From Deficit to Asset: How Career Centers Can Serve Students in an Uncertain World

Justin Lawhead:

Let’s put a hundred people in the room and ask them what they thought they were going to be at 18, and see if any of them are doing that job, and we know that there may be a few hands or no hands. And so what somebody thought they were doing when they were 18 really isn’t what their reality is moving forward. You not knowing when you first get there is really the reality, except there’s expectations, and processes, and choices that we communicate to students that they should know when they come in there. And that’s just not for some, there are those folks that walk in and want to be a doctor or want to be a lawyer and they follow that linear path. So not knowing is not a problem, not knowing is real, not knowing is probably most students’ experiences, so let’s embrace that. Let’s look at that first year as a blank canvas and change the vernacular around that.

Meredith Metsker:

Hey, everyone, welcome back to The Career Everywhere Podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker, and today I am joined by Dr. Justin Lawhead, the assistant vice president for Career Readiness and Postgraduate Student Success at the University of South Carolina. Thank you for being here, Justin.

Justin Lawhead:

Great to be here. Thank you.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I’m really glad to have you, and I am excited to talk to you today about something I think a lot of career services professionals can relate to, and that’s this idea that we’ve been operating from a deficit model when it comes to students and career readiness.

Justin Lawhead:

Sure.

Meredith Metsker:

So Justin, I know you’ve been doing some really thoughtful work there at USC around flipping that script a little bit. So treating student uncertainty as an asset, meeting students where they are, and building a career center that’s truly a place for exploration, and not just that last minute stop for seniors panicking about what’s next. Yeah. So we’ll dig into how you’re approaching career services as a relatively new AVP at USC, and then we’ll also talk about measuring outcomes, and how to translate that work of career services into language that resonates with institutional leaders. Again, something I know is top of mind for a lot of our listeners right now. Before I get into my more specific questions, Justin, is there anything else you would like to add about yourself, your background, or your role at USC?

Justin Lawhead:

Just briefly. I’ve been here since June 2nd, and I really fell into the career space by leadership programs when I was at the University of Memphis, and really just became passionate that the work that those students do for those curricular programs relates to what’s happening here. So when this opportunity opened up at USC, it was a point in my career where I really wanted to apply that work. The only other thing I would add is I have a beautiful daughter that just got married and lives in Colorado, and then I have two kids at home, a senior and a freshman, and a stepdaughter in Memphis, and a beautiful wife named Wendy, and a St. Bernard named Zilla.

Meredith Metsker:

Love it. I love that. It’s cool that you have a child in Colorado, that’s where I’m based. I’m in the northern part of the state. I don’t know where she’s at.

Justin Lawhead:

She’s in Fort Collins.

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, okay. Just north of me. That’s fun. Small world.

Justin Lawhead:

Small world, yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. And I wanted to kind of zero in on something you mentioned in your answer just now, which is that you don’t come from a career services background, right? This is your first time leading a career center. Is that correct?

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah. I mean, it was areas I was always interested in. I’ve overseen career centers, but really just got interested in that work, writing a QEP, creating some partnerships at the University of Memphis with the business school, and just spent most of my available time reading and engaging with content experts, and at this point in my career I really felt like that was really where I wanted to go.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I always love hearing how people come to be in career services. It’s never the same journey.

Justin Lawhead:

It’s not. It’s not.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. When I was looking at your LinkedIn, it seems like a lot of your focus was on really working with, I mean still working with students, but in a different capacity, like as dean of students or in other roles. I am curious how that background kind of affects or shapes how you approach career.

Justin Lawhead:

Sure. So career in 2026 for me is all about partnerships. It’s the Career Everywhere model, the career ecosystem. We know career happens in student employment. We know career can happen in class projects. We know that it can happen leading a volunteer program. So you have to create those connections with those university partners across campus, and how that relates to the dean of students in my time there, most students don’t know that they have a dean of a college or a department chair. That is vernacular, it’s not familiar with them, but they knew that there was a dean of students at the university. So I would get a lot of concerns that come from students that did not relate to areas that I oversaw, whether it was financial aid or class attendance or grades in a course.

None of those things that I really did not supervise or oversee, but I didn’t want to transfer the student and say, “Hey, that’s not my responsibility. Go talk,” I had to develop those partnerships with those specific departments in schools and say, “Hey, I know there’s another side to this story. I’m just getting this from the student. Can we find a way to have a resolution?” So I would come in with an assisting side with them and find whatever pathway that student needs, and that’s what we really need to do in career. How can we build competencies into class projects? How can we get those student leaders to really understand that the things that they’re doing in their programs and their organizations relate to career?

For instance, at the University of South Carolina we have some very large fraternities and sororities. We have some groups that are four to 500 members. And I said to a group of students recently, “You realize you’re running a small business when you have that, or even a mid-sized business when you have something like that.” But students don’t know that, so turning on those light bulbs with fraternity and sorority leadership, and other groups through partnerships and resources. So taking what I did at Memphis and bringing it here and using that to apply career.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s really cool. Thanks for sharing all of that. I am sure we’ll see more of those themes play out the rest of this conversation. Before I get into the questions about our topic, I do want to kick us off with a question I ask all of our guests here on the podcast, and that’s what does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Justin Lawhead:

It means that career is not a departmental responsibility, it’s a university responsibility. So it means that we all know that students are here to find pathways, to find futures, and so we have to look at all those experiences across that educational experience and help students understand that, represent that, and develop that. It means having conversations with academic advising about career conversations that they can have. It means informing parents about how they can guide students in 2026 because their experience is much different than what it was before. And it’s those partnerships with faculty when they give us permission to enter their classroom and have it there. So Career Everywhere means for me that it’s everywhere at this institution. It means going to meetings at seven o’clock at night. It means being in spaces in the community. It’s just embracing that application across the educational spectrum.

Meredith Metsker:

I could hear those kinds of themes earlier in your previous answers about your career journey too. I appreciate your partnerships focus on things, and thinking about the experience from the student perspective versus how the university puts things in buckets or labels things that don’t always necessarily make sense to the end user.

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah, and we’ve had those conversations. So a friend of mine, Brian LaDuke, came here in the fall and did a user-centered design exercise with us. I tell this story briefly. He came to us in August, kind of overview user center design, and then came back in October. When he came back in October, my staff gave me a little bit of pushback because it was the day before fall break, and it was time to go out and ask, and my staff said, “Why would we go out and do this? There’s not going to be anybody here. It’s the day before fall break.” And I said, “Well, he’s here. He’s an expert. We have to try even if we get mixed results and minimum results.” In 90 minutes they talk to a hundred students, and this was two o’clock before fall break. What my staff realized is this state of mind for students. They know some things about the economy, and they know some things about AI impact, and so those students easily had conversations with our staff about what they want to see, and how they need to be supported moving forward.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, it’s always worthwhile to have those conversations directly with students. And I know we’ll talk more about that, that user-centered design here in just a minute, but I would like to get into our topic today, which is this deficit versus asset model concept in career services. So I know you’ve talked about the deficit model a lot, which is the idea that students often only come to the career center because they have a problem to solve. So can you explain more about what that means and why you think that’s an idea worth challenging?

Justin Lawhead:

So the first idea I would say is let us put a hundred people in the room and ask them what they thought they were going to be at 18, and see if any of them are doing that job, and we know that there may be a few hands or no hands. And so what somebody thought they were doing when they were 18 really isn’t what their reality is moving forward. So you not knowing when you first get there is really the reality, except there’s expectations, and processes, and choices that we communicate to students that they should know when they come in there. And that’s just not for some, there are those folks that walk in and want to be a doctor or want to be a lawyer and they follow that linear path.

But really, for most folks, it’s the concept of careers are squiggly line, which was one of the most impactful books that I read because it related to my experience, and it related to experience of students I had served. So not knowing is not a problem, not knowing is real, not knowing is probably most students’ experiences, so let’s embrace that. Let’s look at that first year as a blank canvas and change the vernacular around that.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. Speaking from my experience, I’m definitely not doing what I thought I was going to be doing at 18. I entered college as an English major thinking I wanted to be a book publisher, live in the big city, do that whole thing, and I am not doing that. It took me about a year into college before I realized I didn’t like my English classes at all, and switched to journalism. Even now, my career has pivoted a little bit into marketing. So yeah, truly it is a squiggly line.

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah, I was going to be a lawyer. I mean, I went to school at the University of Pittsburgh in the ’80s, Justin Lawhead. I’m old enough to know what the yellow pages were, are or were, and I was going to get my law degree, and from my perspective of a 19, 20 year old mind make all kinds of money. Then I took the law school entrance exam, and was not going to be a lawyer anymore. But I was involved in student government, I was employed at the student union, and I found through those engagements that I could have a career. I really think that’s most of the experiences that our students have.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. It’s our life experiences that shape those things.

Justin Lawhead:

Right.

Meredith Metsker:

So I’m curious, why do you think this deficit model is so persistent in career services?

Justin Lawhead:

I think some of it is capacity. I think some of it is like, “We only have so many people in our office, in our departments, and so we manage what we can manage.” But I think in 2026 you can scale up programs through peer educators, through social media, through access to your websites that allows you to do that. But I think the deficit model exists because there’s 40,000 students here, and I have a staff of 30, and so my staff paradigm is that they serve all 40 of those students. But when you break it down, the business school has their own career process and center, and I have no qualms with that. That is something that’s probably related to accreditation or funding.

There’s other pockets that are happening across campus where career is happening, and so let’s look at what we can really scale and then move that deficit model to an affirmation model. I think for most folks it’s probably capacity, and I think for some it’s just like, well, we buy into they choose a major, and so if they chose a major then they chose a career, but that’s really not what the reality is.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. If only it was as simple as choosing a major, and then choosing a career.

Justin Lawhead:

Well, right. I always go back to my experiences at the University of Pittsburgh, that was such a grounding experience for me in opportunities. Till this day, I’m still friends with the four guys that I live with. In fact, we get together once a year, and they’re coming to Columbia next weekend, ironically. Those four guys were all going to be engineers, and I was the one PoliSci guy. Well, let me tell you, there’s only one engineer left in that entire group. One’s a very successful data scientist. One’s had a career in journalism. One is working in some other spaces in education. So it happens in a way that’s organic, and I think the only thing we have to give students … the guidance is, “This may be murky for a little bit, but we’re here to guide you along that way, and don’t let that murkiness or uncertainty think that you’re anything different than anybody else, and embrace it, and we’ll go along with that journey with you.”

Meredith Metsker:

That’s a great perspective, and I think a good segue to the next question. So knowing that this is just kind of how career pathways work these days, and sort of how students are approaching this career exploration process, what would you say this asset model, or I think you called it an affirmation model, what does that look like in practice? And how are you building a career center there at USC that treats that uncertainty as normal and even positive?

Justin Lawhead:

So we’re doing it in a couple different ways, and some of this is really kind of initially this year and then application next year. So one of the first things I did when I came here is we have a nationally ranked University 101 program, where we get to touch students, we get to educate them in sessions there. There’s about almost 200 sections, and we present to somewhere between 130 and 150. When I got here, the presentation was about resumes, it was about all the software we had, and I said to the staff, “If you start with the tools and they don’t know where they’re going, you’re going to lose them almost instantly because that’s not related to their current experience.” So we did some modifications of presentation materials and all those sort of things. So that’s one aspect. And then I asked the staff instead of giving a separate orientation that’s unrelated to the University 101, let’s do the orientation presentation first, acknowledging that students get so much information at orientation, it’s orientation overload.

That we give them small bites of what we’re going to talk about in that University 101, and then we create a communication strategy through that first year. Part of what Career Center is challenged with, and what I’ve learned here is we throw everything against the wall unintentionally. We know that these programs work, and we really want these programs students engage in, but if they don’t come with a strategy where that student is in that year, they’re not going to connect. So the other piece that we’re working on is looking at those University 101s, those orientation presentations, and then what’s next. It’s taking a little bit of time. I would say that we’re making progress, but what I’d really like to see is coaching treated at the same value as academic advising. So you have an academic advisor, you have a career coach, and they have a parallel relationship through your entire career. My hope is that through some implementation and some constant conversations and partnerships that we can do that.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, it sounds like you’re on the right track for sure.

Justin Lawhead:

Thank you.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m curious, how do you, I mean you kind of touched on this a little bit, but how do you talk to your staff about this approach, or kind of help them shift this mindset, especially as a relatively new AVP, you’ve been there, what, a little less than a year now?

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s like what we talked about earlier. When you look at change management you can’t come in and just say, “Here’s the plan and here’s how we’re going to do it.” I learned that through experiences by going through different universities and knowing how folks react to change based on what they’ve done there. So I spent a good bit of time when I got here meeting every employee here and hearing their story, knowing why they’re here, and getting an idea of what drives them as part of that. And then it’s really taking that information and incrementally making changes moving forward.

So we talked about coming from a deficit model, if I came into the staff from a deficit model and said, “You’re doing everything wrong,” I wouldn’t get the buy-in. I’m saying, “You’re doing a lot of things right. How do we create a pathway that we scale more moving forward?” I would say like anything else, some things have hit really well, and some things didn’t go the way that I wanted to because maybe there’s some readiness as part of that. So I would say we’re on our way, and we’re going to spend this summer looking at that user-centered design process, and moving forward to see what our fall looks like.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. We’ll have to check in in another year or two and see how things are progressing.

Justin Lawhead:

I hope they are. I’m sure they will.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Speaking of that user-centered design exercise, I would love to dig into that a little bit more. So you kind of gave us a brief overview at the top of the podcast, your staff went out and talked directly to students about what they think of career planning, and then what they want or need from the career center. So can you just walk me through what that process looked like, why you did it, what you found out?

Justin Lawhead:

Sure. Part of the beauty of a long higher education career is you create relationships with individuals that are part of your journey along the way. My colleague, Brian LaDuke, who I met through the National Association for Campus Activities, because I have this whole separate life or previous life that was focused on campus life and campus activities, and I met some fascinating people along the way. And when I knew that I wanted to do this career work as a career shift or a career transition, I got much more active in LinkedIn and followed thought leaders, and followed those individuals that were in this space and thriving in this space, and Brian was one of those. Brian has done some career pivots and those sorts of things. So he came to my staff in August and did an overview of what this is, and what it means, and how it can create awareness, and pathways, and visions he didn’t have before, and then he came back in October and implemented that.

A couple of things that we found out from those students that was important, and some of my staff’s already doing. So the students in those teams told us they trusted three people when it came to career. Their parents, which I think is logical for this generation, but also creates some things that we really need to do moving forward. Parents may reflect back to an experience that’s not relevant to what’s happening now, and so we’ve now created a partnership with parent and family programs. We did a webinar with those parents, and that group is going to push out content to parents pretty frequently, so we embraced that. The second was advisors, because advisors deliver. Advisors deliver schedules. Advisors help them get into things like medical school. There’s an immediate value back to those advisors. So I’ve been meeting with the advising team to think about what can they do within that time that they have, because they meet with every students to either give some career guidance, train the trainer sort of concept, or make that soft referral moving forward.

And then the last folks they trusted were faculty, and there’s NACE research on faculty. Students look at them as the educational authority to their experience. So we’ve done things like a career champions program, which was here before I got here, and so I want to acknowledge what this group has done in regards to career champions. They’ve taken them through training, they’ve exposed them to career theories and competencies, what I want to do next is make sure we have a continuous conversation with those faculty members about what this experience is like for them and how we can equip them moving forward. So in the next couple of weeks, and some institutions are doing this, like a faculty toolkit, so if they want to easily embed some experiences within the classroom that don’t change pedagogy, that don’t change the purpose of the class, but really open up perspectives and eyes moving forward.

And then the other piece, when you’re in a year and you have activities, you kind of have to take a step back with user-centered design because you need to still deliver the programs. So we’re going to look at what we learned through that entire experience, and see what design that we can do over the summer that will inform our practices for the next academic year.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s really cool that you have this direct input from students informing your strategy. Do you imagine you’ll do exercises like this fairly regularly, like once a year or once every few years?

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah, I really hope so. We’ve done it in other spaces as well. In my previous campus life experience, I have pretty significant work with fraternity and sorority life. In fact, my dissertation is on what are the influences of fraternity and sorority life on a leadership identity development?

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, interesting.

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah. Yeah, if you want to read it, I’ll … and it was pretty interesting, and those were student experiences. So I knew through that dissertation research that these experiences matter, and I did it through the leadership lens. So we’ve gone out and talked to fraternity and sorority leadership about this, and said to them, “We know that you have so many obligations as part of those experiences, but here’s a way to do that.” So I partnered with a staff member here, Bree, and we brought the NACE assessments to them. We did the paper version and said, “We want you to have a conversation with a peer about where you think you are in this particular competency,” and have them choose from the seven that were available, and then they realized through those experiences that, “Wow, this is something that we’re really doing.”

So it’s just … I look at this as a Lego exercise. So task forces and those sorts of things, those always really excite people. That’s sarcasm. So Legos are, “Okay, I’ve got this piece and I’m building it here. Oh, I’ve got this piece and building it here.” It may take time to put it all together, but if I can find that fit here and find that fit there, then I’m building without having some of those traditional structures that may take a lot more time. So I would say from that user-centered piece I take that one Lego and make that application, then the idea is we look at what we’ve built and where we can do it, and what we can do moving forward.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that approach. It’s really cool. Now it makes me want to go play with Legos a little bit.

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah. Well, there’s-

Meredith Metsker:

Maybe when my 18-month old is a little bit older he can play with actual Legos.

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah. They take some time.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes.

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

Now he’s more interested in throwing blocks at the moment.

Justin Lawhead:

Than actually building. Yeah, for sure.

Meredith Metsker:

Yes. All right. Well, Justin, now I would love to kind of shift to measuring outcomes, tying outcomes to this asset model and this approach to career services. Now here at uConnect we’ve been talking a lot lately about how outcomes are a lagging indicator. They’re critically important, and we’re not arguing that, but they also can’t be changed by the time they show up in reporting. They reflect things that have already happened, decisions that have already been made, but career services engagement, we found is a really strong leading indicator of great outcomes, and one that institutions and career leaders can still influence while students are actively enrolled. So I’m curious, from your perspective, in this outcomes era that we’re in, what do you think career centers should be measuring?

Justin Lawhead:

I mean, obviously I think opportunities to measure the NACE competencies, and the things that are coming through that assessment I think are just critical. I know that that’s language that everybody understands, and so I’m not saying anything earth-shattering with that. I think the real important piece is to take those outcome measurements across the institution and just not do them in the career center. You read a lot about what things like technology and AI are doing, and there’s a lot of assault on College of Arts and Sciences and those degrees, but really what’s happening in a lot of those programs is the relationship that you want to have with technology. You need to drive the technology, you need to have the critical thinking and communication skills in order to do that. So where those NACE competencies are occurring, not only to demonstrate that you have a skill proposition to that particular employer, but you also are then using those for career planning and career development moving forward.

We talked a lot about coaching, and I have a wonderful coaching staff, and the leader of that staff, Jessica Gibson, has really done some really good work with creating uniformity and community around that coaching group. We have a current measurement that I think gets to a portion of that impact. I want that group to go back and maybe reevaluate the learning outcomes, and make sure that we think we’re measuring what we need to measure, and then how does that inform our practices moving forward. The eventual goal for that is to take things like coaching and mentorship programs and then see how that helps internship application, internship attainment, and then obviously first destination as well.

I think that’s probably the biggest challenge with career centers, is they’re asked to do more than they ever have, and they’re asked to measure more than they ever have. I know that I have to be incremental with this group because they are doing more. For instance, that student service side that I mentioned before had a 56% increase in engagement from one year prior, and so it’s working. We have the brand management, we just got to figure out ways to build partnerships and build outcomes into that. So we’re getting there, and part of it is understanding that we can’t just deliver programs, we have to include outcome measurement as part of that.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. So kind of on that note, Justin, I would love to hear more about how you think about not only measuring the what you did, because I think that’s been a common practice for a long time. How many appointments did we have? How many programs did we offer? How many students attended the career fair? Things like that. So we have the what covered, but then there’s the, well, why, or why is this important? Why does this matter? How do you think about really hitting that second part, the why it matters, the true impact?

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a couple of things there. One, I think we need a why from students, and so the students will tell us the why, and we just need to be more intentional about what it meant for them. The other thing that it’s going to take a little bit of time, but really is looking at our data in space and seeing what happened, and then that defining our why moving forward. For instance, we have a pretty large peer educator model. We have 25 peer educators, and that’s been a stalwart of what we’ve done here, but I looked at the data recently, and a large portion of those students are only meeting with students about resumes. We’re looking at other products that will probably, not necessarily replace, but reduce the capacity or reduce the need for capacity in that time. So what is the why with that peer educators moving forward? And that’s the conversation I hope to have with staff.

It is in no way replacing peer education because I think peer education is more important than it ever has been, because those are the peers that can bring our students into the office, have the conversation early, but I need the why about why they’re doing what they’re doing now, and whether that relates moving forward. And then I also think that the why may need to be an evaluation of whether that program needs to continue or not, and those are never decisions that are easy. But they really, in a time of rapid workforce changing in higher education, I do think you have to be able to answer the why you do with that program in order to demonstrate why you’re using the resources, and why it matters to a student in 2026.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, it’s a great point. It’s not only the why from the student side or trying to explain to students or prospective parents why we’re doing this, why we’re focusing on this, but then there’s the executive leadership side. So you have to communicate the impact and your reasoning to those senior leaders. So keeping with that thread, I’m curious how you, as an AVP, work to better communicate that true impact to your senior leaders.

Justin Lawhead:

I mean, I think you have to share your successes as quickly and as soon as possible. I would say that that’s probably a skillset that I am still acquiring in my later part of career. Humility’s always been part of my approach to work, and that’s just how I’ve approached the things that I’ve done in higher education, but it doesn’t always work when you’re doing careers about outcomes, it’s about successes and those sorts of things. Recently, what we were getting from coaching a year ago in regards to completing assessments was not really enough to tell the story. The team has really shifted their efforts and got more substantive information, and I immediately gave that to executive leadership as part of that.

The other piece I do is spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, because I just think that’s a space to share what’s happening and what you’re doing to get those connections moving forward. So I do a lot of storytelling on LinkedIn, and I would say it’s relatively time-consuming. I try to carve out the hours to do that, but if you’re representing the University of South Carolina in a way that’s positive and you’re representing success, that information’s going to get back to the executive leadership about what you’re doing. So sometimes you let other people tell your story because if they align with what you’re accomplishing, it doesn’t feel like you’re constantly sharing your successes in a boastful way. You’re getting those folks to understand and let them share your success story, and have an advocate and a partner as part of that.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s interesting. So you’re using LinkedIn kind of as an avenue for communicating impact with senior leaders.

Justin Lawhead:

I am. I mean, it’s an indirect impact, but it’s an impact, and so, yeah. So when I do something that’s a success about the career center I usually, almost every time, tag the University of South Carolina and tag this career center. I do think, now I don’t have hard evidence of that, but I do think that gets back to the institution and back to the institutional leadership. It still comes to report functions and those sort of things, but if you’re enhancing the institutional brand, then you’re doing what executive leadership wants you to do in some aspect. It’s still program delivery, but every institution is about brand management, it’s about what people think and whether they want to come, and contributing to that, I think, tells the story back to executive leadership.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, and certainly would maybe put you on their radar a little bit more, already kind of bring you into the room with a little bit of trust.

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah. Instead of me walking up to a president or a dean and spewing out all the wonderful things that we did, which I think in some ways would create an awkward interaction, it’s like telling my story there and getting that story back. Now there’s certainly … I’ll get a call from the VP or an AVP and say, “I need this information immediately. Can you tell me the successes?” And I do that. That’s part of a long tradition in higher education, of making sure that you share information up, but it’s also engaging in that space in a way that you’re branding the institution, and then you’re indirectly telling the story to executive leadership.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Which they always appreciate, especially having worked on a marketing team in a higher ed institution, I’m sure they appreciate it too.

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah, for sure.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, Justin, I know you’re still relatively early in this outcomes journey at USC, and still relatively early in your AVP role there as well, but are there any early data or signals that are giving you confidence that you’re on the right track with this asset or affirmation model approach?

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah. I mean, I think what we’re seeing in coaching is resonating with that. I do see some real wins there, and at least them acknowledging the value of that experience. I think some of the questions might need to be modified moving forward, but that coaching data is really doing that. I think the other piece that we’re seeing is that we’re seeing more students attend career fairs earlier. That seems trivial, but if you get students that are sampling the experience as an exploration exercise, not just a transactional exercise, I think you are creating some wins about affirmation or a positive approach moving forward.

In fact, what happened was that the employer relations staff was doing that work so well that employers were saying, “Hey, it’s wonderful those students are coming here. It’s wonderful that we get to see early exposure, but we don’t know that they’re freshmen, and we don’t know how to work with them unless they convey that as part of that.” So they asked us to do name tags or stickers or ribbons that say looking or exploration or those sorts of things. So in the day that when you have so many people visiting your table, an employer can work with that student based on what lived experiences they bring at that time. So I would say those are kind of the early wins that we’re having at this point.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, those are great wins. And I wanted to go back to the first one you mentioned, so these surveys, so are these surveys you are sending students after career coaching appointments? Does every student get one?

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah, and like anything else, it’s survey completion, so you have to take what you’ll get. I don’t fault students about survey completement because there’s probably some level of fatigue in regards to how many times an institution or an agency asks them questions, but the staff has really been able to quadruple the responses that they’ve gotten before. So that means two things to me. One, we’re getting substantive data that we can look at, and then secondly, those students are understanding enough of that experience that they’re submitting the information, and they find value in it. When your survey completion, for me, increases, then I think you’re really connecting with individuals because they want to talk about the value of their experience.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Can you just paint me a word picture here of what questions that you’re including on these survey or how many questions? I’m just curious.

Justin Lawhead:

It’s somewhere between, I would say 7 to 10. Some of it’s about clarity of goals. Some of it feels like that they understand the career center as a resource now, because that’s the other piece, I mean the old, old narrative or adage is you don’t go to the career center until your junior or senior year because that’s all they do for you. So it’s really more about they have ideas about their goals, they have some ideas about their career plan moving forward, so it’s them in that process, and them then going through a coach, and they now have a better idea of how to work through this process. We want to demystify that this is a journey all along the way, and so when the language reflects that students understand that, that demonstrates progress to me.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, is there, I mean, you’ve offered a lot of great insights already, but is there any other advice you would give to career services leaders who want to shift away from this more traditional deficit model into an asset or affirmation model?

Justin Lawhead:

I mean, I think it’s important for everybody to reflect on what is the reality of their personal experience. You don’t take all of your personal experience to apply for work, but if we all know that, and our peers know that this is really how we found our pathways, then give some consideration to applying that to your work. You and I had a great conversation about our unique experiences, but our experiences are unique to what we found in our work. Our experiences are not unique to how we found our work, and so why … that just to me is the why. I would also say for anybody that’s considering this work, you can find a pathway like mine. You’re right, I didn’t have a director of career center as part of my title. I worked with career in the leadership program. The career center reported to me for a certain period. I volunteered to write part of our accreditation plan. So you can also take that squiggly path to your career leadership journey, and so why not start with that blank canvas when you work with students as well?

Meredith Metsker:

I always think it’s interesting when career leaders have that squiggly path, because who better to help advise students on the uncertainty or almost the benefits of uncertainty, like the world is your oyster kind of thing, than somebody who has been through that.

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah, and then student stories tell you that. So the quick short story I’ll tell is that when I met with a fraternity and sorority leadership, there was a student that came up to me really unrelated to the competency piece. It was that he had experienced a recent difficulty in his family. His mom had passed due to a health issue, and he wanted some guidance about how to pursue health professions. I got him connected to the right person. But there’s somebody whose personal experience changed how they looked at careers, so embrace every moment that you can have that conversation because, to me, it’s really what reality is.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, and that’s what it’s all about, is helping those students. I bet he will remember that interaction forever.

Justin Lawhead:

I hope.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, Justin, before I kind of start wrapping us up a little bit, is there anything else you would like to add about our topic today?

Justin Lawhead:

Just that this is just such important work, and I’m really glad to be in this space because I do think it can have the impact for the future of the students we work for. One of the treasures of being in higher education at my age is that while social media has its pitfalls, social media also has its positives, and I get to see the opportunity of students succeeding in what they do after graduation. I actually posted this about a student that I worked with at the University of Memphis. So this work really gives me energy and joy, and I think that’s how we should approach it as professionals.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, it’s a great point, especially when the days might be long or hard, and it’s … remember that you get to make an impact.

Justin Lawhead:

Yes, exactly.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Well, Justin, if people would like to connect with you or learn more from you, where’s a good place to do that? I have a guess, but I’ll let you say it.

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah. I think I’ve given an early preview of that. Yeah, it’s really LinkedIn, I really just enjoy being part of that community and I learn a lot. I try to write … I’ve written a newsletter about it. I’ve gotten a little bit away from that, but really just find me on LinkedIn. Let’s share our story and partnership in this journey.

Meredith Metsker:

Perfect. For those of you watching or listening, I’ll be sure to include a link to Justin’s LinkedIn profile in the show notes so you can go and find him. All right, Justin, I’m going to close us out with this answer a question, leave a question thing that we do at the end of every interview. So I’ll ask you a question our last guest left for you, and then you will leave a question for the next guest. So our last guest was John Koelliker of Leland, and he left this question for you. How can we develop students into leaders while they’re still in college?

Justin Lawhead:

I think there are so many opportunities to do that. Obviously, there are the traditional co-curricular experiences that are part of that, but treating leadership as an exercise in multiple ways. One of my favorite, favorite TEDx videos is The Lollipop Moment, and really The Lollipop Moment is Drew Dudley who’s talking about even the smallest experiences can have an impact on leadership. So I think the conversation is threefold. One, provide as many opportunities for students to lead as part of that. Two, demonstrate that leadership is what is needed in the community moving forward. And then three, make sure students reflect on that value so that they can communicate to any employer that they bring those experiences there.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. It’s a great answer. I’m curious, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Justin Lawhead:

I want to make friends here, so I would say, what is your passion with career space and the why, and how does that help you lead?

Meredith Metsker:

That’s a good one. What would yours be?

Justin Lawhead:

My wife tells me I tell too many stories, but the last story I’ll tell you, and I’ve actually put this on my PowerPoint presentations, is a long time ago, my daughter and I were at a Chili’s, of all places, because she was a young kid and loved the chicken fingers. When I went to get the server, the server was a graduate of a leadership program that I was communicating, and I said … protect the identity of that individual, I’m like, “What brought you here? Why?” And he goes, “Well, I couldn’t find a job. I needed to,” and that moment immediately empowered me to, at least within that leadership program, to make sure that students understand the why and the how, because those students were getting those experiences through there. They were doing it, we weren’t doing enough to make those connections. Chicken fingers can inspire you, is what I would say.

Meredith Metsker:

I mean, that’s what I’m hearing. So I have to go order myself some chicken fingers and wait for inspiration to hit.

Justin Lawhead:

Chicken fingers are pretty popular here. It’s an institutional history. They actually have Chicken Finger Wednesday here, which was new to me. So it resonates.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s amazing. Yeah. Well, that’s a great question for the next guest. I’ll be interested to hear what they say to that one. Justin, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast. This was a fun conversation. I feel like we covered a lot of ground, everything from deficit model to chicken fingers, so I feel like we left no stone unturned.

Justin Lawhead:

Yeah, I think it’s a pretty full agenda. Yeah, pretty full agenda.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, but thank you for taking the time, and I really appreciate you sharing your time and your wisdom.

Justin Lawhead:

Great. It was great to be here. Thank you.