Happy March, Reader!
Another big meeting. Student success, enrollment, internships—career services should be part of the conversation.
But once again, it wasn’t.
Not because your work doesn’t matter. Not because people don’t care about career outcomes.
But because career services isn’t positioned as central to the institution’s success.
Faculty don’t always connect career readiness to their courses. Leaders set retention and student success goals without linking them to career outcomes. Employers and alumni want stronger connections to students but don’t know how to make them happen.
And then there’s the casual “Do you help with resumes?”—as if that’s the whole point of career services.
The real problem? Career services isn’t in the conversations where it should be.
And that won’t change on its own.
If you want to move from being overlooked to being seen as an essential driver of student success, you need more than anecdotes and gut feelings.
You need a landscape analysis.
What a landscape analysis really does
This isn’t an external review. Those focus narrowly on career services: staffing, structure, programming, and operations.
🎯 A landscape analysis is much bigger. It looks at the entire campus ecosystem—where career services fits in and where it could have the biggest impact.
It helps you:
✔ Uncover gaps—Where are students missing career support? What’s holding employers back?
✔ Identify opportunities—How do faculty want to engage? Where does career services align with institutional priorities?
✔ Position career services as an essential driver of student success.
In other words, it moves career services from the sidelines to the center of student success.
Step 1: Engage stakeholders in real conversations
The best way to understand what’s working and what’s not?
Talk to the people who interact with career services—or should, but don’t.
Who to meet with:
- Students (engaged and disengaged) – What do they know about career services? What support have they used? What do they wish existed?
- Deans, department chairs, and faculty – What does career success look like for their students? What’s working and what’s not?
- Executive leadership (president, provost, VPSA) – What is their vision of career success? What would make career services a stronger strategic asset?
- Admissions and enrollment management – What career-related questions do prospective students and families ask? How is career presented during recruitment? What’s missing?
- Employers – What are they looking for in student talent? What challenges do they face in recruiting at your institution?
- Alumni and donors – How do they reflect on their own career preparation? Would they support career initiatives? How would they like to be involved?
What to ask:
- What is your vision for career success?
- What are the biggest barriers to students being career-ready?
- Where does career development fit in the student experience?
- What are the challenges in employer and alumni engagement?
- How do you see the role of career services on campus?
- If we could do one thing better, what should it be?
👉 You’re not here to defend career services. You’re here to listen. Uncover patterns. Identify where you can have the greatest impact.
👉 You’re not here to brainstorm solutions yet. Your goal is to get people talking about career preparation—the way they see it, not the way you do.
👉 You’re definitely not here to limit possibilities. Worried about resources? Buy-in? This isn’t the time for that. Keep the focus on discovery—for now.
Step 2: Identify themes & what they reveal
Once you’ve gathered insights, patterns will emerge.
1. How students engage with career services (or don’t)
Are students engaging early, or is career services the place they visit the week before graduation, along with the bookstore for their cap and gown?
2. Employer engagement strengths & gaps
Do employers see your students as hidden gems or hard to find?
3. How deans and faculty think about career preparation and want to engage
Is career readiness a top priority or a nice-to-have they hope someone else is handling?
4. The dominant narratives about career services
Are you seen as an essential partner or a helpful but non-essential office where students go when their parents make them?
5. The value of career outcomes
Are career outcomes a bragging point for the university or buried somewhere in a report no one reads?
Now, instead of relying on gut feelings, you have real insights.
And that means you’re ready for the next step, Reader: turning them into action.
In Part 2, we’ll break down exactly what to do next—so career services isn’t just in the conversation but leading it.
More next week! Stay tuned.
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