Institutions can measure how many students visit the career center. They can count internships, employer partnerships, classroom presentations, and appointments. They can survey students about whether they feel prepared for life after college.
But none of that tells us whether the institution itself is designed to make career preparation work.
Does career strategy have sufficient authority? Are divisions working from shared priorities? Is career preparation intentionally built across the student experience—or still dependent on whether students happen to find the career center?
Until now, we haven’t had a good way to answer those questions.
Introducing the Career Readiness Ecosystem Assessment
Over the past year, I have been developing the Career Design Blueprint™ to help institutions understand what it actually takes to build a coordinated, institution-wide approach to career preparation.
But a framework alone cannot tell you where your institution stands.
So, I built something that can.
The new Career Readiness Ecosystem Assessment uses 38 questions across six dimensions to examine whether the people, priorities, structures, and systems required to support career preparation are actually in place.
It is not an evaluation of the career center. It is an assessment of the institutional ecosystem surrounding it.
That distinction matters.
It asks a different set of questions
Most career services assessments focus on programs, staffing, resources, technology, or student participation. Those measures are valuable—but they primarily tell us what the career center is doing.
The Career Readiness Ecosystem Assessment asks a broader question:
Has the institution created the conditions required for career preparation to become a shared, coordinated, and sustainable institutional priority?
For example:
Is responsibility for career strategy supported by formal authority—or dependent on influence and goodwill?
Are divisions coordinating through an established operating model—or through relationships that must be rebuilt whenever someone leaves?
Is career preparation intentionally designed across the student experience—or largely dependent on whether students seek it out?
These are not minor operational details. They shape whether good ideas gain traction, whether progress survives leadership transitions, and whether career preparation can reach students consistently and at scale.
From 38 answers to a clearer priority
After completing the assessment, participants receive a visual profile showing their institution’s performance across all six dimensions of the Career Design Blueprint™.
The results highlight areas of strength, reveal unevenness across the ecosystem, and identify critical gaps that may limit progress elsewhere.
An institution may have strong programs but weak cross-divisional governance. It may have visible executive support but no operating model for turning that support into coordinated action.
It may have enthusiastic partners across campus—but no shared expectations for what students should experience.
Those institutions do not need the same strategy.
That is the point.
Before you launch the next initiative
Without a system-level diagnosis, institutions often respond to every challenge with another initiative.
Changing employer expectations? Excellent. Someone find a task force.
Meanwhile, the underlying conditions remain unchanged.
Before deciding what to add, institutions need to understand what is missing—and whether the next investment will address the real constraint or simply create another workaround.
Three questions to ask now
As you consider your own institution, start here:
Where does progress repeatedly stall? Look for challenges that persist despite new programs, additional effort, or strong individual relationships.
Who has the authority to resolve them? If the answer changes depending on whom you ask, pay attention. Ambiguity is not merely inconvenient; it is diagnostic information.
Are you solving the underlying problem—or compensating for it? If success continually requires heroic effort from a few committed people, the ecosystem is not yet doing its job.
You do not need to solve all six dimensions at once. You do need to understand which condition should become the next priority. 🎯
Get access through the Blueprint Workshop Series
The Career Readiness Ecosystem Assessment is not yet available for broad release.
For now, access is included exclusively with the inaugural Career Design Blueprint™ workshop series. Participants will complete the assessment, use the Blueprint to interpret what their results reveal, and receive an individual or institutional-team debrief focused on where to begin.
You will not leave with 38 answers and a colorful chart destined to spend eternity in your downloads folder. You will leave with a clearer diagnosis—and a more focused conversation about what your institution needs to do next.
Final thought
Institutions do not need another generic list of career-services best practices. They need a way to distinguish between a program that could be improved and an institutional condition that is limiting the entire ecosystem.
That is why I created this assessment.
Because when everything feels important, the most valuable thing a leader can gain is not another priority.
It is clarity about which one comes first.
See you Thursday,
P.S. If someone on your campus should be part of this conversation, forward this edition and invite them to Thursday’s webinar. The most productive discussions about institutional systems usually begin when the people experiencing different parts of the system finally compare notes.
