- April 12, 2016
- 4:47 pm
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Re-Imagining Career Services Outcomes: Track Forward; Forward Momentum
“Envision it Hassan; paint it; paint it well”, said one of my career coaches early on in my career. He was referencing my desire to re-imagine the Career Services Outcomes Model. Simply put, I told him that the current model was quite impulsive and I was challenging its effectiveness. He said, “then do something about it; change it”.
These words vibrated in my mind for the next three months until I reached my 90-day review period. I decided to pick up my career brush in preparation for this meeting and paint myself as a visionary of the field. What I didn’t realize at the time was my coach’s intent to guide me towards my own passion. He said, “Hassan, passion will not stack the deck against you in an interview.” This is what we need to teach our students. As I watched my hand brush away in my mind, behind me, in the background, was a beautiful synergy of thought, action, wisdom and high performance collaboration. I called it the New Era of Career Services and Development. It had a distinct fragrance, an impeccable style, but more importantly, it was original and had feeling, and that’s what made it different. That’s what would make it successful. It was time to challenge traditional resumes. It was time to re-focus energies on new, better ways of providing career services, instead of assuming we already had the best way. In my view, the traditional methods were becoming less and less effective over time.
Much of my independent consulting on careers, mentoring and coaching filters down to one organizing thought: “You own the business of your career”. It is your goal; and vision. I spent countless hours and days encouraging my clients to take ownership of their career paths despite the fact that they worked for someone else, a boss, organization or corporation. It was this drive that really propelled my clients to get positions that made sense for them. As a Director of Career Services, I knew that I must have the same drive in my approach with my career center. In a time when career centers are lean and may not have all the resources they need, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and overloaded. So what can you do to plan for these challenges? Plan ahead! Champion change, as it will require a significant cultural change that is inevitably coming, especially when more and more universities and colleges are highlighting career outcomes rates to remain in the competitive mix.
Many top career development centers are building new socially innovative strategies, concepts, and ideas that meet the social needs of different elements including career development and/or education to community building. When it comes to how to achieve successful career outcomes, the floodgates of discussion are opened and you will find yourself evaluating and re-evaluating a plethora of arguments and perspectives on the topic. I decided to tackle this challenge head on early on my career. I knew, without a doubt, there was a better way to stay ahead of the curve when it came to not only helping our students and graduates receive employment, but tracking this valuable data. My approach was aggressive and innovative with one thing on my mind, what was best for both our students and staff at the career center. Here’s how:
- The first step for me was reflection, a very common first phase in career ready development. In 2010, I had found myself in a new career with new challenges. I parked my car near the beach and took a walk under the moonlight. As I watched the bioluminescence of the waves glow, it hit me. If organisms could find their own path via a form of chemiluminescence, resulting in the production and emission of light to find their way, why couldn’t we help students to take ownership of their career and empower them to be their own compass early on in their career? What’s missing was that “emotional” inspiration; a can-do, positive attitude to get ahead of the game. You have all heard how important it is to “start early” or not to wait to review your resume. What were we really doing to get these students ready? Was it early enough? What was stopping us? Then it dawned on me; we had no “forward momentum”. We were more reactive vs. proactive and that needed to change.
- Be proactive. So what did I exactly mean when I say “reactive”? Most career services offices begin the process of helping students find jobs at graduation or right before (at a graduation fair) if they are lucky. Unfortunately, this may be last time we may see many of these students in all likelihood. If hypothetically, we decide on a 6-month post-graduate tracking period, that gives you six months to help them find fulfilling and/or degree-related employment after they graduate. When I was a Financial Advisor for UBS, I was told that it takes about 6 months to truly build a relationship with my clients. Thus, by the time that period ended, career outcomes would be due and my team would be left short-handed, feeling a ton of pressure as it related to performance goals. Not to mention the difficulty it is bringing students back to your career center after they graduate and become alumni. It almost feels like you are working backwards and this didn’t resonate with me from Day One. Thus, invite students into your office who will be graduating in the coming year, and don’t wait for them to contact you for an Exit Interview or wait until a graduation fair to catch them.
- Begin the relationship with students even before they are students. How, you may ask? When they are prospective students or after they are admitted, or before they enroll. Introduce yourself to new admitted students at an Open House or New Student Orientation; shake their hands and ask for their names. Why is this so important? Let’s say you meet a current graduate (someone who has graduated within six months of their graduation date) for the first time. You set aside 30-45 minutes, give him/her an overview of your services, and then edit his/her resume. Then he/she takes a couple weeks to get the changes and updated resume back to you. Then you proceed with thecover letter, schedule a subsequent meeting, and maybe even set up a mock interview. Later, you send the recent grad job leads and trust that he/she will apply accordingly. Perhaps, a month later, he/she comes back with no luck and to strategize, so you make a list of some target companies. You also assist the grad in updating their LinkedIn profile and offer some upcoming networking opportunities. By this time, two months may have passed by. Is this really realistic when you have over 1000 other students you are also assisting?
- Re-purpose Career Advising. How can executive directors of career centers re-purpose career advising so that our probabilities of getting students jobs in their fields increase even earlier? For instance, is there a formula we can use so that by graduation we already have 50% employed, and that also builds on early successes so that a 90% post-graduation career outcomes is feasible? The answer is yes! The majority of the career advising and time throughout the year should be focused on upcoming graduates. Sure, you still meet with new students, but the career assistance is focused on take-home assignments and research to help teach them to take full control of their career development. Further, you can meet with a dozen students and lighten your schedule by conducting group orientations and workshops on everything from services offices to resumes. This will allow more time for the upcoming graduates who really need it, such as students who need help with their career search or who haven’t had luck landing full-time employment.
- Create a Career Ready Checklist. One small step in the right direction can go a long way if the process is started early enough. The goal is to have a readily referable resume and cover letter for the student ready-to-go 6-12 months prior to graduation. This way, the heavy lifting is over and you can focus on their phone and face-to-face interviewing skills.
- Track forward, not backwards. Tracking forward in career outcomes was a central force to my success that many directors and executive directors of career centers that I have encountered have never heard of or imagined. Create a list of upcoming graduates well in advance. Sure, you will need to do some reconciliation closer to graduation and after graduation, but regardless, chances are these students will be graduating if not when you anticipate, if not, shortly afterwards. So these are the students you want to meet early enough to begin building relationships with them. This takes time. With time, you build trust. If you know these students personally, they are more likely to respond to your email when you are inquiring on their employment status and more importantly, you can “readily refer” them to opportunities as they come up aligned with their goals.
- Build “Forward Momentum”. I call this algorithm or strategic concept this name because of what it implies. So let’s imagine it and define it. First, “momentum” is the tendency of a moving object to continue moving, the strength and force that something has when it is moving, and the strength or force that allows something to continue to grow stronger or faster as time passes. There is also something known as emotional momentum, which is taking advantage of positive emotions to continue moving forward. Together, if you have both the staff motivated as well as the students, you can take full advantage of the time before graduation. Let’s say your career outcomes goal is 90% for the May 2016 class. A couple months before the six-month post-May 2016 deadline (December 31st, 2016), you are already at a 90% rate, let’s say by October 31st, 2016. This gives you two months of what I like to call, forward momentum. Since you are already at goal, you can re-focus efforts on the subsequent class to spring forward in your outreach and knowledge rates. In all likelihood, you will still continue to see successes in the May 2016 class (helping you exceed goals), but will have a head-start on the next class. That’s the key to improving outcomes assessment year over year, if you supplement it with the right technology platform. 12Twenty, is one I recommend, that also offers incentives on hiring trends for students.
It’s very important to note that we are not trying to rescue students by helping them get a job. In a sense, they are rescuing us, at least that’s how I feel after they share good news of finding a career they have been aspiring towards. It gives me that self-fulfillment and purpose. It makes me proud of their hard work. What we are doing is better positioning both the students and career services staff for the real-life challenges for employment and performance goals. We don’t want to treat students like numbers and don’t want to operate like a sales office. Rather, we want compassion to lend itself to our advantage, and help us drive the efforts.
In closing, I remember reading an article about the 7 essential habits of happy people and one of them was that the most successful professionals are often adept at networking. There’s no denying the value of a strong professional network. However, the personal connections you make offline are just as invaluable. I’m talking about the face-to-face with students. People who maintain five or more close friendships tend to be happier, live longer and have a higher quality of life. Do you know what else? They are also more positive and will most likely take advantages of the services you offer if you let them know you exist. I can’t tell you how many alumni I have met over the years who simply were not familiar with the career center. This has got to change.
How can we as career professionals impact this? By planting the seed of career development in the path of the career seekers. We can be their foot through the door. We can give them the wood to build their own ladder, and this can start on their first day of classes. These ladders will lead them to advancing their careers as high as they want to go. The sky is not the limit, if you are a rising star.