they’re lower than everybody else, and now they’re creeping up and up and up. And we’re creating really, I think, a challenging environment for our new graduates. Well, we’re not creating a challenging environment for our new graduates. They’re entering into a challenging environment.

So we’ve got labor market issues, we have concerns about enrollment with our international students with the demographic cliff, and then we have an articulation challenge that we’re running into. So as we think about, at least from the career services’ perspective, how do we support our institutions? One of the big ways is really how can we help our institutions better tell the story of what career preparation does, what career readiness looks like at our institutions, the way we support students and the success that they have. I’ll stop there.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. Totally. I mean, I think one thing that you mentioned about policy changes, and coming from the administration, the combination of uncertainty around budgets and then, like you said, restrictions around international students, which I think for a lot of institutions is an important recruitment pipeline source. So if that is drying up, then there’s a real gap that needs to be filled. And obviously, career services can play a role there. Mike, tell us your perspective about, at a high level, what’s causing the conversation to percolate.

Michael Griffin:
Sure. I start with the value proposition of what college and universities are all about, the education’s all about. When I put my enrollment hat on, I really believe these days that the career services or student center should be front and center in your recruiting effort. We know that families are looking at the value of education, and while we all got into this years ago with the idea of the importance of education, the focus in so many families these days and the student is jobs, is careers, is the direction they want.

So when I start to look at the market now, the education, the enrollment cliff is certainly a deal, but I think more importantly is we need to understand who these students are, what they’re looking for in their education these days. They’re looking for a clear pathway from enrollment, through their career, to graduation. One of my favorite words, this isn’t brain surgery from the standpoint of families and students, they want that value proposition that says, “If I go to your institution, what is that pathway going to lead me to, and what are the job and career opportunities going to be?” And then giving, and Rebekah mentioned this too, the evolving job market is unbelievable these days, so many changes happening so quickly.

So we’re asking career services to join that enrollment process, that marketing process, at the beginning to really help explain the evolving job market, help assess what these students’ interests, values, and needs are, what they want to do. So as they go into a major, they know that major will produce an opportunity at the end. So it’s a continuum that we need to start thinking about. Again, to repeat myself, I believe career services should be front and center in the marketing to prospective students. It’s critical. That’s what they’re looking for. We need to give them what they’re looking for. Then when you address the high cost of education and all the stuff that Rebekah mentioned, certainly to me it’s critical. And there’s certain levels of universities which is going to pertain to more than others. It’s a very competitive marketplace out there, and there are certain universities that need to really demonstrate their value proposition to stay in the marketplace, to be honest.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate the comment about the labor markets. I mean, if parents and families are uncertain about the labor markets, it’s like they’re going to ask questions about, “How are you as an institution going to help my child navigate that conversation?” And that’s probably best suited for the career services team to be able to respond to. I want to just double click real quick on the enrollment cliff comment. From your perspective, Mike, how big of a deal is that? And how much of an impact is that going to have on enrollments for institutions?

Michael Griffin:
I have mixed emotions about the enrollment cliff, to be honest. It’s something we’ve been talking about for years now. We do know that there’s going to be less students who are going to apply for university and colleges, but there’s still a large amount of students out there. I think we’re kind of cutting ourselves short. There’s a lot of students who are still available, and that’s where the value proposition comes in. We know that students are looking at other options now. Trade schools, Vo-Tech education. They want to go into careers like electrical engineering, I mean, electrician, plumbers and so forth. But they want that same career pathway in Harvard, if that makes sense. So the enrollment cliff is viable… Let’s be honest, the big dogs, the big schools, that enrollment cliff isn’t going to be as much of a concern. It’s that medium-range school, private and public, that really are going to need to pay attention to that value proposition, I’m going to keep saying that, the value proposition of helping students understand they have the majors that lead to jobs and careers at the end.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. Yeah. I think everybody on the call probably has a pretty good sense of why career services, how career services’ resources and data fits into the equation. I’d love to ask both of you what the value is to the other parties. So maybe Rebekah, if you could share a little bit about what… Well, let’s start with Mike. Mike, if you could share a little bit about what career services brings to the table. If I’m an enrollment leader, how are they going to help me achieve my goals, perform and be successful?

Michael Griffin:
First thing that comes to mind is they can be a real competitive differential for me by really having a strong career services. We have to remember too, and I keep wanting to focus on who these students are coming in, in high schools these days, there are some career assessment opportunities for them, but it’s pretty weak, to be honest with you. So a lot of these students are coming in without a real knowledge of what type of careers and opportunities are in front of them. So I need a career services department that is on touch, knows exactly what’s going on in the marketplace, and they can play a big part in helping me create a competitive differential in the market by having that information that I’m going to take care of your student on the academic side and the career side.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah, absolutely. And the differentiation is only increasingly important as competition just continues to ramp up. Rebekah, maybe go back to a prior life in the head of career services C, what is the value that a partnership with enrollment brings to you and your team in career services?

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah, I mean, I think there’s many. There are very, very many. But I do think one is, in career services, we’re really trying to get in front of students early and often. So the earlier that they understand what it is career services is and does, the sooner we can start setting expectations for the type of engagement. Similarly, today, students are really leaning on their parents for support, their parents and their family members. And equipping the parents and family members with an understanding of what career services is and does and how it can help can be another way that we can bolster the whole student experience. So on one side, it is really a way to tout and showcase to our most important stakeholder, our students, how it is that we can support and benefit them and work to get them engaged right away, particularly if we don’t require any kind of engagement. That’s one piece.

But I think we want to also think about it from our other stakeholder’s perspectives, which is the enrollment process is many ways the front door to the institution. So when we tell a better story about what it is that we do from the front end experience, how does that communication and support translate to all of these other stakeholders? Our employer students are coming to our schools, our legislators are talking to families who are in the application process or have children or grandchildren going through this process. So it is, in many ways, a way to really shine a light on the great work that we do in career services. So I think it’s a really great opportunity to tell our story. And enrollment management and admissions, they often have really great marketing tools to tell these stories well. So we might not have them internally, but they have them, and we can lean on that to really showcase the great work and outcomes that we help produce at the institution.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. Is there an element of playing a role in the prospective student recruitment process? Obviously, like a huge revenue driver, top priority at most institutions. Is there an element of career services playing a meaningful role in that process, sort of elevating their position in the university, maybe expanding budget, expanding resources? How do you think about that connection?

Michael Griffin:
I’ll go. Yes. I think it’s critical. We need… From the enrollment perspective, I’ll talk about career services needing more resources and tools to do their job. And this is no longer just about resumes and interview techniques. This is about really helping students assess what their interests, their abilities are, and help them define what kind of career and jobs are available to them. I think that’s the key here.

We’ve put together a fairly complex system through enrollment all the way through in college to grad. They need help navigating that whole landscape. So career services is the key component. Now, the only side we don’t want to forget about is academic advising here too. That plays a key. So all those join together. That academic advising is critical with the career services identical, so we have the students, the right majors, they stay in. Then you talked about revenues. This all pays back in the idea of retention. We want to keep these students in school. And when I throw my enrollment hat on, I throw my revenue hat on, and that means tuition revenues for these schools. And certainly those middle tier schools, it’s important that those revenues are hit.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. Rebekah, anything to add there?

Rebekah Paré:
No, I mean, I think Mike touched on all the main components that I would’ve touched on. I don’t think I have anything to add.

David Kozhuk:
Cool. I’d love to just talk more about making the case for a collaboration and how career services should think about approaching the conversation, if they’re not already being pulled into the conversation. Hopefully, they are. But if they’re not for whatever reason, how should somebody who’s running a career team sort of think about what value they add, maybe doing an assessment of where the enrollment management function is now and what the gaps are? How should they think about approaching the conversation? What work should they do ahead of time, and what does that conversation look like? Rebekah, you want to start?

Michael Griffin:
Yeah.

Rebekah Paré:
That’s a great question.

Michael Griffin:
Yeah, I’ll let you go.

Rebekah Paré:
If you’re going to let me go, Mike? I know that you have a whole list of ideas here.

I think as a leadership strategy, just generally when you want to make the case for any kind of change, you really have to put it, in this case, enrollment management’s need. You have to be able to answer the question, “What’s in it for me? Why should enrollment management and admissions work with you more specifically?” And I can tell you, so many, I’ve talked to so many institutions, I’ve talked to vice president of enrollment management, they are dying for more concrete information, more concrete evidence. I just talked to a VP of enrollment management last month who was telling me that parents are grilling her on the First Destination Survey results. They want to know response rates versus knowledge rates, versus on and on and on.

So I think they are eager for more information. So if we can position a conversation with enrollment management about how we can add value, how we can provide those answers for them and support them, outside of simply just showing up in training tour guides, a lot of us do that, I think there are other ways in which we might update the admissions officers now and again about what career services does. But I think the level of conversation that admissions is now having with families has gone a lot deeper than it used to. So they’re hungry for information. So if we can frame it that we can provide the stories, the data that are going to really beef up the way in which they’re able to talk to students and make the case to students, that’s going to lead to them hitting those numbers that we were just talking about. So I think that that’s something that’s very important to be able to do. And I’m going to turn over to Mike, because, Mike, I know from the enrollment management side, you have probably even more specific ideas here.

David Kozhuk:
Just quickly, just to piggyback on that, Rebekah, I think the questions are going to come. And I think if you’re in the position of the head of career services or on the career services team, you don’t want to get a phone call at two o’clock on Tuesday saying you need to be somewhere on Wednesday and talk about career outcomes and not have aligned with the enrollment team, the marketing team, about, “How do we want to talk about our outcomes?” These outcomes are a matter of fact, right?

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah.

David Kozhuk:
So, “This is what we have, these are the outcomes. How do we want to position it? What do we want to highlight? What do we want to… What are some of the questions we’re going to get in response?” So I think it just behooves every career leader, regardless of how much information and data they have or how confident they feel to just have that conversation up front to create that alignment, just so you’re not caught off guard and sort of thrown into the fire without any coordination. Because last thing you want is to sort of share what the outcomes look like, and then somebody would say, “Hey, I wish you had said it this way,” or whatever. Well-

Rebekah Paré:
That’s right.

David Kozhuk:
Big opportunity to align. Go ahead.

Rebekah Paré:
On that front, it’s not uncommon for us also to be entertaining prospective families and students. I took appointments with prospective students and families who happened to be on campus for tour, who really wanted to dig into what career services is and does, what kind of data did we have, what kind of information could we share, major to career pathways, all of that. So being in alignment with admissions around that kind of strategy, I think, is critical.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. And, “Hey, enrollment, this is your show,” right?

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah.

David Kozhuk:
“We’re here to support you. How do you want to position career outcomes?” They have a better sense of what other schools are saying in that regard and how they stack up. So it should be a very collaborative conversation to align on what the message and what the approach is. And again, I just think you don’t want to be caught off guard, so you just want to at least have that conversation to align on talking points.

Rebekah Paré:
That’s right.

David Kozhuk:
Mike, tell us what advice you would have for career leaders who are wanting to start that relationship and broach the topic? What advice would you give them?

Michael Griffin:
Well, that’s kind of a catch-22 question in a way, because they need leadership that’s going to recognize what we’re talking about. I mean, that’s critical right there. We need to… I’m going to back up for a minute, and I’m going to repeat myself. Well, we all know the importance of education per se, getting that degree is valuable. It translates into a lot of different life opportunities, not only financially, but social and economic mobility and all those things. But really, let’s start at the beginning again. Why are these students coming to school?

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah.

Michael Griffin:
We got to… I mean, it sounds very simple, but somehow we clouded and can’t figure that out. They’re coming, because in today’s marketplace, they’re questioning the value of education. They’re questioning what that degree path is going to look like, and they’re questioning whether they’re going to get a career or a job out of it. So if we can demonstrate that in a very concise, clear way to mom, dad, and student that that’s going to be their opportunity, then we’re ahead of the game.

I will also say I think that we’re concerned about it, and we addressed this early on, the rising cost of education and loan, student loan debt and stuff like that. That is an issue. But also, maybe I’m a little crazy here, but I believe that if family knows there’s a clear path to an opportunity at the end of that four to five years in school, that debt they take on maybe has a little different meaning.

So often the idea of college debt gets turned upside down, and really we look at it very negatively because how many stories do we hear about student, one or two years in, drops out because they’re not in the right major, they’re not on the right career path, and suddenly they’re in debt and they don’t know how they’re going to pay it off. Let’s reverse that story by starting off at the beginning with clear decisive ways to help student and parent understand that pathway to graduate. And that’s where career services, and I am going to say this, career services has to step up, as does enrollment management have to step up, and recognize that they need to work together. And I will remember, throw academic advising in there too. We can’t forget about them. But they have to work together.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. I mean, that’s a really interesting point. If you look at debt as this sort of just having a negative connotation, this is this sort of big that we’re going to take on, and hopefully we have the ability or the student themselves has the ability to repay those loans, that uncertainty just doesn’t feel good, and I think leads to indecision. Versus, “Hey, here are the pathways that are interesting to me. Here’s what the earning potential looks like. Here’s how much four years of enrollment costs. Here’s what the sort of annual expense would be.” And then it’s like you have a sense of, “All right. What am I going to do? What does the plan to manage that?”

Michael Griffin:
Exactly.

David Kozhuk:
And then if you look at the alternative, right? “If I don’t go to college and I don’t have this debt, is the pathway going to be better?” Probably not. So it becomes more of a calculated risk and a more calculated decision for the prospective student and their family. But they have to have that career information upfront to be able to think about it within that lens. That’s a really good point, Mike.

Michael Griffin:
Well, it’s like anytime we go into when you buy that first home and you get that mortgage, you buy it on the purpose that you’re going to be able to pay it off and you have a job and a path to pay it off. It’s the same thing here. It’s the same exact thing.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Griffin:
Confidence in the ability to absorb that debt and pay it off.

David Kozhuk:
I just want to stick on the conversation about sparking a relationship. Our friend Mary Willis here said that, “First destination outcomes are not indicative of long-term success. Five and ten-year data is much more accurate.” A lot of career offices don’t have just budget to throw around to just all of a sudden go pick up five and ten-year data. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels like you have that conversation, you initiate engagement with the enrollment team, you talk about what you have. And then if there’s a conversation that ensues about, “Hey, maybe five and ten-year data is better to present, because that will be more indicative of what our alumni see as long-term success,” then maybe there’s cost sharing there. There’s alignment, there’s an opportunity to bring in either a vendor or a data source, or engage institutional research to do some of that work and fill the gap. But does that feel reasonable, Rebekah?

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah. I mean, I think absolutely it is. And I also think about… So my daughter just went through the college search experience just a couple of years ago, and I think about the types of things that really spoke to her. She wasn’t looking at First Destination Survey outcomes data or even five and ten-years data and saying, “Yes, that’s for me.” I think today, students are looking really for much more personalized connected information. So I think certainly, we can provide all this information to enrollment management and they can help us think about what would be the bonus add, but I think the magic is in the storytelling, right?

Michael Griffin:
Yes.

Rebekah Paré:
How can we… I mean, and what career services, I think, forget sometimes, we are that harbor on tons of stories. Who else? You’ve been working with a student for a couple of years maybe, and they write you that they got this fantastic job opportunity as a result of the work that you’ve done together and their whole career experience. That’s a story we can tell. And the more of those types of stories we can collect and help students imagine themselves in the future through these stories, those are the things that I think are incredibly resonant.

I was just looking, Campus Sonar did a report recently, kind of a pulse survey on prospective college students, and the types of things that they’re really interested in right now, one, we can guess internships is always a hot topic. But the other one is skills. Right?

Michael Griffin:
Yeah.

Rebekah Paré:
So with all of this resonant conversation right now about transferable skills and the need to gain skills, students are looking for information about how what they will study will help them develop the skills that are going to make them employable. So when I think about what are some practical things we can bring to admissions and enrollment management are the stories. But who are the top employers? What are employers saying about our students? How are the skills that we’re developing landing on the other side of the college experience? So how can we help people imagine all of these connections that are happening? How are alumni playing a role in developing networks and supporting students on those journeys? I feel like there’s such a rich, incredible experience that career services touches. And the more that we can pull those stories out and highlight them, I think a better enrollment management’s going to be right. The better stories they’re going to be able to tell, the more information they’re going to be able to share that’s tangible. And I think that tangibility is important. Mike?

Michael Griffin:
I want to jump on real quick on what Rebekah’s saying. I totally agree. The five, ten year data, I’m a data guy, that’s part of my background, but at the same time, that doesn’t really mean a lot frankly to a lot of parents and students at their early stages. I mean, how do you make any sense of it? So it’s the stories. So if you think about a more little, I’ll use the word holistic, I guess, if you think about this, if the story is combined with that clear path that’s already set up that they can see what that path is through that major to get a job, that becomes a complete story to say, “Look, this graduate got this job, but they followed this path to get there.” It starts to make it authentic. Whereas the data, while certainly valuable, don’t get me wrong, the data is the stuff that floats up high up here, and you got to make sense.

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah.

Michael Griffin:
We all know you make a lot of different… You can say a lot about data in a lot of different ways.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah.

Rebekah Paré:
Well, I want… Sorry.

David Kozhuk:
Oh, I would love-

Rebekah Paré:
Can I hop in?

David Kozhuk:
Yeah, I would love for you to expand on that. Go ahead.

Rebekah Paré:
I did an interview with Money.com last year, and the reporter, he’s a young guy, was just grilling me on the accuracy of First Destination Survey data. He wanted me to say that all those reports that we do, we produce this data for the university, and it’s all wrong. And he’s not completely wrong. I think we have to own that. We put out a lot of First Destination Results, and I do think that we have to be really thoughtful about what it is we are reporting and ensuring that is representing an ethical picture of where our students are landing and going.

So as an example, if you’re reporting a 95% placement rate, but you only have a 25% response rate and no additional knowledge rate, that’s biased positively and you’re telling a story that’s not true. So I think we have to weigh what is the story that we’re telling, making sure that that’s an accurate story. But in a case where you aren’t able to get that data from your students and maybe don’t have help from your institutions, there are ways that you can pull out stories from that data and tell those stories and pull out some themes that show the different kinds of success that your students are having. So I think data is really tricky. I feel like people want to see tangible numbers, and at the same time, it’s not personal enough for the students who are making these ultimate decisions.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. I think that the compelling part about the data is that a lot of schools are collecting it. They’re collecting the historical outcome data in a standardized way, and it’s sometimes maybe a quick win. I think maybe there’s probably more of an opportunity to talk about the historical outcome data, not in the sort of context of a guarantee, like, “90% of our students have done this,” but, “These are examples of pathways to success that students see at the institution.” You would talk about it as just raw numbers. “A hundred students went into the product management field last year,” or, “200 first gen students launched a career in finance.” I think a lot of times, we get bogged down in the knowledge rates and things like that, and some students are going to respond to your survey, some students aren’t.

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah.

David Kozhuk:
The reality is that there is a story there with the outcome data, regardless of what the knowledge rates are, but you have to sort of position it the right way. If you position it with a tone of a guarantee like, “Our students see $68,000 a year on average,” that’s not totally genuine if you have a 25% knowledge rate. But if you say that, “We had students going here, here and here, and we had more students enrolled in this college going into this field or working at these companies,” you could tell a lot of stories. But I just want to double click on this, because I think in the chat, there’s some agreement about going beyond just the data and going beyond just the outcome data.

Michael Griffin:
Yeah.

David Kozhuk:
Rebekah, you mentioned storytelling. You gave a little bit of a glimpse into what that looks like. I think your comment about your daughter not digging into the First Destination Data probably resonated with a lot of people on the call. I don’t think she’s alone. Something tells me that. So going beyond the data, what other information is part of the story? What other, I don’t want to say data points, what other content is part of the story? And then maybe what advice do you have for career leaders who have not maybe put together that story in the past and are hearing what your advice is and saying, “Hey, that makes a lot of sense. I’d love to start to put together my story.” What advice might you have?

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah. I mean, I think students are looking for people that are like them. So how can we tell… I mean, in some cases, it’s enough stories to be able to appeal to a number of different types of students and the variety of student interests they have. But I think unpacking for students, what does the student experience actually look like? Right?

Michael Griffin:
Yeah.

Rebekah Paré:
I did this… “Oh, I took this first year interest group class, and I got really passionate about government, and then I was able to join the political science club, and then student government. I became a political science major. And as a result of that, I went to study abroad and got really excited about international affairs and got to do a service project in Ghana. And then I came back and got an internship through this Washington,” pick a school in Washington that the internships in Washington DC, “with a think tank. And from there, that led to…” On and on.

So can we plot a couple of these points where we saw students make decisions or get excited and motivated that helped fuel their journey? The more that we can show what that looks like, and then create an opportunity for students to tell that story themselves or to highlight in 30 seconds like why that internship in Ghana was awesome and what difference it made for them. Or another student talks about the career course and how that really got them thinking in a different way. Like, “I never knew what a resume was, never heard of that word, and I learned how to make one in this class my freshman year.”

I mean, these are the stories that I think students resonate with. They find students that have similar types of interests. They find students who look and sound a little bit like them, and they can start to imagine what it would be like at that place. And these stories are showing paths forward. There’s a momentum that starts to happen with students. And the more that we can unpack that, I think the better. And I think we assume a lot of our students, we assume they know what career services is. We assume they know when to engage with us sometimes. But I do think we really have to spell out what does this look like, especially for our first gen college students, and for our students who maybe don’t have an older sibling that has modeled what it looks like at college. We just have to take down the veil that I think exists there for our students.

Michael Griffin:
Just to jump on that, you’re exactly right, Rebekah, but we also, I come back, we have to help them understand what all that means. We tend to throw out a lot of these stories, and we need to give it substance so they really understand that pathway, the substance to it of why it reached there. Yeah. It is all about that career and academic pathway to go through. But, “What does it mean to do that internship? What does it benefit me? Why does it benefit me to do that? And I’m a shy student, and I don’t know what to do. So you need to help me understand how to get into that internship.” There’s a lot of different holes there that we need to help them navigate and understand the importance of all that.

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah. And I think career services does so many cool and innovative programs. This is a really nice way, an opportunity to kind of shine a light on something that you’re doing. When I was at University of Wisconsin, we had a multicultural career conference, and we were able to connect our underrepresented students and first generation students with future employers that look like and sound like them. And we did this starting at a very young age. And we would unpack things like, “What is an internship, and why should it matter?” But we didn’t tell it to them. They got to hear it from employers who looked like them and sounded like them and were able to give them advice. And these are moments where really cool and pivotal connections happen and decisions are made that we can highlight some of those as part of this experience as well.

David Kozhuk:
Mike-

Michael Griffin:
I’m just going to throw an idea out real quick. I wrote it down.

David Kozhuk:
Go ahead.

Michael Griffin:
We need to… I would hire a career expert in my admission office. I would have somebody who is a liaison with the career services office, but the person who I could go to who helped put on… I mean, what a perfect opportunity to have somebody really knowledgeable about the career opportunities and knowledgeable about what career services does embedded in my admission office.

Rebekah Paré:
Wow.

Michael Griffin:
I think that could be invaluable.

David Kozhuk:
I like that.

Michael Griffin:
Yeah.

David Kozhuk:
Legislators like decentralized offices, or decentralized schools have career people embedded into the colleges. That makes a lot of sense. You could probably make the case for advising and a lot of other functions as well.

Michael Griffin:
True.

David Kozhuk:
But I want to just talk a little bit about the enrollment funnel, Mike, and if you could share-

Michael Griffin:
Yes.

David Kozhuk:
… a little bit about a high level of the enrollment funnel and just where you see these stories and just career services participation being most valuable as it relates to the enrollment funnel and how career leaders should think about the role they play, given different aspects of the funnel.

Michael Griffin:
Right. I have, yeah, different opinions about the enrollment funnel. Let me back up. Rewind here.

I think the idea of career services and what career opportunities exist could be placed anywhere in the enrollment funnel. So what I’m getting at is the minute that student inquires, to let them know the strength of our career services department, what we could help them do, could be a critical point to when they then apply to that institution, to align what careers, what majors we have for the careers they may be interested in. But it also could come in at the application stage too. There’s numerous places it could fall into the enrollment funnel.

But one thing I think would be invaluable in anywhere, probably in the initial, if I had an inquiry and they were able to do a quick career assessment to help understand where they are, what they’d like to do in a career, and then if they could see that aligns to a major I have at that university or college, well, I now have much more information to start working with them in that enrollment funnel to bring them through the funnel. So I think it’s critical, it could fit in the funnel. And it depends on the institution’s needs at a certain time. Would it be to the inquiry stage? Would it be the application stage? Would it be the mid-stage? Maybe all three.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. And on that note, let’s talk maybe what a really successful partnership might look like. How are they collaborating? What is the impact on prospective students? What are maybe some of the institutional metrics that are moved as a result? I’d love your thoughts on that.

Michael Griffin:
Rebekah, you got some? You’re shaking your head.

Rebekah Paré:
Oh, well, yeah. I mean, I think… I’m losing my train of thought here for a second.

I think there are a variety of ways to do this, and I think it really depends on the culture of the offices with which you’re working. So I think if some of the takeaways from this session, as an example, are how to better make the case for being involved, and then you can start to shape what that partnership may look like. And I think really trying to start by articulating, “What are our shared goals? What do we want to try to accomplish as an institution. While we may be siloed offices, how can we be working together?” Because increased enrollment, increased yield rates is essential for the entire operation.

And if we can get students set off on a better start, a better sense of who they are and where they’re trying to go and the confidence that this is an institution that’s going to bring them there, it is going to impact our retention rates, our persistence rates, our retention rates. We can tighten up that time to degree timeline, as well as improve graduation rates. All the major student metrics, I think, we can… We have already… Career services has a strong impact on that. But the earlier that we can get students started and really on that right path from the get-go and an understanding that they have the support at this institution, I think that’s essential.

So how that actual partnership comes together, maybe having monthly meetings, maybe having a mini-retreat where you set what are these goals and how can you all contribute to those goals and laying out a timeline by which some of this work gets done. So I really think, again, it has a lot to do with the folks that you’re working with, their bandwidth, their motivation around this topic. So it’s so important to come in with really clear understanding of how you want to help them meet their goals, right?

David Kozhuk:
Yeah.

Michael Griffin:
Just to jump on real quick. I’d also have… I’d create a career starter kit working with the career services office. Starter kit that could talk about career assessments, major to career guides, labor market snapshots. If I had that as a nice little tool that I could send to prospective students to really… It’s bundled well, it sets a nice foundation, that would really say right out of the chute, “We’re interested in you and interested in your opportunities and career.”

David Kozhuk:
Mike, what Rebekah said seems so obvious, right?

Michael Griffin:
Yes.

David Kozhuk:
Like the case for a partnership. Why aren’t… What is your hypothesis as to why aren’t enrollment management leaders pulling career services into the conversation? What’s the hesitation?

Michael Griffin:
David, if I could look into my crystal ball and answer that, we’d all be… I’m baffled, to be frank with you, why we can’t see this. We’re so siloed. We’ve been so siloed over the years into our departments. For some reason, we just cannot see that we all need to be working together, from enrollment, through career services, through academic advising, through everything. We need to change our leadership. Our leadership needs to get on board and realize that this is a process that needs to be changed. Yeah.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah.

Rebekah Paré:
I can add to that.

David Kozhuk:
Please.

Rebekah Paré:
I mean, I do think that our leadership typically is made up of former faculty members. And some of our faculty members, I mean, let’s think about this from even a generational perspective, maybe didn’t even really have career services. So I think we have a disconnect there with what career services is and does. It is more than resumes. It is, we do not place students in jobs. It’s more than internships. There’s a whole ball of wax that goes under supporting students in really meaningful ways, and many career services offices are doing a remarkable job around that.

People just don’t know what it is. They don’t know what career services does. They are struggling to… They don’t know how to intercept when it’s just like, “Well, they just do resume reviews over there, right?” I mean, you go on admissions tours, I went on about 10 admissions tours with my daughter, and if I didn’t hear resume and internship at each one as the sole definition for the way in which we are going to support you in getting you a job after graduation, it’s like mind-boggling. It’s so much richer than that. And we in career services have to make the case upward and outward about what career services is and does and why it matters. Right?

Michael Griffin:
Yes.

Rebekah Paré:
So that’s one.

The second part is admissions and career services are often in different divisions, and they’re often very siloed. And there aren’t natural meeting places for these units to have natural conversations, so you have to really break out of the mold. Higher education is awesome with silos. We love them. We build all these walls all around us, and we can’t-

Michael Griffin:
For sure.

Rebekah Paré:
Nobody cares about those walls, but you. So that’s something that… You really have to understand, nobody cares what career services is from the outside. They care what the institution is doing to support students. So we have to break out of the territorialism and preservationist mentality that we have around what it is that we do to protect our work or protect our land and space. We need to get out of that and start pushing what we do in the Career Everywhere model, since this is uConnect. How do we push this into all of the different facets of the student experience, including before they even arrive? So I think we have to just own that, and then seek ways to break those pieces down and just better communicate what we do.

David Kozhuk:
I love the action orientation with that commentary, Rebekah. I think it would be good for all the career leaders on this call to just assume that their colleagues in enrollment think that their resume review and interview prep specialist and that’s all they do.

Michael Griffin:
[inaudible 00:50:54].

David Kozhuk:
So if you internalize that, hopefully you’re going to walk out of your office, walk across campus, and tell them that there’s a whole lot more to your work and there’s a whole lot of ways that we might be able to work together. And there’s actually a whole lot of ways that we can support you and your goals and the institution’s goals in recruiting more students that are set up for success. So I love the action orientation. I think that’s really what it takes is just like break through the status quo, the way it’s been. Mike, do you have a final thought?

Michael Griffin:
Just piggybacking what you just said. We just need to know who these students are, you know?

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah.

Michael Griffin:
What’s their mindset? Where are they coming from? We need to be aware of the marketplace, what they want out of an education. Once we start to understand that, then it’s easy for career services and admissions to start working together. So it ain’t brain surgery, it’s just knowing who our student and our marketplace is, and giving them what they want.

David Kozhuk:
Okay. I think we went a little bit over, Ashley. What do you say?

Ashley Safranski:
It’s a meaty topic. Sorry to disrupt, but I know we have about six minutes left. We have a handful of questions that we’ll try to get through. I’m going to launch a poll question here. David, I’m going to ask you to speak to, I think you have a lot of thoughts around how the Virtual Career Center can help facilitate some of this type of partnerships. Is there anything you want to add? And while you do that, I’m going to launch a poll question that will just help us know how to best follow up with folks.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. I mean, I think at a very high level, I’ll keep it quick, for those of you who are new to uConnect, we’ve built a virtual career center platform that is designed to help schools sort of integrate all of the career resources and data and information that they have into one single destination that’s a one-stop shop. And the Virtual Career Center sort of embeds into the school’s public-facing website, so it presents all the great work that you do in career services as part of your brand umbrella and part of your institutional value proposition.

And I think the value, as it relates to this conversation around engaging prospective students, is that all the internship and job opportunities, the employer partners, the resources, the services, the events, the programs, everything that you do to support students becomes easily searchable for prospective students and families who are doing research on the institution. It becomes easily accessible for enrollment managers and marketers who are trying to tell a story around career services. I think some of our customers think about the Virtual Career Center as a bucket of content for enrollment management to run campaigns and tell that story in a very personalized way.

So I think it really tees up a lot of the nuanced work and the full range of work that career teams do and makes it easy to sort of embed into the prospective student experience without having to have the career team sort of in an open house all the time or doing a presentation all the time, putting together PowerPoint decks all the time. It allows prospects to find the information themselves and allows others to evangelize it to prospective students. So I wish we see… We’ve seen some schools really be proactive about this, and I hope to see sort of more intentionality around the partnership between the two groups. And yeah. Happy to answer questions in the future about what that might look like.

Ashley Safranski:
Cool. Thanks, David. I know we have just a few moments, try to work through one or two questions. One of the first ones that I want to ask I think is top of mind for many. “What are some strategies you recommend for institutions with limited career services resources, small teams, for example, to emphasize the importance to university leadership?”

Rebekah Paré:
I do this. I feel like I do this every day with schools. Because I think this is such a daunting topic.

Michael Griffin:
It is.

Rebekah Paré:
Logan, thank you for your question on this. One way I think is really important is to get out and talk to your stakeholders about career services and what success looks like for their students or for their domain. So you could talk to your employer partners, you can talk to existing students, current students. You can talk to your faculty, your department chairs, your deans. I would get out there and talk to as many people as you can from a great variety of stakeholder groups, and get a sense for them about, what does career success look like for them? What do they feel like they still need to do?

And this is an example. You go into meeting with maybe three questions, and you spend the entire time listening, you don’t educate, you don’t… You just try to get these folks talking as much as you can. You pull together an analysis of those interviews, and you’re going to find that 75, 80% of your institutions thinking about career, they’re talking about career, they want help in these very specific ways. And I’ll tell you what, they all want stories to tell. So the stories that you’re producing for enrollment, you can send all over your campus for all other kinds of purposes. So I think there’s a really great strategy you can do.

For those of you that know my work, I have written on this on LinkedIn on how to conduct a landscape analysis, that’s also on my website. So you can check that out. And if you want any help, you can certainly reach out. I’d be happy to talk with you about that.

Ashley Safranski:
Anything to add, David or Mike?

Michael Griffin:
No. She covers it.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah, I think it’s great advice. Just equipping the people around you, if you’re a small office, with the talking points, with the highlights, with the story.

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah.

David Kozhuk:
So they’re telling the story of career services without you needing to be there, because you’re only one person or two people and you just can’t.

Michael Griffin:
Right.

David Kozhuk:
So even Mike had the comment about the starter kit, just resources or information that you can share out with others to help them evangelize your work is, I think, how you can more effectively get the word out there with a small team.

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah.

Michael Griffin:
Yeah.

Ashley Safranski:
We don’t have enough time to answer more questions, but I want to call out there in the chat, Meredith, a few minutes ago, if you’re not already in the Career Everywhere community, encourage you to join. I think that would be a great way that we can continue to have that conversation. Rebekah, I know is in there. Mike, we’re going to get you in there. So let’s keep it going. I think there was a lot of great ideas and strategies, and certainly some questions that we didn’t get to. So we’ll get a thread started there. And again, if you haven’t joined, please do.

Rebekah, Mike, David, thank you so much for your time. This was a fantastic discussion. Everyone joining, thank you for being so active in the chat. That was really just really fun and encouraging to read. It’s really exciting that this topic is really picking up steam and there’s a lot of momentum behind it.

Rebekah Paré:
Yeah.

Ashley Safranski:
Yeah.

Michael Griffin:
It’s critical.

David Kozhuk:
Yeah. Thank you, Ashley. And thank you, Mike and Rebekah, for-

Michael Griffin:
Thank you.

David Kozhuk:
… your expertise. And thanks, everybody, for joining us.