How to Make Career Services a Campus-Wide Strategic Priority

Barbara Zerillo:

Career development is important. It’s important to everyone. It’s important to every school. That being said, presidents, executive leadership teams, there’s a lot of things that are important on a campus. You could probably say every department is important. If it wasn’t important, it wouldn’t exist. So it’s not enough for us to say this is important to invest in. That’s not going to get buy-in from anybody because you need the why. You need the clear case as to why. And so I think that was a piece that really stood out to me is how do I show the value of this. And not just that it’s important, but to show this is a risk to not invest. I think that’s beneficial for leadership and leadership folk to hear that there’s a risk if we don’t do this right now.

Meredith Metsker:

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere Podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker. And today I am joined by Dr. Barbara Zerillo, the senior director of the Career Development Center at Post University. Thank you for joining me, Barbara.

Barbara Zerillo:

You’re welcome. I’m excited to be here.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I’m really excited to have you and to talk to you today about how you’ve made career a strategic priority there at Post University. I believe it’s one of the five pillars in the strategic plan, right?

Barbara Zerillo:

It is. It’s extremely exciting. Our president and our executive leadership team have really made career a clear institutional priority here, which is phenomenal. It really goes beyond messaging, so I’m excited to talk to you a little bit about that today.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s so exciting. I know everyone listening to this is probably jealous already right off the bat. So yeah, we’ll dig into all of that. And I know you did a ton of work to research what other career centers in the Northeast are doing, to benchmark your career center, to involve your president in the research process and to ultimately make a really effective pitch to senior leadership on why they should invest in the career center. In fact, I think in our prep call, you mentioned that you got the funding to hire about 10 new staff members and build out a really robust tech stack and you did all of this in what, less than a year or something like that?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

So yeah, it’s super impressive and I am excited to talk to you today about how you did all of this, what the results have been, and then what advice you have for other career leaders who are listening. But before I get into my questions, Barbara, is there anything else you would like to add about yourself, your background or your role there at Post University?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah, sure. So I’ve been in the career development industry for 14 plus years now. I think coming up on 15. For me, I think I’ve always been really passionate about making career development accessible. I think that for me is really important. Making sure that every student has access and that it’s a practical experience for them. And what I’ve loved about being at Post in particular, Post really prides itself on making it personal. We always say Post makes it personal. And I think it’s been a really rare opportunity here because leadership has invested so much into career and is in the process of investing. And I think that really helps to make it that personal experience for students so that we can get career development to everybody here at Post.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. It’s always nice when leadership walks the walk with the budget and the staffing in addition to talking about it.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yes, exactly.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay, cool. Well, before I get into the more specific questions about our topic today, I do want to kick us off with a question I ask all of our guests here on the podcast. That’s what does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. So for me, Career Everywhere, it really comes down to equity for me. It goes back to what I said I was passionate about is making career accessible and practical for everyone. I think for me, I really think for career to be everywhere, it has to be woven through the fabric of a student’s experience, not just academic, but also extracurricular, their entire experience. And I think most importantly, you don’t want it to be that students need some secret passcode or password to get into this career knowledge. You want to make sure that everybody gets access to it. And so for me, that’s what Career Everywhere means.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. Well said and I fully agree. And I know we’re going to talk about that accessibility angle throughout this interview today. So now I would love to dig into our topic today, which is again, how you effectively made career a campus-wide strategic priority there at Post University. And I think it would be helpful to start off with some context. So you joined Post University about a year and a half ago, correct? Is that what you said?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yep, exactly.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. So can you share more about what the career center situation looked like when you arrived and then what made you decide things needed to change and quickly?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. So there was a ton of work already happening when I got to Post University. There was a lot of motivation, movement, excitement around career readiness, workforce readiness, but the office itself was pretty small. So we had a team of three staff members, two career advisors, and then the director, myself when I first started. We had a smaller office space. We also had a handful of career platforms, kind of the typical, the Handshakes, Big Interviews, InterStride. And we were already, career already was one of 10 strategic initiatives. So there already was enthusiasm and support for it, but the office size and the office support structure wasn’t quite there to support it at the level that I know Post wanted to support it at and where we’re headed now.

There was also some great work happening. I want to give full credit to everything that was going on before my time as well. They did a great job cross-training academic advisors here, so some of our programmatic academic advisors were trained on career topics so that they could have career conversations, about 30 of academic advisors. So that was one great opportunity to scale they took advantage of. And Meredith, when you say what made you realize you wanted to do things quickly, I think it is definitely in my nature to move quickly. My CliftonStrengths, one of my CliftonStrengths is being an activator. And so I love getting things off the ground, innovating, new projects, new priorities. But I think what’s so important is that I really took the time to listen.

Like I said, there was a lot of momentum already and great work happening. And so I really took the time to listen to make sure that I respected that process. Leadership was already engaged and excited. We have such a great leadership team here. And so I think for me, that listening phase was really, really critical, but we did move quickly. We started immediately really mapping out what needed to happen, what we wanted to accomplish and started to put that into a plan. I pulled from some of my project management experience and background. I have my project management professional certification and really using that to think through what are our office strategic goals? Where do we want to be in a year, two years, three years? And that I think all helped to get things moving.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Sounds like just kind of the perfect situation. I mean, if you’re going to walk in as a new director, having some buy-in already and having your project management skillset there, it sounds like it’s just a really … It was a good scenario to hit the ground running.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think you need all those pieces. You can’t do this on your own. I can’t take credit for doing this. Post gets a lot of the credit for all of this. We had to have all the right pieces in place. And when I took the job, that opportunity for growth, I could smell it. I knew it was there.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I bet. So as part of this revamp process for your career center, I know you did a lot of research and benchmarking and you built a true data-driven case for investing in career services. So can you walk me through that process? Where did you start?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. So I mean, data is critical. I think having data available and accessible to you to be able to tell your story is really important. So when I first got here, I did want to look for not only our current data from our office, but I wanted to look beyond that and to get some external data as well. So a few things that I did, I surveyed a group of New England career chief services officers that I had an access to the listserv. I surveyed them and just asked really, honestly, a very simple survey. It was, who are your staff and what’s your tech stack look like? Because those were the two pieces that I knew I wanted to focus on and I wanted some recent current real data for what our peer institutions were doing.

That ended up being super powerful. I probably sent it to a hundred plus people and I got 44 responses within three days. So within three days I had kind of an anonymous report built up that I could share back with our leadership team that helped to benchmark where we were at. Beyond external data, I also really wanted to tap into some of that internal data. So for us, some of the data that I looked at internally but also outside of our office was persistence data. So I wanted to see where were we comparing related to persistence.

So we found that within the first two terms, if students saw a career coach within the first two terms, they were 13% more likely to persist at Post. And that is super powerful. That is concrete data. And props to Josh Domitrovich who had been on your podcast in the past. I had heard him speak and that was one of the pieces. So props to him for giving me that idea as well. So again, those pieces really helped to build that case so we could move the dial.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s really cool. And I was thinking of Josh when you were talking about that persistence stacks. I think theirs at Penn West was really similar. I think it was like 14%, maybe 14% higher persistence rate if they engage with career services and it is very powerful stat.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah, yeah. Well, and especially when you factor in, what do leaders care about? I think we’re often stuck in this bubble and all we’re thinking about is our numbers and things that matter to us and you have to go outside of that. You have to think bigger, you have to think bigger picture at your institution.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, yeah. For sure. And so just to confirm with this survey you sent out, because I mean, you had a lot of respondents really quickly. So it was just those two questions. It was like team size and tech stack. Is that what you said?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. So I broke it into a few questions. So it was like how many part-time, how many full-time staff? Those were the two moral kind of bulk of it though, was really focusing in on that because again, I thought about, do I ask about budget? I kept budget out. I didn’t think people would be as likely to respond if I was probing them what their budgets were. I think that’s more of a sensitive topic. So it felt to me staff was something people would not only want to share with me but get back. I gave all that data back to everybody who filled out the survey and the anonymous report. So I think that was helpful as well. For tech stack, I ran through the list of what tools are using for this, this, this, this, this and other. So I was able to see a little bit of what people’s tech stacks look like.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I’m curious if you’re able to share, what were some of the trends or patterns that you noticed in the survey responses?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. So I think when it comes to for tech stack, there is no one size fits all at all. Every institution is very different. When it came to resume AI tools, it was across the gamut of different tools people were using. So I don’t think it was necessarily like, “Oh, these are the five you have to have.” But I think in each group you could see themes emerging that people had something in this area or that area. Obviously everybody has a CRM for their overall office, but when you get into the weeds a little bit more, it really varies. uConnect was obviously popular. That was one of the ways that we helped to get uConnect here was from that data as well.

Meredith Metsker:

Awesome. Love to hear that. And that’s really cool that you also offered to share that data back with respondents. I’m sure that was another good incentive for them to fill it out.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, if I was interested, I’m sure other people were interested.

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, absolutely. Okay. Well, in addition to the survey that you sent out and the benchmarking you were doing, you also organized site visits to other career centers, right?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yes. Yes, we did.

Meredith Metsker:

I know it included Boston University, Dartmouth, Bentley, some others there in the Northeast. So I’m curious, what was the goal of those visits and what did you take away from them?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. So I knew I wanted to … We always hear from other directors of other career centers, executive directors, we all gain that knowledge and I think that’s where we’ve learned from each other from, but I think oftentimes our leadership hasn’t gotten that experience. They haven’t heard from other institutions specifically on the topic of career at the same level. So what I wanted to do was do a site visit where I brought a few folks from our executive leadership team with me. So yeah, we visited those three schools in particular. It was amazing. We got to spend a day at those schools learning the ins and outs of their staffing, their tech stack, what do they prioritize, really how do things work and what they’ve done to be successful.

And the Bentley visit, Bentley is the top career center in the country. So the fact that that one is close to us and we were able to make a visit, the president actually joined us for that visit and I can’t express enough how impactful that was for him to … It speaks to him the fact that he was willing to take that time to dive in deep to this topic and to really get the ins and outs of what a career center does and how to be successful. I think that probably single-handedly had the biggest impact on the work that we did.

Meredith Metsker:

So Barbara, I’m curious, how did you get the president to go with you on these site visits?

Barbara Zerillo:

Well, I would love to take credit for really being the one to compel him, but it wasn’t just me. We had another executive leader on our team who had actually gone to Bentley as a student and had that experience there and was able to communicate like, “There’s great things that they’re doing. Let’s go see what they’re doing.” Also to the president’s credit, we didn’t have to twist his arm. This was a top priority for him and gaining this information was just as valuable for him as it was for me to bring him there. So I want to give credit more to the leadership team and that they realized that this was something critical to do if we were going to really move the dial on career readiness here.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And what a great idea too, to take advantage if you are fortunate enough to have other institutions near you, what a great idea to involve the executive leadership team in these site visits, in this research, getting them to basically buy in from day one.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah, yeah. It was very powerful, probably the most powerful thing, impactful thing that I did to move the dial here.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I can imagine. And I’m curious with these site visits, again, you went to Boston University, Dartmouth and Bentley. So were there any trends, any patterns that you were noticing that all of these great career centers were doing right now?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. I mean, I can say they’re all doing phenomenal work and doing really impressive great things. I think the biggest trend I would say is, again, one size does not fit all. Every institution is different. The products they’re using, the tech stack they’re using, their staffing structure, their organization I think at all three schools would be different. So I don’t know if I would say there’s any one thing in particular. Probably if I had to, I would say they’re mindful and aware, I think they’re all very aware of AI. They’re all very aware of needing to be kind of aware of what’s going on and what’s the next step in career. So I think there are three really impressive career centers.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, for sure. And I know at least in Dartmouth’s case, because we just had Joseph Catrino on a few episodes ago, he also is in a position where he has presidential buy-in. So I bet he had some good things to say too.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. He’s doing super impressive stuff up there.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yep, for sure. Okay. So Barbara, now I would love to talk about the why document that you created for your president at the end of this research process. Can you share what was in it and then how you presented the case?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yes, absolutely. So for the president, I think the question we kept coming back to is why. Why invest? Why invest this amount? Why invest in the tech, in the staff, all of that? And I think I really needed to find a way to clearly communicate. And one mistake that I think centers often do is they focus on saying it’s because it’s important, right? And that seems like a great case, but when you really boil that down, every department at an institution is important. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t exist. And so what a president or a leadership team is really looking for is what is the risk if we don’t invest, what is the cost if we don’t invest. And so I think taking it from important to critical was a key step that need to happen.

So the why document really spelled it out, talked about our current student engagement numbers, talked about our current populations. Post has a smaller main campus that’s in person with traditional age students. And then we have a huge 15 to 20,000 population of online learners. So two very dramatically different populations of students. So for us, for RY, we really had to support both of those. And for anyone who is supporting both online and traditional learners, it is a different ballgame. You’re really almost running two career centers. And so that alone was kind of some data that showed we needed to increase and that it was a risk not to.

I also pulled together the benchmarking insights from the New England director survey I did. We focused on the technology gaps that might exist based on that data that we had pulled. And again, going back to some of Josh Domitrovich’s content, really thinking about enrollment, retention, career success, how does our data tie back into that and how does it show that we need to invest in this particularly right now?

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. It sounds like a really compelling document. And I am curious, you mentioned how you not only focused on kind of the why it was important, but you also focused on what’s at risk if we don’t invest. Can you share a little bit more about from your perspective, what was at risk and maybe what kind of got the president’s attention?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. So I think when it comes to, again, speaking specifically about our institution and every institution is different, but at our institution, if we continued to operate with the size staff that we had with the tech stack that we had, we were missing a huge population of our students. We needed to have a really state of the line tech stack because we have such a large online institution. We need to be able to reach them where they’re at. When you think about our population, they’re not always seeking those traditional one-on-one appointments and just in general, people are seeking those less and less.

They want to click a button, they want to have immediate access to something. They want to be able to ping someone in a chat with a question. They don’t necessarily want to sit down for a one hour appointment with somebody like they might have used to in the career services world that we lived in previously. So I think that that was a key piece is that we need to bring this into not only the present but into the future. What does this look like for us in the future?

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. It makes a lot of sense what you were talking about in terms of modernizing the career center, especially to reach those online students. And I do imagine that was pretty compelling for the president and other executive leadership to hear, especially in regards to enrollment and bringing in revenue to the institution. If you are not modern, if you can’t reach those online students or compete with other institutions, then what’s the incentive to enroll?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. I think every institution right now needs to be focused on career and again, that access to that career development, it really has to be front and center. And I think the institutions that are investing like what we’re doing and what a lot of other schools I’m seeing are doing is just that, is laser focusing in on how do we reach our students and scale to the level that we need to.

Meredith Metsker:

So I’m curious, what was the president’s response to this why document? What did he say about it?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. I mean, I definitely think that the outcome that we’ve achieved kind of speaks to that. So we’ve invested a lot in some technology products since then. We’ve also invested in hiring some staff. We’re in the process bringing on three staff right now just in the last couple of months and have plans to hire a lot more. So I think that speaks for itself, that I think it really resonated with … Again, it gave Post what they needed to support an initiative they were already looking to support. They needed a plan and so we provided them with the blueprint with the plan that they could then invest in and move forward with.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. That’s a good segue to the next question because speaking of that plan, so earlier you mentioned that career went from being 1 of 10 areas of focus, which is a lot, to one of five strategic pillars for the entire institution. I’m curious, what did that shift look like in practice and what changed?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah, so it went from 1 of 10 strategic initiatives to one of the five pillars and we have multiple strategic initiatives underneath us. So that in itself was a major change. It really allowed us to laser focus in on career as an entire pillar and there’s multiple initiatives underneath it. So a couple things that changed. We meet monthly, or I meet monthly, I should say, with the president, with leadership, with the other folks running the other five pillars to really flesh out how we’re doing, where we’re at. Some other shifts that happen from that, we structurally reorganized. At this point my office is now under the academic side of the house, which I think is a great place for us to land so we can really integrate into curriculum.

We got a new physical space, again, have those frequent meetings with leadership. Our tech stack, we purchased uConnect, we purchased Careerflow AI, which is a resume AI tool and a kind of career search management tool. We also purchased Iris Air and My Career Closet. So we really dove in and invested and I think those are some of the pieces that really got set into motion. Also now because it is one of the five strategic pillars, we are working with a project manager for the institution that really keeps up with our milestones, our tasks. It is all structured and written out from a project management perspective, which I love. So that’s also been extremely helpful.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. I imagine that’s especially fun for you with the project management side.

Barbara Zerillo:

I was very happy, yes.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s so cool, especially with that, not only the approval for hiring more staff members and investing in a tech stack, but how quickly it came through. No wonder you were able to get all this done in about a year.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. And I think really things picked up about last summer, mid-summer is where things really shifted and picked up. We fell under an incredible leader who really helped us move quickly, knew the right strings to pull to get the things that we needed done. And I think that that was significant in us making the moves that we had to move. So again, it speaks to, I mean, everybody already always hears this, but you need a champion at the leadership level that’s going to help you translate what you need to translate, help guide you, help coach you. I think I was lucky enough to have that and that really had an impact.

Meredith Metsker:

So it’s making me think I need to get a panel together with you and Joe Cotrino from Dartmouth and all these folks that do have these really good working relationships with the president. Get you all together and share the secret sauce here.

Barbara Zerillo:

Right? Yeah. Love it. Anytime.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. We’ll have to make that happen. So I know you mentioned that you haven’t finished hiring all of the new hires you were approved for, but so far I’m curious, what has it been like to go from your small team of three to now scaling relatively quickly?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. I mean, it’s been amazing. Right now, I’ve hired two additional directors underneath me, which is really helpful. So we have a director of employer relations. We also have a director of alumni career engagement. That alone has been a gift. Just having people that are able to focus on that so I can keep thinking bigger picture, keep thinking … Making sure everything’s going in the direction we need to and get a little bit out of the weeds has been significant. Again, going from a small team of three, any staff makes a difference, but in particular, the folks that I’ve brought in have been really, really great. The school’s also been amazing with me and the previous staff as well being … We’ve been brought up along with this. So there was promotions provided. They really invested in our staff and who we are.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, it sounds like it. And I’m curious, what are some of the positions you’re hoping to hire for in the future as far as expanding your team?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. So we definitely like to get a director of career coaching and we’re going to be hiring multiple career coaches themselves, but again, we want to think outside of the box. We don’t want to be consistently doing the massive caseloads for one career coach. We want to scale. So it’s going to be thinking about how do we leverage that. So again, we’ll obviously leverage our uConnect platform. We call it Career Hub where they can be managing those career communities, workshops, doing things where you hit a larger amount of students is a big piece. But yeah, those are some of the pieces that we’re going to be adding. But yeah, all sorts of roles.

And I think I’ve definitely talked to a lot of folks along the way. You mentioned Joe Cotrino. I talked to Dave Merry at Suffolk, who also grew a team really quickly. They gave great advice. One of the pieces of advice they gave that I think I didn’t heed at first was take your time, stagger the additional staff member because you want to be able to take the time to really process it out. It’s easy to build a plan of what’s going to work on paper, but when you actually put the pedal to the metal, you have to make sure it’s going to work. And so I think that’s where we’re at now is we’re pausing a little bit. We’re slowly staggering our hires to make sure that it’s going to work as a larger system.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. That makes sense. That’s a good piece of advice because not only do you have to go through the hiring process, but then you have to onboard this new person. I imagine it would be really hard to onboard 10 new people at the same time.

Barbara Zerillo:

I mean, just the interview process alone, doing two director level interview processes at the same time, I mean, I was a full-time HR person, so there’s challenges.

Meredith Metsker:

Add it to your resume, Barbara.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. But I can’t complain. I will say I do not want anyone on this call to think I’m complaining. I will take all these problems.

Meredith Metsker:

It’s a good problem to have. I wanted to go back to something you mentioned a little bit earlier. So career is one of the five strategic pillars and you mentioned that there are a few, I think, initiatives under you now. Would you be able to share what those are?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. I mean, so it’s things that I think probably makes sense to folks in this world, but building out the career center itself, knowing that we needed to grow team. So the actual growing of the team is a strategic initiative. So everything that comes into play with that. We’re also building out really a new employer relations strategy and we’re building out a new alumni career engagement strategy underneath that. So really taking what we had before but building on it and making it, again, scalable at the level that we want to be scalable at.

Other things are communication of what we’re doing even internally at the campus to make sure it is integrated throughout. How are we going to be communicating to make sure that career readiness is everywhere, that everybody that’s here, not only the students, but we need staff, we need faculty to be aware of what we’re doing so that they can communicate that as well. So those are a few of the pieces. Also our entire career service delivery model, we’re completely revamping that because again, we want to think at scale and to really make sure that we’re able to leverage the tools that we have that we’ve purchased and we’re getting good engagement in all of them to make sure that we reach all of our vast amount of both online students while still supporting our main campus students.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. It sounds like a lot of really exciting stuff and also a lot to manage, which makes me want to ask about your project management experience and kind of how you use those principles to stay organized, stay on track throughout this whole process. So can you talk a little bit about your project management system and how it’s helped you manage something this big while also still running the day-to-day operations of your career center?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah, absolutely. So it’s so funny because when I first started learning about project management, I just kept saying like, “This is what we do in higher ed.” We operate typically on semester or terms. You operate in these finite periods of time where you’re trying to get things done and then there’s a period, I won’t say a period of rest because there isn’t, and then you’re onto the next project, the next semester, the next term, whatever that might be. So we already operate in these very clear cut distinct periods of time. And so project management lends itself really well to that. So when I first came in, I took my office strategic plan, so I made an office strategic plan. This was outside of the institutional one that really focused on what do I want to accomplish in the first year.

And I mapped all that into, we use Planner here, Microsoft Planner, because we’re a Microsoft school. I mapped all that into there, our milestones, our tasks. And then I broke it down further where everyone on the team, their goals align with those strategic kind of plans that I had. So everything kind of filtered into this funnel to reach these ultimate strategic initiative goals. And then it’s funny because fast forward, once I started working at that higher level with the institutional strategy, we have a PM we’re working with and we’re doing the exact same thing. So that I think is just a tried and true method. It’s just helpful. You keep track of are you behind, are you on time, who are you assigning to what tasks, so all of that’s really helpful.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And I’m sure it’s fun to kind of geek out with somebody else on project management principles.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yes. Yes. And there’s so many tools out there now. Even if you don’t have the funding to purchase a Planner type system, there’s lots of tools out there that are free of cost for one user to use to put your plan in. So even if you are just a one person office, you can use project management kind of processes and plans.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. And maybe if folks have questions, they can ask you for advice.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah, absolutely. I love talking project management.

Meredith Metsker:

I love it. Well, speaking of the tech side of things, so you mentioned earlier that you’ve built out a pretty comprehensive tech stack throughout this whole process. And I’m curious, what does a full career services tech stack look like to you and how did you evaluate and decide what to invest in?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. So I think a full tech stack, like I said before, one size does not fit all. So I do not think there is one correct tech stack. That’s one thing I took away from about a thousand demos and conversations with peers and the survey I pulled. But I think that one thing that I found is that there are some key categories, right? So everybody needs a CRM for their office. So a Handshake, a Symplicity, whatever it might be. There’s also, it was common that people had interviewing tools. A resume AI tool, obviously that’s another big hitter nowadays. An alumni tool, I think that varies whether it’s an office owns that, institution owns it, but an alumni engagement tool itself. So those are some things we looked at.

Additionally, some places are purchasing employer relations, CRM specific programs. So we were considering, are we going to purchase one of those, but our institution’s actually purchasing Salesforce. So with that, we’ll be able to leverage that for our CRM. So I think it can be a mix. I know it’s funny because uConnect, it’s almost in its own category. There isn’t another product-

Meredith Metsker:

It is. Yeah.

Barbara Zerillo:

So I remember on the survey it was like I put it down for virtual career center platform, but it’s like that’s the only one. So that I think is, as I talked to people, small schools and big schools, that platform I think is kind of a … I can’t say it’s like necessity because, again, not one size fits all, but I think it’s really helpful. And for us, it’s been great since we launched it.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Well, I’m super glad to hear that. And yeah, you touched on the categorization challenge as a marketer here at uConnect. It’s like, okay, we have no direct thing to compare to. So we basically have to create our own category under virtual career centers. So I feel you. Yeah.

Barbara Zerillo:

Which is hard when you’re pitching it to leadership is to explain why you need this tool when it’s like, what do you mean we … It’s like it’s not a website. So how do we-

Meredith Metsker:

It’s not a website. Yes.

Barbara Zerillo:

It’s not a website. So I think that’s something really … Yeah, that’s something challenging.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, we feel that for sure here at uConnect. Yeah, it’s just in its category all on its own over here, but definitely a core piece of infrastructure for a lot of schools. So it’s exciting to hear that it’s working well there at Post University. So kind of the big question here now, Barbara, is for anyone watching or listening who wants to try to replicate what you’ve done or even just take one step forward towards making career a bigger institutional priority, where would you tell them to start?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. I think research is critical. Researching both qualitative and quantitative data, I think the site visits were really powerful, but I think that is one piece of it. The other piece is also just understanding your presidential priorities, understanding leadership’s priorities, really understanding what language they’re using, what is beneficial. And then I think the third thing I would say is to ask for a seat at the table. And I think you can do … All three of those are critical, getting the data, understanding the priorities and getting a seat at the table. They almost all are interconnected.

Like what came first, the chicken or the egg? They can all happen at the same time even. It’s just you need to start figuring out what the priorities are so you can get the right data. You need to get a seat at the table so you can understand those priorities. And then obviously you need the data to be able to communicate out about your office and the direction to go in.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s great advice. And I’m curious on the presidential side of things. So you’ve obviously done a really great job of understanding what’s important to your president. And I would love to know what were you looking at? Were you looking at state of the university addresses? How are you gathering that information about what was important to him?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yeah. I mean, I think just conversations, conversations with your president, your leadership team. I love the question, what keeps you up at night? What is keeping you awake at night because you’re worried about it? And I think once you start to have an understanding of how much bigger their plate is than yours, it makes you realize I can’t come at it from this siloed singular angle because that’s not going to be effective and that’s not going to be beneficial. So I think really understanding just directly from them is helpful, but definitely state of the unions, those type of things, town hall meetings, really if there’s something they publish or are writing about, reading that, just anywhere you can get that information. But obviously direct conversations are always going to be the best.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah. Ideally if you can get in with your president and have a meeting directly, that’s the way to do it for sure.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yes, yes.

Meredith Metsker:

And I appreciated you making the point about not going in with just a siloed mindset, really kind of making the broader business case or helping your case fit into the broader strategy. Because I imagine for a lot of presidents, they got a lot on their plate. They’re trying to keep the institution running and running well. And so it can’t just be our department’s important. It’s like, yes, but also where does it fit into the larger strategy?

Barbara Zerillo:

Exactly, exactly. We have to stop saying career development is important. We have to start thinking beyond that for sure.

Meredith Metsker:

Yep, yeah. Amen to that. Well, Barbara, you’ve offered a ton of really great insights and advice already, but is there any other advice you would give to career services leaders who are just trying to elevate their center’s visibility and impact?

Barbara Zerillo:

I mean, I think I want to hone back in. I know I’ve said it before, but to really stop saying career development is important. I think that going back to what I talked about where you want to think about why is it a risk for your president to not invest right now. And I think in particular, if you can’t find that risk, that’s another thing. What if someone can’t figure out that story to tell because there’s other priorities that are that risk? That’s also something that’s important to think a little bit about. And just again, put yourself back in the shoes as a president juggling 50,000 things and priorities and identifying maybe you do need to rethink, reframe your thinking. Do you really need the extra staff that you’re talking about? Do you really need that tech product? So I also think from another perspective is thinking about reframing your own thinking at times too is important.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s really good advice. Before I start closing us out, is there anything else you would like to add?

Barbara Zerillo:

I think also just I think it’s really great for all directors to and senior directors, executive directors, anyone at any level, associate directors, assistants, all of that to stay connected with other career development centers. I think people in our industry are very generous, are very sharing. I think take advantage when you go to a conference and you meet with someone to take their name or get their LinkedIn and follow up and have a conversation because we learn so much more from our peers than you do just by being siloed in your own institution. So that would be the other piece is just stay connected, especially if you’re newer in the field. I think it’s really important to stay connected, but at any level really.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s great advice. And it’s clearly worked out really well for you throughout this whole process with that survey, with the site visits. And on that note, I would just make a quick plug for the Career Everywhere Community, that uConnect hosts, if you’re looking for a place to network with other career services professionals in higher ed on a day-to-day basis, the community is free to join. It’s open to anyone in higher ed career services. So just go to community.careereverywhere.com and you can join there. All right, Barbara, if people would like to connect with you or learn more from you, where is a good place for them to do that?

Barbara Zerillo:

So I’m big on LinkedIn, so feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can also email me directly if that’s easier. You can find my contact info in Post’s website. So I would just say if you’re thinking about getting in touch, get in touch with me. Even if you just send me a quick message that you saw this podcast, I’d love to hear it. We can always, after that point, reconnect years later even, and we’ll remember that we have that connection. So I would say just reach out on LinkedIn or email.

Meredith Metsker:

Perfect. And for those of you watching or listening, I’ll be sure to include a link to Barbara’s LinkedIn profile in the show notes so you can go and connect with her there. All right, Barbara, at the end of every interview, I like to do this answer a question, leave a question thing. 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 Todd Schuster of Forage and he left this question for you. If you could share one detour you made in your career journey, what would it be?

Barbara Zerillo:

So for me, I think the biggest detour was after I graduated college, I went to Taiwan. I moved to Taiwan and I lived there for two and a half years studying Chinese, teaching. And I think that was a huge detour for me. Some might say it has nothing to do with what I do today, but for me, that was such an incredible stop on my journey. I learned a ton from the culture experience and just the opportunities that I had there. I think it’s also just a really great fun fact when I’m doing icebreakers. So highly recommend just taking time to do those gap years.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that sounds amazing. What made you pick Taiwan?

Barbara Zerillo:

I was honestly open to anywhere. I was just at that point, it was the recession and I was looking for an opportunity and a job outside of the country. So I ended up having networking, someone that I used to go to college with, had a role there and messaged me. And then within a month I was gone and then I stayed for two and a half years.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s so cool. Very cool. Well, Barbara, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Barbara Zerillo:

So I thought about this one. I would love to ask the next guest, if you could wave a magic wand and solve on challenge in the career services world overnight, what would that be?

Meredith Metsker:

Oh, that’s a deep one. That’s a good one. I’m curious, do you know what your answer would be?

Barbara Zerillo:

I think for me it would be going back to that Career Everywhere concept, how do you weave it in so it is unavoidable, that’s the word, unavoidable for students to miss. I think for me it would be how do you weave it in like that?

Meredith Metsker:

I like that. I like the wording, unavoidable.

Barbara Zerillo:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s good. That’s the dream, right?

Barbara Zerillo:

Yep.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, very cool. I’m excited to hear what the next guest says to that question. And Barbara, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. This was really fun. It’s a great conversation. We covered a ton of ground, I feel like, and hopefully people had their notepads out and were taking notes, but just thank you so much for taking the time to share your wisdom.

Barbara Zerillo:

Thank you so much for having me. It was really great. So yeah, thank you so much for having me, Meredith. This was fun.