Hi, Reader!
Picture this: You’ve got ten minutes with the board. You’re armed with slides full of stats, charts, and maybe one too many acronyms.
They nod politely… and then ask about the football team.
That’s the trap. Too many career presentations stop at the report-out. We ran this program. We held this event. Here’s the number of students who showed up.
That’s not what sticks.
🎯 Boards (and cabinets) filter everything through two lenses: risk and opportunity. If you want your message to land, you need to reframe career through that lens.
Present the hiring challenges
Boards love labor market data. It’s the one language they all speak fluently—as business leaders, they live in markets, ROI, and workforce dynamics.
That means they don’t just want the numbers. They want your perspective: How concerned should we be? What does this mean for our students? And—most importantly—what are we doing about it as an institution?
Examples of credible signals you can bring in:
- Entry-level hiring is shrinking. Three-quarters of employers are holding steady or reducing entry-level roles in 2025—the tightest market in five years. (Cengage)
- Graduates are struggling. Just 30% of 2025 grads have secured a full-time job related to their degree; one-third are unemployed and still searching; (Cengage); and just over half are underemployed (Burning Glass/Strada).
- Degree advantage is eroding. The unemployment gap between young grads and non-degree peers is now the smallest in 30 years. (Burning Glass) Translation: the old “go to college, get a job” story isn’t holding up.
- Skills shortages are looming. By 2032, the U.S. will need 5.25 million more workers with post-secondary education than current pipelines can supply.
(Georgetown Center for Education and Work)
The data earns attention. Your framing of what it means and what you’re doing earns credibility.
Share what you’re doing about it
This is where you shift from “doom and gloom” to “here’s how we’re leading.”
Examples you might highlight:
- Embedding career readiness competencies in general education.
- Building employer projects and alumni mentoring pipelines.
- Using interventions to identify and reach at-risk students before they slip away.
- Partnering with faculty to link majors to career paths (without turning Shakespeare into résumé prep).
Every initiative should connect back to a lever boards care about: rankings, research, enrollment, or fundraising.
Be ready for: “How can we help?”
This is the magic question. And yes, it will come, sometimes right away, but maybe not until the coffee break.
Examples of strong responses:
- Visibility: “Help us integrate career outcomes into donor pitches and admissions events.”
- Resources: “Support funding for additional advisors so we can match staffing ratios to ROI goals.”
- Connections: “Introduce us to industry leaders in your networks to expand opportunities for students.”
Use my Problem → Urgency/Risk → Ask model:
- Problem: Entry-level hiring is shrinking.
- Urgency: If graduates can’t launch, families question the ROI of enrollment.
- Ask: Elevate career readiness in cabinet discussions so resources align now.
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The State of Campus Recruiting
Parker Dewey Founder and CEO, Jeffrey Moss, will moderate this State of Campus Recruiting session, which is all about how winter recruiting and short-term “winternships” can
- reach overlooked student populations,
- strengthen brand visibility and DEI goals,
- provide meaningful touch points, and
- keep pipelines active between fall and spring.
Get an edge on your employer relations with this free webinar.
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Why this model works
When you’re in front of a board, you’re not just giving an update. You’re competing for attention against multi-million-dollar facilities projects, donor strategy, enrollment forecasts, and yes—U.S. News rankings.
The Problem → Urgency/Risk → Ask framework cuts through the noise because:
- It speaks their language. Boards think in terms of risk (what could go wrong) and opportunity (what could go right).
- It creates urgency. Linking the problem to enrollment ROI, rankings, or fundraising tells them why now.
- It positions you as strategic. Boards don’t want more problems; they want leaders who bring solutions.
- It makes helping easy. A crisp ask shows exactly how they can use their influence—money, visibility, or connections—to drive impact.
- It builds credibility. Tie your asks to institutional priorities and you stop being “the career services person” and start being recognized as a strategic leader.
Final thought
Boards love data. But they remember leaders who show them what to do with it.
Your job isn’t to convince them careers matter—they already care. It’s to tie careers directly to the risks and opportunities they’re most focused on.
When you do that well, you move careers from a “nice student service” to a strategic driver of institutional success—and maybe, just maybe, help your institution climb a line or two in U.S. News while you’re at it.
Things you might want to read
Keep rockin' it! 🎸
P.S. If this resonates and you wish you could go deeper, that’s exactly what we do inside the Career Services Accelerator. Last week we worked on reframing our data, connecting it to board-level priorities, and crafting asks that land. One participant shared, “I am a completely different professional after a year in this program.”
P.P.S. Good things are better when shared. Know someone who’d enjoy this newsletter too? Send them the invite here.
