5 Ways to Measure Career Center Effectiveness

Rebekah Paré:

When I think about the effectiveness for our internal stakeholders, I’ll think about five areas. There are many more, but we’ll start with these five big ones, I think. One is strategic orientation. Is your center leading or reacting? The second is institutional alignment. So are you helping the institution itself achieve its goals? Academic integration. This is a hot topic these days. Are you bridging the gap between academics and career? The fourth is the student reach and service design. Who are you serving and how are you serving them? And five is communications and influence. Can others clearly articulate your value?

Now, I don’t know, I could talk all day about employer engagement and alumni relations, and I do evaluate those activities as well. But today I really wanted to stay focused on those internal dynamics that really help shape a career center’s value proposition.

Meredith Metsker:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker, and today I am joined by Rebekah Paré. A longtime career services leader in higher ed, and the founder and chief strategy officer at Paré Consulting. Thank you for being here, Rebekah.

Rebekah Paré:

Thanks Meredith. I’m thrilled to be with you today.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m so glad to have you and I’m excited to talk to you today about how career centers can measure their effectiveness. As we both know, this is a very hot topic for our friends in career services, especially as more internal and external stakeholders are really focusing on career outcomes and higher ed ROI. And personally, I mean, I think more and more attention will be shifting towards career services in the coming months and years, which is a good thing, of course, but it also means career leaders need to be ready to prove their impact and prove what they’re doing for students.

So I know this is something that you specialize in, Rebekah, with all of your past experience in higher ed career services directly, and then now in your work as a consultant who works with career centers across the country on issues just like this. So excited to dig in with you today. Before I get into my specific questions, is there anything else you would like to add about yourself, your background, or your consulting work?

Rebekah Paré:

I just thought I would share for your audience before I moved into career services, I spent a number of years in academic affairs working as an instructor, academic advisor, a leader in academic policy and degree completion efforts. And so I think that’s a background that’s helped give me a little bit more of a broad perspective on student success. And I think something that now I lean on a lot as I think about how can institutions really leverage their services as a strategic asset. So I’m not just a student service over there on the corner. And so today when I’m not consulting with universities on these issues, I do work with career center leaders one on one and in my career services accelerator, which is a group program focused on leadership and advocacy.

Meredith Metsker:

So you live and breathe all of this, all the time. Awesome. Well, again, before I get into the specific questions about our topic, I do want to kick us off with a question I ask all of our guests here on the pod, and that’s what does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Rebekah Paré:

It’s funny because I’ve been on your podcast before and I was thinking, “Wow, I wonder how I answered this the last time and how have I continued to work in this area?” My thoughts on this evolve, but I love this concept of Career Everywhere, and when I think about it, I think about this idea that career development is really not just confined to a single office, a single appointment or event, but embedded across the entire student experience. So every student encounters career guidance, not just those who opt in. Every department sees pro readiness as part of their mission and they understand their role.

Every moment in the student journey, we can think about that as moving students in to the university and through the university experience, the college experience. And how every moment is really reinforcing purpose for students, helping them with skill building and helping make real-world connections to what it is that they’re learning and why that matters. And so I guess just we’ll simply put, career is a shared responsibility and a campus-wide opportunity.

Meredith Metsker:

I like the way you put that. I mean that’s the ideal state. That’s what we’re working towards with all of these podcast episodes and hopefully we’ll see more of that kind of career ecosystem throughout institutions here in the coming years. So now I would love to dig into our topic today, which is again, how career services teams can measure their effectiveness. And to help us set the stage for the specific strategies that you’ll share later, can you first talk a little bit about how you define effectiveness?

Rebekah Paré:

This is a really important question, I think. When we talk about effectiveness, the first question I always ask is effective according to whom? And I think one reality that we face as career services leaders is that different stakeholders define our success differently. Your students, the faculty, the campus partners, your vice president or provost, your president, they’re all looking for something fairly unique. And if you serve them all the same way, you’re going to inevitably miss the mark. So when we think about our stakeholders, I think about them in two different categories. We have internal stakeholders and we have our external stakeholders. So internal includes our students and our faculty and campus leadership. And then when I think about external, I think about our families, our graduates, our alumni, community organizations we partner with, employers.

And each group really brings its own set of expectations and needs. And as a career services leader, I think your job is to really understand those needs and then design your work to meet them strategically. So when I’m brought in, my presidents, deans, vice presidents, or whomever to evaluate a career center, I don’t just look at programming or participation numbers. I ask this broader question, is the career center optimized for impact? And so in this episode today, I really wanted to focus on how do we define and evaluate effectiveness from that lens of our internal stakeholders because that’s where I see the career center leaders asking for the most support. And so when I think about then effectiveness for our internal stakeholders, I’ll think about five areas. There are many more, but we’ll start with these five big ones, I think.

One is strategic orientation. Is your center leading or reacting? The second is institutional alignment. So are you helping the institution itself achieve its goals? Academic integration, this is a hot topic these days. Are you bridging the gap between academics and career? The fourth is the student reach and service design. Who are you serving and how are you serving them? And five is communications and influence. Can others clearly articulate your value? Now, I don’t know, I could talk all day about employer engagements and alumni relations, and I do evaluate those activities as well. But today I really want to just stay focused on those internal dynamics that really help shape a career center’s value proposition.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m excited to dig into all five of those. Those are all great. And especially the number three, the academic integration, as you said, that is a big key topic these days and we’ve talked about that on a couple other episodes of folks who are trying to do that. So I’m excited to dig in. So with that said, let’s do it. Let’s dig into each of these five strategies. So I want to start with that first one’s, strategic orientation. Can you tell me more about what that entails and how career leaders can implement that?

Rebekah Paré:

So I think this is, again, strategic orientation is really about whether the center is leading or just reacting. So I think it’s a couple of the things that I’ll look for are do you have defined goals and key progress indicators? What are you focused on? Is that clearly articulated? Who helped shape those goals? This is where we get into the needs. Who shaped those goals? Is it just your own team? Is it very internally inward focused? Or did you engage your deans and maybe other senior leaders or students consulted in this process? Who’s participated in shaping those goals? And I think just as important, are those goals aligned? Are the goals that you’re sitting with aligned with institutional priorities?

And I know we’ll talk about that in a minute. So too often I see career centers operating with a real well-meaning list of initiatives that don’t actually connect to what the university cares the most about, like enrollment, student success, retention, workforce readiness. So here I’m looking for how does the career center define its success? What does success look like to you? And whether that definition of success rather is anchored in a campus-wide strategy. Are you part of the whole? Institutions love silos, so we tend to fit in little corners. How are we thinking bigger and broader? And so when the center is truly strategic, it’s not just doing career programming, but it’s really serving as a driver of institutional goals.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m curious, from what you’ve seen in your consulting work and your experience working in career services, what are some good goals or KPIs that career leaders should be thinking about?

Rebekah Paré:

I mean I think what’s challenging about that is it really depends on where your center is and where you’re trying to move. And so [inaudible 00:10:27], just right before this call, I was on a call with an institution working on their strategic plan. And for them it’s really about how do we incorporate these different perspectives and understanding what the needs of our departments and faculty. This is in a college setting. So what is it that they’re trying to accomplish and move the needle on? Do they have a new program that requires more attention of employers so that they’re aware that this new program exists and start to create those pipelines for employment and internships and other types of opportunities? I think it really depends on what are the goals that are really important to your institution, and then what are you doing to line up toward that success?

So in the instance that I just shared with you, we have a new program in the college. Nobody knows about this program. How can your career center help us create awareness for this program so that we can get the opportunities lined up for students and move them along in a trajectory of success, professional success? And so what are then the metrics that we’re going to use in order to define that? So I think it really depends on where the career center is at, where the context is within the institution. So I think folks ask me this all the time, what are the metrics that I should have? Well, where are you? What are you working on? What are the initiatives? And again, really thinking about the difference when you are lining up your goals and your metrics toward a more collective aim.

Here’s a college who says, “We have this great new program, we’re really excited about it. We want to move the needle.” And they see you as a team player and advancing that work, right? There comes the buying and support and ambassadors, then you want to move your other initiatives forward. Do you think those folks will be team players? They will because they see you as helping them achieve their goals. And so I really think about how do we work collaboratively to really understand what are we all trying to accomplish here? What does student success look like for all of our students, for all of our programs? And then how can the career center help advance that work? One challenge that I do see some career centers have is really, what should we be focusing on?

And I can tell you, if you can go out and have these conversations, if you go ask these questions, the themes will appear and that light bulbs are going to go off. Here are the three or four areas where we can really focus our attention, move the needle, and really advance these programs. And now we’re working together as a team and we’re still doing our career work. It’s just now we’re working on it together with others. And that really just helps drive more support and engagement around the issue of career and professional development.

Meredith Metsker:

It becomes more of that shared campus responsibility like you were talking about earlier.

Rebekah Paré:

Exactly. I think that has to start at the career center. Because I think that so many partners believe in this work. I think if you go out and you talk to them, you’ll be surprised at how many folks are thinking about it and they just need to know what their role is or what they should do, or at least what their next step is. And as the experts in this space, we have the opportunity to define that while also defining our work. I realize we all have workload challenges. I think your faculty will also say the same thing. We all have limitations, but if we can structure and orient our work to be working more collaboratively, then more people are going to buy in and support that work as well. And those allies are critical. They’re absolutely critical, but you have to build them, right? They’re just not going to come to you.

They’re not going to come to you with all their great ideas because they’re busy too. So if you can cross that bridge, it makes a huge difference.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. Well that was a good overview I think of the strategic orientation, which I know ties in pretty closely with the second strategy you mentioned, institutional alignment. So again, can you tell me more about this one and how career leaders can go about implementing this?

Rebekah Paré:

So I think this is really about what is your relationship to this university’s highest priorities? And I kind of mentioned that already. So I think how are you helping your institution achieve its own goals? That means looking upward, right? Does your strategic plan and initiatives map to the universities or the division’s strategic goals? Does career show up in the institutional strategic plans as well and accreditation materials and board level presentations? Who’s talking about this and what are they talking about with them? And are you seen as essential to these conversations and to issues like enrollment or tension, student belonging, and workforce impact? And I know these are areas that are all striving to help make the case around, but I think a good test of this is how much time do you spend as a leader looking up and thinking about what’s going on above you and aligning your work toward that.

And I think then there’s some structural signals that we can also pay attention to in this. What our reporting lines look like, what’s involve in planning groups, and if you’re routinely consulted by student leaders on things. It breaks my heart when university career center leaders come to me and say, “Well, they just published a strategic plan and all of this career stuff, smattered all throughout it, and they’ve never talked to me and I don’t know what they mean.” So we were trying to avoid that kind of thing by getting ahead of those conversations and help steering them. You don’t want to be in that position where you’re having to run and try to catch up to those conversations, but how can you help drive some of those conversations as well? So I think the most effective career centers are positioned not just as a standalone office, but as a partner in delivering on the university’s core promises to students.

Meredith Metsker:

This reminds me of something you mentioned in a recent article you wrote for us as well, that’s just kind of around career services advocacy, which is how do you get in the room, even if you’re not at the table? How do you get other people across campus talking about your work, seeing you as a strategic partner, even if you are not physically there? So with this one, with this institutional alignment, what are some things that career leaders can do to, as you said, look up and make sure that they are aligning?

Rebekah Paré:

I mean, I think it really does first start with having the conversations, right? Going and talking with individuals, especially people who seem to be in the know, have political clout, the ones that aren’t in the conversations. You know who those folks are. Go set up meetings with them and ask them what they’re thinking about in terms of career support for their students, whether it’s in an academic department or an advising office or the admissions office, all of the different places where these conversations might be happening. I would try to have as many conversations as you can. And as a matter of fact, as a person or leader, I would highly encourage you to make that just a regular practice, just to be out talking to folks. I think we tend to put our nose down, get into the work, and focus here and focus on our team and maybe even focus on protecting our team for workload concerns and things like that.

We tend to drive our attention inward and when we drive our attention inward, we’re missing crazy amounts of opportunities. And so what happens is when you start to have conversations and then you pull those conversations into your work and reflect that back to your stakeholders. So imagine I talked to 30 faculty members or 30 department chairs, pick a group. And then I’m taking in all this information, I’m collecting themes that have occurred. Folks are saying, “Well, I don’t really know what you do as a career center. Our students seem listless. They don’t seem to be as focused as they used to be. I want to be able to tell them something. I am a liberal arts faculty member and I want to tell them something. I’m not really sure what to tell them. Or students are asking about skills. Am I using the right words?” What are the things that are emerging in these conversations?

And can you pull some of those together? Document them and reflect them back to this group. Maybe you have the opportunity to go to a department chairs meeting at a college. We’ve talked to a number of these folks and say, “I’ve heard you. Here are the themes. And as a result, this is what I think we could do.” Suddenly people are paying attention. So I think one is listening and integrating that reflection that you’re hearing into your work. And you can’t do that privately. If you go privately, it doesn’t matter. People don’t know that what you’re doing is really being integrated into your thought process. So you have to make sure that you’re communicating that back. So how do I share and showcase back to folks that their work is being integrated into our planning, into our vision document?

Can I circle back with those folks afterwards and say, “Hey, here’s what you said. Here’s what we heard. Here’s what we’re going to be able to do as a result of that. Did we miss anything?” And to involve people, suddenly now folks are bought in. I mean, I think if you reversed the situation and you imagine someone doing that with you, now suddenly you’re advocating for them and you’re helping them. And what you’re doing is you’re building awareness about the work they’re doing. You’re building some buy-in and support for that direction. And you’ll be surprised because some of those key folks, especially those with influence who might be in our conversation, say a strategic planning committee at the institutional level. They’re like, “You really need to go talk to that, Meredith. Because she said some really interesting things at this meeting I was at. Why don’t we bring Meredith in?”

So suddenly now you’re in front of mind. People are paying attention to what you’re doing. They’re thinking about what you’re doing. They’re contributing to what you’re doing and now advocating for what you’re doing. And that’s how you start to creep in. It’s not an overnight change. It’s from slow steady progress. Involvement, involvement, involvement. And I think it’s game changing when it works. I’ve seen it be really transformative for career centers.

Meredith Metsker:

Absolutely. Also, I love your description of creep in.

Rebekah Paré:

Creep in.

Meredith Metsker:

We’re just a bunch of creeps here in career services.

Rebekah Paré:

I know. Well, I think it’s about being present and it’s about being engaged in the work of others. I’ve done this exercise myself and I do it as a consultant. Now, I go into other institutions and wow, I was at one school where almost all of the deans had career built into their strategic plans, but the centralized career center didn’t know it. That’s a disconnect we don’t want. You want to be their partner in that thinking and thought and planning.

Meredith Metsker:

On the kind of strategic planning note, I have a couple specific scenarios I just want to ask you about. So let’s say you are a career services leader, you know that a new strategic plan is being worked on, it’s in the works. What’s something they can do to just kind of insert themselves in the process? What’s a good first step? Should they have a plan and just try it and propose it? Or is it just about having those conversations again? I’m just curious how you would approach that.

Rebekah Paré:

Think it depends on where they’re at in their own thinking and planning. So say you’re in the process of doing this kind of thing, even if you’ve just begun and you hear that this is happening. I would start bringing my summaries and start having conversations with people at the table. I’d find out who’s on that committee and see if you can get some meetings with folks in that committee. You certainly need to be working with your supervisor and your supervisor may be very involved in this and may not be very involved in this. So exactly what strategy and what levers to pull is tricky because you have to figure out who is in a position of influence that you can educate and bring up to speed on what it is that you’re identifying as important themes.

You can even put together a brief one-pager or a couple-pager with some of these ideas and start to show that it’s being backed up by things that you’re hearing on campus. That it’s not just your idea, but you’re leading with solutions that are moving the needle and some of these major priorities. I think that I would try to figure out how to bring that forward and who to bring that forward to. So finding out who’s on the committee, talk to your supervisor, find out if… The supervisor knows if you don’t know. And again, talking to people of influence because, I don’t know, folks know all kinds of things all the time. And those committees can be very, very large. And I supported a career center leader doing this just recently, and we were able to get her into really strategic meetings focused on… They started breaking out on subcommittees and she was able to suddenly participate and got invited to the table.

And that’s what you want. You want to be able to move things. And depending on where the strategic plan process is, you may be able to move a lot of things and you might not be able to watch at the same time. So you just have to be a little bit flexible. But I think the more that you can be in the right spaces. And then I think again, this idea of understanding where your institution’s priorities are and really leaning into those is really important. And if they’re not clear, and sometimes they’re not clear in institution, not every institution has a superstar strategic plan. I’ve seen a whole spectrum of them lately and it is remarkable, but really pay attention to what it is your president or chancellor is talking about. Attend meetings where they’re providing updates, go to the staff governance meetings, go to other kinds of celebratory events where they’re having an opportunity to share some of the things that they’re thinking about working on.

These folks tend to provide these State of the Union type of addresses, get them, be listening, take notes, get the recordings, whatever it is. There’ll be a write up, a marketing communications will put up perhaps in the university news. So I would try to find those things and really start documenting what is he or she talking about a lot? What are the themes that we keep hearing? Let’s think about what are those themes? What are we doing that can support that? It doesn’t have to solve the problem, but it’s contributing to advancing the work. I think that’s what you need to be doing. And so being present, talking to folks, advocating. I think advocating through writing is very… [inaudible 00:25:36] seems to love this. You’re dealing with a lot of academics who read all day. So if you can put together a couple of pager that summarizes these ideas, I think it can be really compelling.

Meredith Metsker:

Those are some really great suggestions. Thank you. I also want to propose the second scenario. This one is a bit of a bummer, but I know a lot of career leaders deal with this. Let’s say the strategic plan has already been finalized and there’s a lot of stuff about career in there and maybe the career center was not consulted. What would you recommend they do to still try to align to something they didn’t really get a say in?

Rebekah Paré:

I think you don’t have much of a choice. You have to play ball here. Usually what happens when that is the case is we have folks in senior leadership roles who may not truly understand what we do. And so you can kind of see it when you see the word internship in a lot of places. So one-dimensional career services. So I think the best thing that you can do is first understand again, who’s on the committee? Who are some of the decision makers around this? And sometimes it’s the board. So sometimes it’s not senior leadership, sometimes there’s a heavy hand on the board. It really depends on your organization and where the control of power is and who’s involved in what. But I would try to just do a lot of listening about what was talked about when these particular items were discussed. What do we understand about them? What are some themes?

Because chances are you’re going to have to shape them into something doable. So you’re going to have to walk two lines, which is we’re doing what it says in the strategic plan and we’re making it better because we understand better how to do this and how to talk about that. I think first, again, just to repeat quickly here, is to understand what is the spirit of the change that people are looking for? What’s the transformation that we’re looking for? Get that as well-defined as you can and then start to think about, “All right, how can we structure our work to advance and support that work?” The biggest challenge that I see, Meredith, is that’s not even the hardest part. The hardest part is when they start throwing numbers in there, 90% of our students are going to have an internship. And you’re like, “Wow.”

Meredith Metsker:

“Great. We’ll get on that.”

Rebekah Paré:

Is that even reasonable? Did we look at any data? I think some of the challenge that we have around that is really thinking about am I [inaudible 00:28:21] to really support this work? And you might not be, and I think a lot of times you’re not. I think then you have to think about you have a choice. You can say, “I’m out. I’m not going to do this work.” And there are people that do. They’re like, “We’ve got enough on our plate. There’s the line. We’re going to do this other work over here.” And you’ll really disadvantage yourself and you’ll be cut out of resources and opportunity. That’s what I tend to see. So I would put that option over here, and some people are at a place where they’re feeling frustrated or disenfranchised enough, but that’s the direction that they have to take for just self-preservation, and I appreciate that, but it is not going to open doors for you.

It is not going to get you resources. So the other alternative is to start thinking about what is the vision? Can we articulate what’s the spirit of what we’re trying to accomplish here? And then could we lay out a plan to accomplish that, that we feel is reasonable, especially with the staffing load and expectations that we have? So how do we lay that out? And I think that resonates really well. People are thinking, “You’re really trying to move this forward. All right, maybe we’re a little excited with these numbers, but what you’re laying out makes a lot of sense. Let me see how we can support you.” And if you can start to show success, they may say, “Well, what if we had a million dollar gift? What would you do with that? Would that help you move faster?” Those are the conversations that can happen.

I’ve seen it happen working with somebody else who’s dealing with this actually. So how do we take this, being a leader, be strategic, be the expert, own your expertise. And it’s hard when we’re in the middle of this organization and we feel like all these people should know. Nobody knows. You know though. So harness that expertise. Really think about how can you strategically make this happen, show that effort, document it in writing, get some feedback, negotiate, and see what it is that you can do to advance and require you giving stuff up. [inaudible 00:30:28]

Meredith Metsker:

Got to prioritize.

Rebekah Paré:

You’re not going to be able to do everything. You have to really think about what’s the most important here and why.

Meredith Metsker:

Can’t do everything unless you have that million dollar budget, then maybe?

Rebekah Paré:

I don’t know. I’ve had-

Meredith Metsker:

[inaudible 00:30:39] some things. That’s true.

Rebekah Paré:

You need [inaudible 00:30:45]. And I think we’re in an environment right now where their resources aren’t going to be flowing and with great abundance, and we have real concerns about enrollment these days. We have real concerns about federal funding issues. We have real concerns about what’s going to happen with international students. So I think with all of this uncertainty, I mean, I can guarantee you they’re not probably throwing tons of money at the career center. So some places are being really strategic about this, I will say.

But a lot of schools are just trying to buy right now. And so I think you need to think about really getting focused on what it is that you can do to move these efforts forward and think about the work that you’re doing and say, “What can we just let go? Let’s let this go. It’s not fulfilling these new needs. Do we have to keep doing it this way? Are there other ways we could do it more efficiently?”

Meredith Metsker:

That’s a good point. A good reality check. And I think this thing you were talking about, about how can we do more with what we have and try to make more of an impact with the resourcing we have. I think that’s a good segue to the third of your five strategies, which is academic integration. Again, using those partnerships, using those resources you already have. So can you talk more about what you mean by academic integration and how career leaders can do that?

Rebekah Paré:

So I think we’re hearing a lot of conversation around this with regard to competency integration. Some schools are working on experiential learning and embedding that in the classroom. So really what I’m thinking about here is how are we bridging the gap between academics and career outcomes? So you can start by asking yourself, who are your strongest faculty partners? What relationships have you built with your deans? So if your centralized career center with the deans, with your academic departments. And are you collaborating on curriculum or classroom engagement? And when I mean collaborating on that, I don’t mean going in and doing a five-minute spiel about, “Hey, this is what we do at the career center. We’d love to see students.”

I really mean, how are you working with your faculty on course development so that they maybe are integrating the NACE competencies or integrating project-based learning? And I think we know that students don’t always really see this connection between major and career, and it’s not always a straight line for folks. I’ve had students tell my team that they didn’t learn any skills over their four years of college, and that breaks my heart. Nobody told them they learned skills, so they just didn’t think about the fact that they developed any skills. It’s heartbreaking. So how do we help make that bridge? How do we help make those connections so that students see that by the time they graduate, they know what those skills and competencies are and can articulate them.

And so what does that mean for how do we help faculty embed this into the learning experience? Because this is where I think we can have the biggest impact. And we’re going to talk next probably about equity and thinking about how we’re reaching all of our students. And we know that working through the academic curriculum, we have more of a chance of meeting more students’ needs or all students’ needs, not just those that opt in. So that’s one. I also think when we think about academic integration, what I’m looking for as well is are we even reaching and creating those thoughtful partnerships across all disciplines? So not just the pre-professional programs where it’s easier to line some of these things up and you have faculty that are more open and willing because this is just part of the air that they breathe.

But I’m thinking about how are we doing this with the arts? How are we doing this in the humanities? And I’ll tell you, a lot of those programs are most open to this right now because they’re most concerned about their involvement. But then I think about the social sciences and natural sciences and mathematical sciences. How are we helping make those bridges? And I think when we can work more hand-in-hand with academic affairs, we just are creating a better support system for students with this type of integration. And I will tell you that when I have done this kind of work, I have been able to find the best advocates, right? Folks who do this, who get it, who are making those connections, who are helping us move the needle in the spaces.

They’re the ones who are going to stand up at meetings, raise their hand, and tell all their peers about why this matters. And that’s what you also want to see happen after this is creating those advocates. So I think faculty are interested and open to this. I realize that not all are, but I just spoke at a conference for a French faculty and they’re like, they just want to dive into strategies on how to get more people on board. So many people understand the value of doing this. They have real concerns about the future of their disciplines and they’re trying to figure out how to maneuver. And they might not be thinking the career center could be a good solution to that.

So go in and introduce yourself and have those conversations because I think there’ll be many people who’ll be open to experimenting in this space with you, piloting a few different projects, and then you could really showcase those as you’re working to get more and more buy-in and support.

Meredith Metsker:

Those are all great suggestions. And I think what I’ve heard from some other folks on this podcast who have kind of worked in this area is that it makes a huge difference when you go in with an idea where it’s like you’re not telling the faculty members they’re not doing enough, you’re doing it wrong. It’s like you are already doing so much. We are here to support you and make this as low of a lift for you as possible.

Rebekah Paré:

I think that’s true. Again, I think we want to come back to what is in it for them? Why does focusing on career or competencies or crunch-based learning, what difference is that going to make for them? And if you can lean into that, I think they’re going to get excited because they have goals that they want to try to meet. And what I mean saving disciplines, I’m not kidding. I mean, some of these departments are in real jeopardy and I’m really concerned about some of these. And so if you can be a partner and helping the arts and humanities as some examples, really articulate their value and help students see the connection of the world of work so that more students are enrolling because they get it now. That’s tremendous.

And that’s not impossible to do. It’s not impossible to do. But absolutely, you don’t want to tell faculty that they’re not doing it right or doing things wrong. Really, I found the most success frankly, in telling them that I’m here to amplify your work. I’m not vocationalizing it. I’m not trying to make this all about career preparation. What you do matters. Students are gaining great skills and competencies, but if they can’t articulate them at the end of the day, they’re going to look back and think their major was a waste of time. I mean, just think how many people have you talked to who have said things like, “That was a useful major. Now I’m doing something completely unrelated.”

Because they don’t actually see the connection. And so I think I’m terrible at those conversations because I will pounce on those people right away. But we don’t want students graduating thinking that they didn’t learn skills, that they only learned content, and that content and knowledge doesn’t matter in today’s world of work. That’s just all myth bust. We need to bust those myths. Those are all myths that aren’t true. So how can we instead, what we’re trying to do is lift you up faculty. We’re taking the things that you’re doing and we’re helping students make sense of it in a larger context. And that’s not typically what faculty have done because they’re very focused, laser-focused on their discipline and their specific subject within that discipline.

So how do we help students see those bigger connections? And I think that resonates with faculty. And I think certainly whatever tools and resources and support we can provide to make it easy for them, just the better. Because not all of them are going to be passionate supporter, champion folks that are going to want to go revise their curriculum or do this and that, integrate projects and cases, and things that they’ve never done before. That’s hard in today’s environment because that workload’s also pretty tough.

Meredith Metsker:

I think that’s a good segue into the fourth strategy you have to know is a lot more about scaling. So your fourth strategy was student reach and service design. So I would love to hear a little bit more from you about that.

Rebekah Paré:

So I think this is where we get into equity as well, at scale and design. So I think the question you can ask yourself is really, first, do you know who you’re reaching or what patterns are you seeing there? And I think just as important as that, who are you not reaching? And getting into the fine print here, are you desegregating your engagement and outcomes data by major, identity, and year? Are your services scaffolded across the life cycle? I mentioned this before. How are we onboarding students to career? How are we getting them engaged in their first, second, third, fourth, and beyond years through graduation and beyond?

Are you using a mix of delivery modes in order to support students and where they’re at? So we depend a lot on one-on-ones, but that is not scalable. Workshops, embedded courses, self-service modules, peer advising, chatbots. Are you creating a suite of services that are really accessible for students? And my favorite is I used to remember getting the 2:00 AM message from students who are like, “I’m procrastinating on getting that paper done, so I’m going to think about my future.

Meredith Metsker:

Right? “I should be sleeping, but I’m planning ahead.”

Rebekah Paré:

“I should be sleeping, but no, I’m going to ponder life’s biggest questions here.” And how can you equip students who are ready at whatever time of day to be able to access information and move along their journey. And so I think we really want to think about how is this model both the types of service delivery, the intentional scaffolding that we do, how is that really set up for scale as well as equity in reaching all of our students? Further, as we dive deeper into who it is you’re serving, there’s a couple of populations that I lean into a lot, which is first-generation and limited-income students. And first-generation I think is probably the biggest indicator. And as we know, they’re the ones who least engage in career.

In some of my own research that I’ve done, I have found that any population, any identity group coupled with first-generation status will show an automatic drop of 10 to 15 percentage point difference in career outcomes. So we’ll have lower career outcomes for this population of students. So what are we doing to intentionally reach into that population? Because if we can fix that, if we can really address that well, it’s going to support all students. So what are we doing in that space? So I think we’re thinking about accessibility, inclusion, and impact for all students, not just the ones that already know how to find you. Maybe get all that wonderful advice at home.

Meredith Metsker:

I think that’s really important. And I hear a lot of career leaders talk about this too, in terms of serving non-traditional students who have families, have jobs. Maybe 2:00 A.M. is the only time that they have time to think about this. And I think that’s just kind of what modern career services is now. It’s not always going to be your traditional 18 to 22-year-old who is a full-time college student, and that’s their sole responsibility.

Rebekah Paré:

And to take that a step further, it’s not going to be the traditional one-on-one career advising that we love to do. I talked to career services’ leader at a community college recently. She has between 11 and 14,000 students a semester. Vastly different population of students, part-time, continuing education, career changers, right? Young 18, nineteen-year-olds working on their associate’s degree. It was huge gamut, right? She’s a one-person operation. And the first thing I said to her is, “You cannot do one on ones.” It is a dream to be able to do that, but if you’re not going to be equipped to do that well, I don’t know that I would offer that or I would really be thoughtful about when and how I act with that.

So you really need to think about the one to many types of services and the self-service experiences that run themselves. How can you spend your time curating experiences for students that they can self-educate? If your institution’s not investing in career advising, why are we doing it? And instead, you probably have better bang for your buck, so to speak, by lining up the types of online experiences, self-service courses, et cetera, that students can use to navigate through their own technology can be great for this.

Meredith Metsker:

I guess not to toot our own horn too much, but that’s kind of why uConnect exists. We are a virtual career center platform is really about making career resources accessible to anyone anytime. Whether it’s that non-traditional student at 2:00 A.M. or a traditional student who wants access to job and internship postings or courses or things like that all in one place. That’s something we’re super passionate about and we’ve seen a lot of our customers really do a lot with scale like you were talking about where…

I mean, we have customers who are teams of one serving thousands of students and they can’t do one-on-one advising all day. So they use those tools and technologies to handle more of the, what’s it called, repeatable stuff so that they can focus on the more higher value interactions.

Rebekah Paré:

Absolutely. Then I think about the courses modules that you’ve been launching recently where students can go in and complete these short term experiences through video where they learn a lot in a very short period of time about an industry or specific occupation or an issue of the day. And I think what that takes for a person or to produce at the quality of a primarily, for example, you can’t produce that or it’ll take you a hundred years to be able to produce all these things that’s all outdated in three.

And so how can we line up some of these things like leveraging tools that uConnect has so that we can be educating our students and helping with that scaffolding for students to move them through that journey without always having to do a one-on-one. And I know one-on-one is ideal, and I think I’m breaking a lot of hearts by saying this out loud, but I do think that there’s some realities that we do have to face.

Meredith Metsker:

And there’s still opportunities for one-on-one, but it really has to be more specialized, more high touch, and not just one-on-one resume reviews for every single one of your 10,000 students. Unfortunately it’s not realistic.

Rebekah Paré:

And I think we’re lucky that tools like uConnect exist. There are many other tools out there that can help alleviate some of those pain points so that we can, I think, do a better job thinking about the diversity of services that we can provide to really support students where they’re at.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. Well, I think that was a really great overview of your fourth strategy. So I want to kind of start wrapping this up with your fifth. So this one is communications and influence. A big part of the job that I feel like maybe people don’t always think about with career services, but I am curious to hear from you, what do you mean by communications and influence and how can career leaders make sure they’re doing that?

Rebekah Paré:

As you were talking, it was making me think every single one of the strategies so far has really been focused on communications and influence.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s like marketing and sales is a big key skills for career services like this.

Rebekah Paré:

For sure, but getting out and talking to folks and listening and telling folks about what you’re doing and what you’re thinking about, where you’re moving, all of these things I think are part and parcel of that, of communications and driving influence. But I think this is really a little bit more focused on our communication systems themselves. So if your impact is invisible, it doesn’t matter how good it is, sad to say. So we really want to think about how do we make that impact visible? What’s the messaging that we need to have? But I think this is a critical component of what a career center director’s role is. Being out, being present, talking to folks, making the case, and driving that visibility and messaging.

So can your president or provost, can your senior leaders explain your impact clearly? Do the faculty understand your role, especially in the broader understanding of student success? Can prospective students and families find compelling information on your website or admissions that helps them invest in your institution with confidence knowing that the outcomes are going to be positive? Do alumni and employers see you as a trusted partner? So this is about internal, and I’m violating my rule about external. A little bit of external messaging here, but we’re also thinking about really being clear about our brand and really thinking about how we’re aligning our stakeholders.

So I think really effective care centers are going to have strong communication systems that scale their influence, whether you’re supporting students through orientation, whether it’s through an email campaign, whether you’re doing a faculty training, whether it’s through your annual reports or platforms like uConnect, we’re just talking about the varieties of ways that we can communicate and curate resources and experiences. How do you structure this in such a way that your value is impossible to ignore?

When we think about these communications and influence piece, I think it’s really about really articulating very succinctly roles, all the resources that you have available and the value that you provide, the success that you’re driving, and how you’re driving that success, and then making that about the community and moving that up, making that about institutional impact and support. I always feel like it’s like making others look good. That’s not a bad place to go.

Meredith Metsker:

Absolutely. Especially when you’re communicating with I would say your president and your provost who are probably communicating with policymakers and government officials, and they want to be able to look good. So anything you can do to give them, like you said, a one pager of hard numbers or just student success stories to share, I have to imagine that would be much appreciated.

Rebekah Paré:

Great testimonials, good pithy quotes from employers, quick summaries of all the progress that you have and the initiatives, the transformation that you’re driving, what you’re moving toward. They eat that stuff up and they will repeat it. They will repeat it. And so you can think about even creating a PowerPoint slide or a dashboard where you can put some of these key metrics and key indicators of success.

Meredith Metsker:

Are there any of those key indicators through your consulting work that you’ve seen career centers use that seem to be most impactful or seem to get repeated most by presidents or provosts?

Rebekah Paré:

Again, it really depends on what the institution’s moving the needle are focused on, but I think in today’s day and age, what our senior leaders, particularly presidents, chancellors, advancement teams are really focused on is showcasing the value proposition. So how is your office showing value to the community? How is your office showing value to or driving employer engagement? So every state right now is focused on workforce readiness, thinking about how are we retaining students in the state. Stories that you can tell that can be then easily repeated to legislators, to our policymakers, to our alumni, and donors who care about these types of topics that show that our institution is adding value in all of these different places.

It’s not just that we’re educating students and then turning them out, but it’s really about the fact that we’re more than that, right? We’re helping non-profit organizations build internship programs and they’re hiring our students. It tells a story. We’ve added 20 new employers this year who are recruiting our students, and they happen to all be from our region and the state. And they’re really excited to partner with us on A, B, and C. So I think the types of stories that show value, of course, there’s career outcome measures, that’s obvious. I’m trying not to stay with just the obvious of we improved our career outcomes this year. Great. This was a hard year to do that. If you did that, you’re amazing.

But I think anything that you can do to show the ways in which you’re adding value, and I think certainly student success, the contribution of career centers to issues of retention, enrollment, and admissions are a little bit harder to articulate. But if your career center is so good that it’s showing up in admissions essays, if your career center is good enough that people are talking about it in scholarship applications, if it’s so good that it’s drawing people into the institution, you can start to see how that’s going to influence enrollment. And those are stories that you can tell.

If someone said something really cool about your office, I’d put that on there. Put that on your slide this month or this quarter. And I think any kinds of indicators like that, even if it’s not hard metrics, helps to move the needle and then maybe can help you make the case with institutional research that you want to do some connections between participation and retention or participation in time to degree. Participation in career services, activities, these kinds of things.

Meredith Metsker:

Those are all really great suggestions and ideas. There’s just so much that career leaders can do to show their impact both qualitatively and quantitatively, as you were saying, and really making the case to presidents too.

Rebekah Paré:

It’s a big effort and it sometimes means really rethinking what are we doing as a career services leader? What does our job actually entail? Because if you think about the time and energy that it takes to be out and being that ambassador, driving this conversation. Folks will know that they see you walking in the room, career is going to be talked about in that space. That’s kind of where you want to be. And if you can get there, take some practice, might be a little uncomfortable at first.

You get in there and you start opening those conversations and opening those hearts and minds. You can spark all kinds of imaginations for what’s possible, but it does really mean thinking about how are you spending your time and what are your areas of focus for your work as a leader.

Meredith Metsker:

Going back to something you were saying earlier about communication systems. I’m curious, what have you seen work well with some of the schools that you have worked with? Is it those annual reports? Is it monthly emails? I’m just curious what you have seen that’s been effective.

Rebekah Paré:

Well, again, I’ll say it starts with… I think it depends on your audience, right? Because again, coming back to our stakeholders, all kind of need different things. So really trying to understand what’s going to resonate for whom and how? So for example, I found one of the best ways that I could influence a dean I reported to was by writing stuff down. He didn’t care how long it was, but I put my ideas in writing and send that to him in advance of our meetings.

So I didn’t just have an agenda. So I had vision documents or things that I was thinking through. He processed that and have a lot to say, and then I could start to influence how he talked about the work. For our chancellor, I found that I had influence through their speechwriter, right? Took a little bit of time to figure that out, but this person-

Meredith Metsker:

That’s one of those secret influencers.

Rebekah Paré:

I mean, we had already gotten to the space where they wanted to talk about us, so then I could tell them what to say and how to say it. But then I had a relationship with this person so that I could kind of feed them some top line metrics. I’m not feeding them a page of information. I’m feeding them two bullet points. We’re going to be hyper focused with this group, because otherwise things can get lost. But I feel like depending on who it is that you’re trying to influence will depend on what it is, what their preference for types of communication, or how you get in front of them. It’s not going to always easy to get in front of some of these folks.

So how you kind of get things through may depend on some of these relationships, some of these advocates that you’ve been developing through your work with faculty and other strategic leaders on your campus. And then your supervisor may be well positioned, and we haven’t talked about that enough. Your supervisor may or may not be your best advocate and ambassador. They’re not always fully in the career space, depending on their role. But you can also send bullet points, talking points up to them. And so one thing I would do is I would really understand who my supervisor was going to be meeting with in the next couple of weeks.

I’d be listening, listening in our meetings, listening in our one-on-ones. And I would send talking points 48 hours before the meeting, like, “Hey, I know you’re meeting with Dean so-and-so, and I want you to know that we’re working on this project. Here are five things you should know before you walk into that meeting so you’re not caught off guard.” People will be like, “Thank you.” They’re so busy. They got all this stuff going on. They can’t keep track of all the different things sometimes, depending on how organized your people are. So sending those things in advance, they’re not caught off guard. They look like they know what’s going on and they have tangible evidence from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

So those are different ways in which I’ve been able to influence and get information to people. It feels sneaky a little bit, but I think that’s important. And then of course, making sure that your website, I mean this is one of the reasons why you connected so strong, is you can curate these different resources and information for all of these different stakeholder groups fairly easily. And so having a place where you can drive information instead of always having to send things out, you say, “That’s a great question over here, this is where you’re going to find out things that you need.” So training people on where to go for information and then keeping that information up to date, fresh, relevant, meaningful is important.

Meredith Metsker:

And in the case of uConnect, there’s all this engagement data in the back end that you can pull. So if your deans or your supervisor have questions like, “Hey, I see you have a community on your virtual career center for first-generation students, how many are engaging? What are they engaging with? What should we know? What topics are most relevant right now?” You can pull that really quickly and just make a report.

Rebekah Paré:

You gave a positive example. I was going to be like, “Are people even using that? Are faculty even going to that web page?” Well, as a matter of fact, they are. Let me tell you about the data. It comes in both ways. Absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

Well Rebekah, I do want to be mindful of our time because we’re already over our time here, so I apologize for that. But you’ve shared a ton of great info already today. But is there any other advice you have for career services leaders who just really want to get better at measuring career center effectiveness?

Rebekah Paré:

I think I want to take a moment and just sort of remind, I guess our listeners, that this is not just about measurement, but it’s really about making and driving change and transformation. So the five strategies that I’ve shared are really about how do we optimize the career center to be more effective and strategic? But we’re going to be… We can get real here. Not everybody’s scoring all the points in all these different categories. Everybody’s on this journey on working toward success in these spaces. However, their institution is defining that success. And so if you’re not feeling like, “I’ve got all this stuff nailed.” That’s not failure.

That’s really an opportunity for you. So if you are thinking about wanting to move the needle in any of these five areas or all five of these areas, I would say really start by assessing where you are today. Go on that listening tour. So important. You’ll be so happy you did it. I promise it’s a lot of time that you’ll be so happy you did it. Go on a listening tour. Talk with your deans, your department heads, your student leaders. What are they focusing on? What are they thinking about? What do they care about? What language do they use? And that’s where you’re going to start to see how to set up that alignment.

And the more that you understand your campus context, the more you understand the needs of your stakeholders, the more strategic your decisions will be and the more support you’ll get in return. So I think it’s really important to remember everybody’s in a different place in their journey. There’s always places that we can move toward. And so just start where you’re at.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s great advice. It’s like be proactive, be a good ally, go on that listening tour, really just build those relationships. Well, is there anything else that you would like to add, Rebekah, before I start closing this out?

Rebekah Paré:

Well, I was just going to say as I thought about preparing for this interview with you, Meredith, I thought about all the different ways in which we can measure effectiveness. And I really wanted to pick these particular five because I think they’re very, very important for career centers to show how they are the return on investment department for their university, how they have a value proposition to the institution. But it’s also really where uConnect makes a huge difference.

And we’ve talked about a number of these things, whether it’s these curated resources for faculty or aligning your messages across campus. Expanding your digital reach is so important. And I think your virtual career center platform really can help you scale impact in ways that really matter. Service delivery, messaging, awareness building, tools, it’s a home gamut.

Meredith Metsker:

I appreciate you saying that. And I know I’m obviously biased working here at uConnect, but we’ve been talking a lot about it lately in terms of it being critical infrastructure. It’s not just a website replacement, it is infrastructure. It is your front end, your back end. It’s pulling the data, it’s content management, it’s email communications. It’s everything that you need for a really robust virtual presence. It’s all that infrastructure.

Rebekah Paré:

And I think when you’re thinking about investing in tools, one of the things that you really want to think about is what is taking away from you so that you can do the most meaningful work? And how can this have used beyond you having to manage it moment to moment. And so I think the virtual career center component of this, when I sat down and started to tally up the number of hours it would take me to replicate some of these things or my team to replicate some of these things, it’s hard to manage.

And so I think the virtual career center platform, it’s not just a website. It is just really so much more dynamic than that. The integration with labor market data I think is so important. The courses we talked about, just the number of tools and resources and articles and blogs, you can just filter in there without having to find it all yourself, vet it all yourself. I’m just like, makes you want to breathe.

Meredith Metsker:

Just one place to pull all the information you need.

Rebekah Paré:

Amazing. And communicate out, that’s a lot to your stakeholders. Building those systems, it takes a lot of, I think, know-how, expertise, knowledge, and you may not be able to… Many career centers don’t have the ability to hire anyone in marketing communication space, which I will say I think is a miss. So doing this well is important and tricky. So having uConnect makes a big difference.

Meredith Metsker:

I happen to agree, but again, I’m biased. Cool. Well, Rebekah, if people would like to connect with you or learn more from you, or if they want more personalized advice based on what you’ve talked about with your consulting work, where’s a good place for them to reach you?

Rebekah Paré:

Well I’m on LinkedIn all the time, so if you aren’t following me on LinkedIn-

Meredith Metsker:

She is. She’s great.

Rebekah Paré:

Thank you. Come follow me there. I do have a newsletter, a free weekly newsletter folks might be interested in that’s really full of practical strategies and stories and some real world insights that support career services leadership. So you can find that on my website as well as more information about my consulting and strategy coaching work. And my website is www.pareconsulting.com and that’s P-A-R-E consulting, one word, dotcom. So I’d love to see you in a variety of ways for folks to connect with me, set up a meeting with me. I’d be happy to talk with you about moving the needle in some of these spaces.

It’s challenging work. It’s super exciting work, I think. And it’s so much easier to have a printer at your side and really helping you see the forest for the trees, see and document your progress and help you avoid those dreaded potholes in the world.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s helpful to have that objective third party who’s also in your corner.

Rebekah Paré:

In your corner and confidential in your corner. Amazing. Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

There you go. There you go. Something I’ve always wanted when I was career center director.

I believe it. For everyone watching and listening, I’ll be sure to include links to Rebekah’s website, her LinkedIn profile, and her newsletter in the show notes. You can go check those out and subscribe and check out her work. All right, so Rebekah, I like to close out every interview with this answer a question, leave a question segment. So I’ll ask you a question our last guest left for you, and then you’ll leave a question for the next guest. So our last guests were James Tarbox and Theanne Thompson of Stanford University. And they each left a question for you, so you get two.

So James’s question was, if a play were to be written about your life, what would the three word title of that play be and why?

Rebekah Paré:

This is a really hard one. What part of my life? So I’m going to go with unapologetically liberal arts, and I was a first-generation college student who studied music and German and had to defend that decision. Had many meals at dinner for most of my life, I would say. And I think my passion for education and what liberal arts education does really drove me to continue my education and then transition into spending my career advocating for the liberal arts and liberal learning, liberal education, I guess I should say. And really helping others be able to connect their studies to meaningful futures and really feel like that’s sort of what brought me to what I’m doing today. And it’s just really like a passion place for me.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. Unapologetically liberal arts. That’s great. And since you studied music, maybe this play could be a musical.

Rebekah Paré:

Yes. Could be musical.

Meredith Metsker:

In German.

Rebekah Paré:

Absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

I would watch it.

Rebekah Paré:

I studied music in Germany, so it would be totally appropriate.

Meredith Metsker:

I love it. So now I’m going to ask you Theanne’s question, which is, what is a hobby or activity that fills you with joy that you like to share with others or do with other people?

Rebekah Paré:

So I play in a 19 piece all female 1940s era swing band, that’s a mouthful, called Ladies Must Swing. I play the piano. It’s super fun. It brings me a ton of joy. And I just love sharing music with others. We play a lot in the summertime.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. I didn’t know that you played piano,

Rebekah Paré:

Jazz piano. It’s super fun. I don’t get to play as often as I would like to of course, but I never thought I would play in a jazz band again after college and to be playing in an all-female 1940s era swing band is-

Meredith Metsker:

Love it. Lady Power.

Rebekah Paré:

Special. Totally lady power. Ladies Must Swing.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s cool.

That’s cool. I can definitely relate. I was in marching band, pep band, and jazz choir in college and I loved performing with a big ensemble like that and I miss it now. Why is there not marching band for adults? I want adult rec league marching band.

Rebekah Paré:

That’s so funny.

Meredith Metsker:

Through my city or county.

Rebekah Paré:

Well they’re community fans.

Meredith Metsker:

but they usually play classical music. I’m like, “I want to play modern pop songs composed for marching band.” I just loved that so much.

Rebekah Paré:

That would be super fun. What instrument do you play?

Meredith Metsker:

Trumpet.

Rebekah Paré:

I remember this now. Trumpet. There’s lots of opportunities for trumpet.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes, it’s a great instrument, but I do want to learn one that’s more social. No one wants to hear the trumpet around the campfire. No one wants that. So maybe I should learn guitar or ukulele or just something more social. All right. Well Rebekah, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Rebekah Paré:

You’ve been turned into a kitchen spice,, what are you and how are you best used?

Meredith Metsker:

I don’t know what I would be. Do you know what years would be Rebekah?

Rebekah Paré:

I was trying to think about this. I think I’m waffling between cinnamon and red pepper flakes. I know. I like the cinnamon because it’s kind of sweet and spicy. You can kind of use it in other ways. And then the red pepper flakes kind of… It’s like one of my favorite things to put on my food. I put it on too many things probably, and I just like the spark of fire.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. Maybe I’m like a hint of cayenne. I don’t know.

Rebekah Paré:

Cayenne is another good one. Cayenne.

Meredith Metsker:

But just a hint.

Rebekah Paré:

Well, otherwise it’s completely overpowering, right?

Meredith Metsker:

Yes. I love that. That’s a great question. All right, well, Rebekah, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I think we covered everything. We covered kitchen spices, and career service strategy, and musicals, German.

Rebekah Paré:

The whole gamut.

Meredith Metsker:

The whole gamut here. But thank you for taking the time to talk with me today and to share your expertise and wisdom with the audience.

Rebekah Paré:

This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Meredith, for having me.