Why Career Services Leaders Need to Think Like CMOs

Ashley Safranski:

Similar to marketing or CMOs, I think career services and career center sit at a really interesting position at a college campus. I think there’s the element of being right in the middle of supply and demand between employers wanting to hire students. I think that’s really an interesting dynamic and an important dynamic.

I think that there’s a lot of opportunity where career services is an enabling function to a lot of other departments across campus, which is really similar to marketing. We’re really trying to communicate externally, drive alignment internally. We’re the keeper of the company’s story, and I think there’s something to be said about that with career services. Career teams are the keepers of these amazing student outcomes, student stories, the data, and in many ways career leaders should be the best storytellers at an institution. If I were a marketing leader at a college campus right now, I would 100% be making the career services leader my best friend.

Meredith Metsker:

Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Career Everywhere Podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker. Today I am joined by Ashley Safranski, the chief marketing officer here at uConnect and my incredible boss. Thank you for being here, Ashley.

Ashley Safranski:

It is a treat, Meredith, the big plan. It’s only taken me a little over two years to finally get the nod from you, so I hope I live up to standards.

Meredith Metsker:

I know. I was thinking earlier, I’m like, “Should I have had my boss on earlier than, I don’t know, three years into this?” But I am super glad to have you today. I’ve been looking forward to this all week, and I am so excited to talk to you today about a topic that is near and dear to both of our hearts, why career services leaders should think like CMOs.

This is a concept we’ve been talking about for a couple of years now, and you actually wrote an article about it last year that got a lot of interest, and I’ll be sure to put a link to that in the show notes. But I knew I needed to have you on the podcast, so we can flesh this idea out a little bit more because I think, as you and I have both seen in our, what, four years here at uConnect, there are a lot of similarities between the work we do in marketing and the strategies career centers can use to engage more students and tell the career services story across campus and beyond.

But before I get into my questions, Ashley, is there anything else you would like to add about yourself, your background or your role at uConnect?

Ashley Safranski:

Yes. Thanks, Meredith. I think that I’d love to share that my background actually is in higher ed. I was a campus tour guide while in college for about three years. And I think, I’m curious if this resonates with the audience, like many people in higher ed, you get your start in higher ed in recruitment and admissions. So, I definitely went that path after graduation. I spent the first eight-ish years of my career in New Student Recruitment overseeing on-campus recruitment, tour guides, visits, a lot of the marketing initiatives for that.

So, that actually, for the audience, fun little fact, is how Meredith and I got connected. We go way back when Meredith was working in Central Marketing and Communications back at Washington State University. Go Cougs. And we got to collaborate a lot. And I think that’s really where, obviously, I became very keenly aware of Meredith’s talents and was excited that our paths stayed in touch throughout the years. And when I came to uConnect, I knew who needed to join me, and it has been a fun four years so far.

I would say that you and I genuinely do, I think, find ourselves constantly feeling like career services, these are our people, and just feeling a lot of alignment with, I think, a lot of the challenges that career teams face and also a lot of the opportunities to make a really meaningful impact at the business, or the organization, or the university. So, it has been really fun, and I think the background in higher ed, it has just been exciting to be able to continue to work right alongside career leaders in higher ed.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. It kind of feels like it’s a full circle thing for you. Started in higher ed. And yeah, like you mentioned, that’s where I started my marketing career after my brief stint in journalism. I went and worked at WSU in Central Marketing, and yeah, Ashley and I worked on a lot of recruitment marketing materials together, ton of fun projects. Yeah, that was what? 10 years ago now?

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Somehow.

Ashley Safranski:

And some of my most favorite memories are working on campus, and I miss it so much. There’s nothing quite like it, but this is also fun. So-

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, we’re campus adjacent is what I like to say.

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah, we are campus adjacent 100%.

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, love that. All right. Well, before I get into the more specific questions about our topic today, I do want to kick us off with the question I ask all of our guests here on the Pod. What does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Ashley Safranski:

Let me read the marketing website really quick. I think a different angle is I’ve really grown to think a lot about the opportunity for career services and just really what it truly means to have Career Everywhere on a college campus. And to me, it means career is embedded into all of the things that matter at an institution. It’s baked into or it’s at least highly relevant to all of those highest level priorities at an institution, anything that’s in the strategic plan. I think that is really the pinnacle of career being everywhere at a university. So, yeah, and I’m excited to dig into that. I think that’s a big theme of what we’re going to talk about.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, for sure. And I think we are seeing more of that in higher ed now, not enough yet, but it does seem like we’re seeing more of career-oriented pillars in strategic plans or even a few more chief career officers. So, it’ll be interesting to see how those trends continue over time.

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah, 100%. It’s exciting, but obviously a lot more to be done.

Meredith Metsker:

Yep, yep. All right. Well, now I would love to dig into our topic today, which is, again, about why career services leaders need to think like chief marketing officers, or CMOs for short. So, to set the stage a little bit, I think it would be helpful to talk about the parallels between marketing and career services. I know you have a lot of thoughts on this, so I will just let you take it away.

Ashley Safranski:

Meredith, you’ve heard me get riled up about this a lot, but I do think, foundationally, and whether this is a controversial perspective or not, I do think generally career services professionals tend to be okay with this kind of connection, but I think it is important to really take a step back and think about higher ed as a business.

Our university, it needs to operate, in at least some aspects, as a business. Budget and revenue are realities. We can’t ignore that. We need those things to remain viable and keep the doors open. Students are customers. They go through an evaluation process. They essentially need to be renewed year after year, until they persist.

So, I think that’s an important philosophy, if you will, to set the stage. I know that we’ll dig into that, but it certainly doesn’t mean that we’re not thinking of students as, really, humans. And there’s more to the experience than just graduation, but I do think this really helps center the conversation.

From the marketing and career services perspective, and I think I’m going to say some things that career leaders will definitely resonate with, marketing teams are often viewed as cost centers. Every org has to have one, and they just spend a lot of money, but what do they really do? Marketing teams are often severely under-resourced or understaffed. They’re seen as reactive support at a company.

So, that might jive. And that doesn’t mean that this needs to be the case, but I think that’s often a perception or sometimes that happens at different businesses. Luckily, not at UConnect. Marketing needs to be aligned to business objectives, and I think that’s where I’m excited to kind of dig in.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I’m sure maybe career centers can relate to this part, too, but sometimes marketing is seen as the team you just go for to ask for things, one-off things, and you end up being constantly, like you were saying, reactive. And you have a hard time taking a step back and thinking about bigger strategy because people are always asking you for things.

Ashley Safranski:

Oh, you’re always busy, your list. Those are just such major realities of marketing. You’re always doing all of the things. And I think sometimes there’s this mysterious, like, “Well, they’re doing a lot of things, but I’m not clear on how that’s driving impact in what we’re trying to do.”

So, I do think that’s a major opportunity. It doesn’t mean that we should accept that at face value. I think marketing leaders, just as career leaders, should be our north star to change that perception. And that, to me, is one of the biggest opportunities that can make such a meaningful impact on campus.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think that’s a nice segue to my next question. So, knowing all of this context about the parallels, the similarities, why do you think it’s important for career services leaders to think like CMOs?

Ashley Safranski:

I think, similar to marketing or CMOs, I think career services and career centers sit at a really interesting position at a college campus. I think there’s the element of being right in the middle of supply and demand between employers wanting to hire students. I think that’s really an interesting dynamic and an important dynamic.

I think that there’s a lot of opportunity where career services is an enabling function to a lot of other departments across campus, which is really similar to marketing. We’re really trying to communicate externally, drive alignment internally. We’re the keeper of the company’s story, and I think there’s something to be said about that with career services.

Generally, career teams are the keepers of these amazing student outcomes, student stories, the data. And in many ways, career leaders should be the best storytellers at an institution. If I were a marketing leader at a college campus right now, I would 100% be making the career services leader my best friend because they have access to these amazing stories and these amazing data points that tell the story that we need to be telling to prospective students, current students, alumni, employers, donors, et cetera.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, and they often hear about those stories first. So, who’s going to know when a student gets a dream internship or an amazing first job right out of college? It’s usually the career center.

Ashley Safranski:

Yep, absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, now the big question, Ashley, how can career services leaders think like CMOs?

Ashley Safranski:

Well, we’ll dig in to a lot of strategies, Meredith, of course, but I think, practically, first and foremost from my perspective, it’s just critical to think like a business operator. And I think, for career leaders, I mean, I struggle with this personally day to day, too. It’s like we’re all very focused on the million things on my team’s to-do list and just staying afloat sometimes and keeping your head above water, but thinking and caring deeply about the highest level objectives of the organization or the institution, and then aligning or building your strategy to those things.

I think it’s important to know that or really think about all initiatives are in service of something else. So I mentioned, earlier, usually always ties back to revenue in some capacity and, I think, not taking anything at face value and asking why, like, “What is this really in service of?”

So, there’s an experiential learning initiative from the president. That’s fantastic, and certainly career services is going to be major driver in supporting that and operationalizing that. But understanding, “why is this an initiative? Why is this important to the president?” I think helps if it… Is it aligned to retention? And I think it allows you to really take it one step further and start thinking more like a business operator.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. Yeah, and I know that kind of ties back to what you were talking about earlier. I want to be clear, though. We’re not discounting the value of higher education in terms of personal growth and education, preparing future leaders, all of that, but there still is that reality that a university needs revenue in order to operate. And career services leaders, I think, who can understand that and really tie their work to that, not only will they likely be more successful, but hopefully they’ll become the president’s best friend.

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah, absolutely. The other thing I’ll add, too, is like, okay, so you understand the high level objectives, and you care about them deeply, of course. Now it’s like, how do you execute? And I think that’s always an interesting thing for really any business leader, of course.

But as a marketing leader or a career leader, how do you take what matters most to the institution, develop a strategy that aligns to that, and then make sure that your team is well set up to execute against that? And they understand what their roles and responsibilities and, “Why are we doing these things? And how do they impact our work and the students?” but my boss, and my boss’s boss, and my boss’s boss’s boss, what kind of the chain there. So, I do think there’s a lot there from strategy all the way down to execution and just the tactics that you dig into.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And then, of course, we’ll probably talk more about this later, but there’s, as we say, the difference between external marketing, so the marketing you’re doing to ideal customers or students or employer partners, however you want to look at it, and then also the internal marketing, telling your story within your institution so everybody knows what you’re about, what you’re working on, what you offer, how it ties to top level goals, all of that good stuff. So, like you’re saying, yeah, it’s really about being a master storyteller.

Ashley Safranski:

Yep. I love that.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. All right. Well, now I would love to dig in to some of the specific strategies. I know we have a handful that we want to get to today. Let’s start with the first one, which is audience segmentation, very important. What would you say that entails? And how can career services leaders apply it?

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah. For any marketers out there or just really anyone, I think you’re sitting here going, “Duh, audience segmentation is an important thing.” So, it’s certainly not a novel concept, but I want to dig into this just a little bit further because at uConnect, some may be surprised to know that we’re an incredibly small marketing team. There’s three of us on our team right now. And for a really long time, for the first three years, really, it was just Meredith and I in marketing.

I mention that because I think it’s important to really consider capacity constraints and resourcing when you think about segmentation. Obviously, we’d love to reach every very niche audience or student segment, but I think that’s an important consideration that everyone should take into account, is like, “What can we reasonably tackle?” And there’s certainly a lot of strategies and content that need to resonate to the masses, and I think finding that balance.

I wanted to highlight that because I think that’s just a critical consideration. It’s easy to be like, “We’re going to ascend to this, this, this, this, and this group,” and you’re a team of one or two people. That’s just probably not realistic.

For career centers, I thought a lot about this. Of course, the very obvious audience segmentation is like first year, second year, third year, senior, employers, et cetera. So there’s some very, very obvious or academic areas of interest, obvious areas of audience segmentation.

But I want to go back to, how does this tie to institutional priorities? Think about the full scope of your audience and then how that relates back to what matters at the institution. Is enrollment a number one priority at your institution? Okay, so if it is, I’m thinking, “Do I have content, and maybe am I speaking to prospective students and families? Is my audience segmentation lined up to what matters at the institution?” So, that’s one.

The other one that I think everyone is often doing, but you think about it in terms of strategy, are you a small team that needs to really scale the work of your team, and you’re trying to make sure career is embedded into the campus ecosystem so that it’s lived out? It’s Career Everywhere? It’s lived out when you’re not in the room? Then I think segmenting your audience to make sure faculty and staff and academic advisors, the broader campus community, even outside of students, is a key segment in your audience.

But beyond that, I think audience segmentation is definitely really critical. But I’m curious what you think, Meredith. I know this is something that you think about often.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. So, in terms of segmentation from the content perspective, I’m not only thinking about who I’m trying to reach, but also where I’m trying to reach them. So, when I was developing our content strategy, for example, one of the things we came up with was the Career Everywhere newsletter goes out every week on Thursday mornings. And I picked an email newsletter because I know career services leaders are looking at email. They are in their inboxes a lot, communicating with each other, with others across campus, with students, so I knew that that was one place I could likely reach them.

In terms of social media, we have all of the social media platforms, but we zero in on LinkedIn. And that’s because, again, I know that that’s where our ideal segment, career services leader in higher ed, I know they spend a lot of time there because they’re coaching students on how to use LinkedIn.

So, that’s how I think about it from the content perspective. It’s not only who, but where are they?

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah, absolutely an important part of that consideration.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. All right. Anything else to add about audience segmentation?

Ashley Safranski:

Nope, I think we’re good.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. Let’s move on to the second strategy. This is a personal favorite of mine. I can geek out about this all day, but content as a service. So, what does that entail? And then how can career services leaders apply that?

Ashley Safranski:

Yes. First, I think a big part of our marketing approach, and I’m hopeful and optimistic that our listeners and just anyone interacting with the Career Everywhere content feels this, but a big part of our north star, as we developed our strategy, was we want to provide value. So, we want to make sure that no matter when you’re engaging with us, where you’re engaging with us, whether you are a uConnect customer or not, you’re always finding value. And that means, hopefully, you don’t mind having us around. And when you are ready, and you do want to talk to us, you know where to find us.

So, that was a major reason, I think, that kind of belief, why, Meredith, you were the number one hire right after I started here at uConnect a little over four years ago, was how can we add value? Well, we need to do that through content.

I’m going to flip the question right back over to you. I’m curious, how do you think of content as a service, and expanding on always adding value?

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, yeah. All right, digging in. I’m ready to dig in here. Yeah, so like you said, I really started from a place of wanting to provide genuine value and genuinely educational content. I didn’t want to create marketing that just felt like it was really overly promotional or fluffy or anything like that. I wanted to really, yeah, just lead with value. I guess I started by wanting to know the audience. So, knowing what topics are of interest. What formats perform the best? Who do they like hearing from? Where do they go to get information.

And I’ll just say that my first year at uConnect was really a lot of experimentation. That was 2022. It was before we launched the podcast, the newsletter, the conference, the community. That first year was just trying different things, trying different article topics, experimenting with interviewing career services leaders, and I learned a lot that first year about what worked and what didn’t.

So, then we launched the podcast and the newsletter in early 2023. We did the conference that year. We launched the digital Career Everywhere Community in 2024. And again, all of that stemmed from a genuine desire to be helpful, to educate the audience, to tackle challenges that we knew they were having.

And then, in terms of being valuable, it was also really important to me to take a journalistic approach to our content strategy. As I mentioned earlier, I come from a journalism background. I was a newspaper reporter for several years, got my degree in journalism. So, I knew, coming into this role, that I don’t come from a career services background. I have worked in higher ed but not career services, so I couldn’t pretend that I was a subject matter expert.

So, I wanted to, again, take a journalistic approach and go directly to the source, go right to the people who are experts, so career services leaders, and find ways to interview them to get their perspective, to really facilitate sharing of their expertise with the audience. So, that was another thing that was going through my head.

I’ll also say, in terms of developing like a content strategy, as you mentioned, we have a very small team. I’m the only content person here at uConnect, so I knew I couldn’t do everything. I had to pick a couple things I could do really well, some formats that worked well for me, personally, and then just optimize and refined from there. So, that’s sort of how I was thinking about developing the strategy.

And then, as any career leader will know, too, using data to refine that strategy over time, so seeing what topics are resonating, what formats and mediums are resonating. And that could be the quantitative data, like your page views, downloads, video views, open rates, all that good stuff. But it’s often also qualitative, like people approaching the uConnect booth at conferences and saying how much they love the podcast, or they get the newsletter, or expressing interest in our product because they have loved our content and community so much. That’s also a very valuable set of data, as well.

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah. I’ll just highlight, I think you do that exceptionally well. And it’s probably why I was finally invited to the podcast. It’s looking at the data to say, “Hey, there was a lot of interest in this article from last year, and I think we should continue that conversation,” and using small data points to inform the rest of your strategy.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, your article was one of our best performing last year.

Ashley Safranski:

I was going to add that.

Meredith Metsker:

So, it’s a no-brainer. We got to expand on this.

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah. And then I think you’ve done an exceptional job of really the capacity element, which I know our friends in career services have to take into consideration. And how do you show up consistently? Those are all… Like it’s easy to throw a blog post or two out there, but how do you show up day in and day out? And I think that’s an important piece of just staying top of mind for everyone.

From the career services perspective, I know not everyone can have a Meredith, and so there’s a lot of considerations to how do we provide value and how do we think of content as a service, to stay in front of our audience of students or staff, faculty, lawyers, whoever. So, a lot of considerations around like, “Who do we have on our team? Can we bring in others from across the campus community as subject matter experts?” which is something, Meredith, again, you’ve highlighted with the podcast. It’s like, “I’m not the subject matter expert on this.” Although after hundreds of interviews, you probably very well are now. How can you bring in other people to help contribute to this content flywheel?

And then lastly, you may be a team of one. We work with a lot of schools that are teams of one, or teams of two, or three, or whatever, small teams, and don’t have a lot of capacity to create that. Use the tools and resources at your advantage. If you’re a uConnect customer, you’re using a lot of the blogs and resources that are baked into your platform. So, you’re looking like you’re a team of 10 or that you do have a Meredith on your staff because you’re constantly showing up, and you’re constantly making sure that students and staff have access to fresh up-to-date content, consistently. So, I think there’s lots of different ways to get there, but the showing up with value and seeing content as a service is a really important one.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, for sure. And I just want to dig into what you were just saying, that you don’t necessarily have to create content yourself. There are a lot of great resources out there that you can refer students to. Or again, like Ashley said, if you have the Virtual Career Center from uConnect, there’s a lot of content you can pull right into the Virtual Career Center, and then it really just becomes about distributing that content. So, using what you already have, finding ways to get it in front of students, whether that’s social media, or emails, or however you usually reach them. Yeah, there’s a lot of existing content, so don’t feel like you have to create all the time.

But then, again, maybe you have a large team or you have a lot of student workers, and you want to try developing a content program, or you want to give those students experience with content creation. In which case, you can start a podcast, like ours, or a video series, or regular articles, or reports, or white papers, or social media series, things like that. There’s lots of options if you do want to create. So, really, again, just depends on your team, the skill sets you have at your disposal, your capacity.

Ashley, do you think it would be helpful if I shared what our content flywheel looks like?

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah, I think you should definitely give a quick overview of that, [inaudible 00:28:09].

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. So, yeah, I’ll just, audience, I’ll walk you through the process in case this is something you want to pursue, even if you have a small team. Again, I’m a team of one here.

The way I think about it is, again, this kind of self-sustaining flywheel, or, often, we’ll call it a content waterfall, if you want a different metaphor. But it always starts with a pillar piece of content, so one major piece of content from which you can pull other smaller pieces.

For us, our pillar piece of content is this podcast and we record audio and video, so we have twice as many assets to work with. From each episode, we’re pulling multiple video clips for social media. We have the audio episode that goes on all the major podcasting platforms, a video episode that goes on YouTube. If the episode performs really well, we’ll write an article about it, which again lends to more social media posts and it gives us a ton of content to promote on LinkedIn and our newsletter in the Career Everywhere Community.

That’s what I mean by this flywheel, this content waterfall. It doesn’t have to be a ton of major pillars of content. It can just be one from which you’re pulling a lot of other pieces. That’s really the most efficient way to do it if you are very resource constrained. That’s just one example.

Ashley Safranski:

I like it. And you do it well. So-

Meredith Metsker:

Thank you. It’s like a well-oiled machine now.

Ashley Safranski:

No doubt. Meredith is on business with this stuff. She’s well-oiled machine.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m standing on business. Is that what the youths say?

Ashley Safranski:

That probably sounds more right.

Meredith Metsker:

I don’t-

Ashley Safranski:

And my daughter listens to this podcast. She will roast me for getting that wrong.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, yeah, I just used standing on business and youths in the same sentence, so I don’t know what that says about me. All right, well I think we’ve talked about the content side of things enough, so let’s move on to the third strategy, which is creating brand evangelists. So, Ashley, to you, what does that mean? And what could it look like for a career center?

Ashley Safranski:

What does it mean? I think creating brand evangelists or every marketer’s dream. You want people who are out there talking about your brand on your behalf, and they’re speaking well about you behind your back. I just picked that up from Amy Poehler’s new podcast.

Meredith Metsker:

I love her podcast.

Ashley Safranski:

We’ll speak well behind each other’s backs.

Yes. You want people out there speaking well behind your back. And I think that’s the big north star, as I keep saying, for marketing teams, is, “How do we create our brand evangelists?” At uConnect, we do that a lot through Career Everywhere, and we hope that… Again, going back to we lead with value, and hopefully people appreciate some of the content that we’re putting in there. And they will tell their friends and family. Even though it’s not about uConnect, which is totally fine and very intentional. They’re speaking well behind our back and hopefully bringing more people into Meredith’s content ecosystem. That’s kind of the big objective.

From a career team perspective, I think it’s not a new concept, by any stretch of the imagination. There are so many schools doing amazing things with developing like Career Champion programs. I think that’s a really just awesome and effective strategy. I think that’s living out Career Everywhere so well. How do we help bring others into the fold and help them evangelize our work? We know that there are so many people on campus that students interact with day to day, and they’re not always going to come to the career center, for whatever reason. So, how can we make sure that those individuals who students are interacting with can speak well about us behind our backs. So, they know what we do. They know about the resources we have. They know where to refer students to. And I think that’s a big… And they’re proud to talk about it. They really are like, “Our career center is awesome, and the career coaches are amazing,” and they’re really referring people back to you. And I think that’s the big objective here.

I will say that, of course, I’m going to tie it back to, “How do we think about institutional priorities here?” once again. So, as we think about creating those brand evangelists or Career Champions in this context, okay, “How do I align that to what matters most at the institution?” So, again, if it’s enrollment, it’s like a big theme these days. If enrollment is a big priority, then I probably want to make sure that admissions and recruitment, tour guides, recruiters, et cetera, they’re brand evangelists. They know all about the work that we’re doing. They know how we support prospective students. They know how we support students throughout their entire journey and post-graduation, maybe in some instances.

So, I think there’s always an opportunity to tie everything back to the institutional priority. If retention is a big goal, then how do we make sure academic advisors and faculty staff. If there’s really big fundraising objectives on campus, which is really common, how do we make sure our Advancement team knows about all of the ways that we’re supporting students and leading to great outcomes and doing amazing things out there in society? So, always an opportunity to tie it back to institutional priorities, and especially with creating evangelists.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, those are all really great examples and pieces of advice there. I think a key part of that is having a place to refer all of these evangelists to, like one place or a couple. In our case, we have the Career Everywhere Community, newsletter, podcast, conference are probably the four main places, but a lot of our brand evangelists or our champions, they know exactly where to refer people to. And it’s my favorite thing in the world when I see multiple people from the same career center joining the Career Everywhere Community because a colleague recommended it to them. Like, yes, that’s exactly what we’re hoping for.

I think it’s the same when you’re a career services leader working with evangelists on your own campus. Do you have a central hub with all of your resources and information that you can direct folks to? If you’re a uConnect customer, maybe that’s your virtual career center. If you’re not, maybe it’s your website or some other… Wherever you have all of your resources. I think that’s really important part of building an evangelist program is that they know exactly where to go, where to refer people to, where to get more information.

Ashley Safranski:

I would just say, to echo you, Meredith, that that idea of being on 24/7 and making sure that all of your stakeholders can access really the full spectrum of everything that you’re doing, all of the resources and information and the data instantly and when they need it, I think it’s just the way in which we’re all accustomed to operating these days. I think that only helps you create these brand evangelists even more deeply.

Meredith Metsker:

Yep. Yeah, for sure, and really just create your brand, period. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think we’ve covered that one, so I want to move on to strategy number four, driving cross-functional alignment.

So, Ashley, you are super good at this here at uConnect, so I would love to hear more about what this means to you and what it could look like for a career center.

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah, I think it ties back to what we were talking about earlier where career teams, like marketing teams, sit at a really interesting part of the organization, very central. With that, there’s two ways it can go. It can mean that, therefore, everyone just dumps onto you, and you’re just getting reactionary, like, “Hey, I need this. I need that,” or you can be the driver. You can be the reactive, “Okay, yes, I’m going to answer all of these requests and just try to keep my head above water,” or you can say, “We have this opportunity to really drive things forward.”

The reality is that marketing, like career services, is we have to be the ultimate team players. Sometimes that means being really comfortable with not getting the credit. I think hey, in business, it’s sales. Got a sale, and we’re really cheering on sales, and Customer Success is doing amazing things with the customers that they work with. That is amazing. And I think, for me, personally, I love that. I love being our team’s biggest cheerleader and champion in the work of everyone at the company. But to be kind of this ultimate team player and not in a reactive way, I think a big opportunity, and I think this is highly relevant to career leaders.

And in fact, I think there’s been conversations about this in past podcast episodes, is it’s critical that you know what other people care about. What do your colleagues across campus, what are their biggest problems? What are they trying to solve for? What are their KPIs? How are they measured? And then think… You like, “How can I help you? How can I help you achieve your goals?” And I think career services, similar to marketing, is extremely well positioned to help so many different functions across campus achieve their goals.

So, I think that’s really where it centers is having this appreciation for the reality that, hey, we sit at the center of things. We still have the opportunity to be major drivers. So, I think a lot about, like at uConnect, how can we be a marketing-driven organization? How can we be a marketing-led organization? And I think the same can be said for institutions. How can we be a career-led institution? And how can we be enablers of all of these different functions? That’s really how I think it.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, this makes me think of something Josh Domitrovich, of PennWest, said in a recent episode where he was talking about making his career center, the center of the spider web at PennWest. Like they are at the center of things. They are the connector, the facilitator between academics, employers, Advancement, Student Affairs, career, all these other things. They are the ones that are sitting in the middle and can really impact all of those areas of the institution. And he was talking about that in terms of how can they be most helpful, but also how to make sure the career center is sustainable. Again, in the business sense, how do you make sure that, yeah, your function is sustainable?

Ashley Safranski:

And it’s really hard. Right?

Meredith Metsker:

It is.

Ashley Safranski:

We go back to a lot of these prevalent themes, which is marketing teams, like career teams, you’re often so under-resourced, yet you sit at the middle. So, you weigh the challenge, really, of there’s so much opportunity for us to support and impact so many different teams and functions across the organization and students and upwards to executive leadership, but we’re only one team.

So, then it goes back to developing your strategy with constraints. Are you properly resourced with the right infrastructure, tools, technology? Or have you developed a content flywheel or waterfall? Have you thought about segmentation? All of these things really play into developing a strategy so that you can effectively have great cross-functional alignment.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Speaking about the alignment, so… I said this earlier, but I think you, personally, are really good at this. I’ve seen it here in action at uConnect over the years. How do you go about understanding what other folks in the company, what they want, what’s important to them? And I guess, also, relating that to a career services leader who’s trying to figure out who to reach out to, what’s important to them and so on?

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah, I think starting with, well, I’ll say I’m fortunate at uConnect to have a seat at the table, and that makes a difference. So, I have access to what matters most at the company. And I think understanding, “What are our highest level objectives?” as a company or an institution, is the first place you should start. So, like, “What are we trying to do in 2026? What are we ultimately trying to achieve?” Then, the next step down, what are the institutional initiatives? So, what is the institution trying to drive forward in service of those usually revenue related goals and objectives?

So, I think that helps inform. So, if I’m a career leader, and I’m going to the VP of enrollment or the chief enrollment officer, I’m going in already having, like, “Hey, I’m standing on business,” Meredith, like you said earlier. I know what our goals are. I know that enrollment is our number one priority, as an institution. I know how many students we enrolled last year. I know what we’re trying to achieve this year and I’m coming into the conversation with, “Here’s how I can help.”

And I think, when you go in proactively, like, “Hey, I’ve thought a lot about this, and I have some ideas.” And, of course, I’m not trying to dump things for you to think about, but when you go into conversations and it’s like, “What do you need from me?” it’s like mental energy. For the person receiving that question, it’s like, “Okay, let me think.” And like, yes, I would love your help. But it takes a lot of thought and just mental cycles to be like, “How can career services help me, when you’re already putting out a million fires and you’re so busy and you have all of these other asks of you?”

So, I think going into conversations with a lot of empathy, like, “Hey, I know, generally, what matters to you. I know what you’re trying to achieve.” And obviously they’re going to fill in the gaps. “And here are some ideas that I have for how we can collaborate or how I can support your work,” is kind of how I try.

But, also, just being really empathetic, too. I think being someone that… I’m a big believer in this. It’s like, just being easy to work with goes a long way in creating productive and positive partnerships. Being someone that… Like I genuinely enjoy working with Meredith. She’s strategic in thought, but does… You don’t have to be a wallflower or just roll over. I think you’re coming to the table aligned and just enjoyable to work with. I think that goes a long way.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes it’s just about showing up. This makes me think back to, gosh, one of our first episodes, with Junior Delgado of Westfield State University. He was talking about how he goes to athletic events. He goes to basketball games. And he is showing up because he knows that if he wants to make inroads with someone in athletics or with coaches, he will be there. He’ll go introduce himself after a game. So, sometimes it’s, yeah, showing up in different ways, not necessarily with always making an ask, but still just showing up, letting them know you’re there. Something as simple as that can make a big difference.

Ashley Safranski:

100%, and I think, for me, I’m like, I want to be the person that my colleagues go, “Oh, I have an idea. I’m going to go reach out to Ashley.” I want them to be excited to work with me and my team. And I think that’s an easy way to just drive that cross-functional alignment.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yep, agreed. Like I said, you do that really well here. And people are genuinely happy to work with you and to bounce ideas off of you.

Ashley Safranski:

Appreciate that.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. Well, now I would like to move on to our fifth and final strategy, and it’s a very important one. We have touched on it a few times already, but it’s about tying your work to top-line goals. You are obviously very passionate about this one, so I would love if you could just maybe dig in a little bit more. Talk about what it means to you and how career services leaders can apply it.

Ashley Safranski:

I think a big opportunity to do this and to tie your work to top-line goals. And again, I want to highlight there are so many amazing thought leaders who speak to this really well. I think Rebekah Paré, my friend Rebekah, has [inaudible 00:45:28] to this exceptionally well, consistently. And I always, like on LinkedIn, I’m like, “Man, we are like soul sisters. We’re just out here thinking about the same stuff.”

But be annoying a little bit. Ask why to all of these things. Even I encourage, if you’re not the leader of your department, and you’re a career coach, and you’re given this task or this, like, “Hey, we’re doing this initiative?” “Well, why are we doing that?” It’s always, again, it’s always in service of something else, and there’s always an opportunity to tie your work to the highest level objectives. It’s like maybe a big tall ladder to get there, but it’s always there. And I do think the more that you understand that and can connect that, the easier it is to talk about it.

It’s just a reality. It might be an annoying reality, but the more that you can understand those institutional priorities as a leader and that you can convey it downwards to your team, the… I don’t want to say easier because it’s never going to be easy. And I am not naive enough to think that it’s ever going to be easy. But you will have a more efficient time, probably, getting buy-in from senior leadership, getting that seat at the table. You’re going to be invited to more meetings.

I think our friend, Josh Domitrovich from PennWest, who you referenced earlier, has done this exceptionally, exceptionally well. I love… He’s been a speaker at our conference for the past few years, and I always admire how he sits at that intersection of, “Okay, I know what matters at the institution, but I’m the leader of the career team. And how does this impact the work that we do?” And he can translate… I think that guy could probably tie every single initiative that they’re doing at PennWest in the career center to a top-line goal.

I mean, he said it. There was a great clip earlier. It’s like, “If you’re not impacting enrollment, retention or outcomes, don’t come knocking.” And I think that’s just such a smart mantra for, really, anyone working in higher ed, but career services, for sure, of everything should be tracked back to that.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. Yeah, I was thinking back to Josh’s presentation at the Career Everywhere Conference where he was not only tying career center work to institutional goals, it was career center goals, department goals, institution goals. So, he had this three-tier way that he was looking at it and how they all tied and worked with each other.

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah, and [inaudible 00:49:02]-

Meredith Metsker:

So, shout out to Josh.

Ashley Safranski:

Yes. I mean, Josh is doing incredible work at PennWest. But right, again, it’s like there may be a lot of tiers to the ladder, to like, “Hey, from this one workshop that I’m hosting for a specific class,” to, “Here are the university’s retention goals,” but there’s a thread. And I think as long as there’s always a throughline or a thread and there’s thoughtfulness behind it, I think just that you’re going to have an easier time speaking to things.

Meredith Metsker:

Yep, absolutely. I think that’s a great place to wrap up that strategy, unless you have anything else to add on that front.

Ashley Safranski:

No. I want to highlight, too, Meredith, we host a podcast at uConnect. And as you can imagine, it is not always the cleanest, straightforward thing to measure podcast to top-line business objectives.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s not easy. No.

Ashley Safranski:

And Meredith does a great job. There’s a lot that can be tracked. And I just want to highlight, too… I had a boss that shared this with me years ago, and it always stuck with me. It’s like, not everything that can be measured matters, and not everything that matters can be measured. So, I do want to highlight that. There’s just some things that you do because, in your gut, you know it’s the right thing.

And that’s where you really rely on a lot of qualitative data, the people who come up to you, and certainly it’s going to happen. You might have someone who comes up to you at an alumni event, and they’re like, “I came to the Career Fair as a freshman,” or whatever, a sophomore, or, “I had this one career appointment, and it totally changed the trajectory of my life,” or, “I got my first job because of that,” or whatever.

That doesn’t always show up in spreadsheets and dashboards and analytics, and I never want to lose sight of that. It’s like the best part of most jobs. And I would have to imagine a big reason why so many of our career partners are so dedicated to the work. I think that there just has to be a tremendous amount of fulfillment in that.

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, yeah, I have to imagine so. Just speaking from my own perspective, yes, of course, great download numbers, breaking records or whatever, that’s all awesome, very validating, but it’s the personal notes or hearing feedback from our team when they go out to SoACE or MPACE or whatever, and they’re like, “Yeah, we had so many people stop by the booth and say that they’ve listened to the podcast. They’ve listened to every episode,” or, “They read the newsletter. They’re in the community.” That’s what keeps you going.

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah, absolutely. Love that.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. Well, Ashley, you’ve offered a lot of great insights already, but is there any additional advice you’d give to career services leaders who want to think more like CMOs?

Ashley Safranski:

I think career teams… And I feel this in my core, having had the privilege to work alongside career services for the last four years, and I think especially so with my background in enrollment and having that experience, really shapes, I think, how I think about just the future of higher ed and the opportunities that exist.

My advice is, you deserve a seat at the table. You deserve a seat at the table. Your institution needs you to have one. So, if you don’t have one, please, try to figure out how to get one. Bring your own chair. I think someone said that in a podcast episode with Rhonda.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that was Rhonda Gifford, also from PennWest.

Ashley Safranski:

Rhonda [inaudible 00:52:37], love that. Bring your own chair. Just find a way to get into the room. And I think that the more that you can do some of these things that we’ve talked about, hopefully it makes it there’s less friction in doing that. But that would be my advice, is keep fighting the good fight. I think higher ed and the students and just the longevity of that field, we need you in there.

Meredith Metsker:

And it feels like now is the time, like maybe we’re having a moment.

Ashley Safranski:

I feel like career services is having a moment. I’m with you.

Meredith Metsker:

Yep. It’ll be exciting to watch in the future. That’s for sure. All right. Well, Ashley, is there anything else you would like to add before I start closing this out?

Ashley Safranski:

No, but this was fun, and I was so nervous. I’ve listened to, now… How many episodes of the podcast have there been?

Meredith Metsker:

84.

Ashley Safranski:

[inaudible 00:53:31].

Meredith Metsker:

You might be 85.

Ashley Safranski:

I might be 85, a big milestone for us.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah.

Ashley Safranski:

But it was really fun, and I was nervous just because of the amazing career leaders and professionals who have done the podcast before me. It’s pretty intimidating, and it was just really fun. So, thanks for finally inviting me.

Meredith Metsker:

You’re welcome. Feels good.

Ashley Safranski:

No shade is thrown.

Meredith Metsker:

It was great to finally have you on the show, and you did great.

Ashley Safranski:

Thank you.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, Ashley, if people would like to connect with you or learn more from you, where is a good place for them to do that?

Ashley Safranski:

LinkedIn is the place to be, as you said, Meredith, we’re all in on LinkedIn.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And Ashley posts all the time, and her posts are objectively awesome, so be sure to go and follow her there.

All right. So, I’m going to close this out with this answer a question, leave a question segment I like to do at the end of every episode. I’ll ask you a question that our last guest left for you, and then you will leave a question for the next guest.

So, our last guest was the amazing Dr. Sharon Belden Castonguay of Wesleyan, and she left this question for you. What has been the most impactful use case of AI on your office’s operations?

Ashley Safranski:

Love Sharon. Love the question, so I’m so excited to get Sharon’s question. This is a really good one. I mentioned this earlier in our conversation. We’re a really small marketing team, and AI has… Embracing AI, even just good old ChatGPT, I think has completely unlocked the way in which we work, of course. Of course, there’s so many opportunities for efficiency, but I feel like we can do the work of five because we’re just quicker.

I’ve always thought, like, “Gosh, there’s so many things I wish we could do on our team.” There’s never a shortage of ideas. I think you and I, forever, we’re constantly sending Slacks, like this idea, that idea. And I think that the just leaning into AI has allowed us to capitalize on a lot more of those ideas because we can be a bit more efficient.

And always just looking, every day, just to get a little bit better, and I think using AI helps us do that. And I’m not shy to talk about it. I just think that, for our small teams in career services, and those small teams look for those quick wins. It’s definitely unlocked a lot of opportunity for me, personally, and just as a team. I think, Meredith, you might agree with that.

Meredith Metsker:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it has definitely helped me move faster with some things. And I will say that the way we’re using it is we’re not outsourcing thought. We’re not outsourcing ideas to ChatGPT. Instead, it helps us just move faster.

Ashley Safranski:

It helps us bring it to life [inaudible 00:56:33].

Meredith Metsker:

Yes, yeah.

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah, absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

Yep.

Ashley Safranski:

So, I love that question and definitely a good one.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes. Thank you, Sharon, for that question. All right, Ashley, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Ashley Safranski:

This may have been the hardest part to prepare for.

Meredith Metsker:

It always is.

Ashley Safranski:

I have a feeling you hear that a lot. There’s so many different directions you can go, but I am, honestly, super curious with just the way and this velocity in which things are really changing in higher ed and in career services. I would love to know, what’s a common belief or common practice in career services that you’ve changed your mind about over time?

Meredith Metsker:

Oh. That’s a good one.

Ashley Safranski:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s a really interesting one.

Ashley Safranski:

Yep. So, I’ll be eagerly awaiting that answer.

Meredith Metsker:

I believe it will be the team at University of Central Missouri who’s going to get that question.

Ashley Safranski:

All right, I’ll be listening.

Meredith Metsker:

All right, great. Ashley, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. This was so fun. It’s like just talking to a friend on the Pod.

Ashley Safranski:

Absolutely. Thanks, Meredith.

Meredith Metsker:

So much fun. Yeah, I had a great time. I think we covered a lot, and hopefully the audience will take away a lot from our marketing strategy. So, just thank you again for taking the time.

Ashley Safranski:

You bet.