Career Everywhere: Recent Episodes
uConnect
For too long, career services has been an afterthought. Now it's time for career services to be in the driver's seat, leading institutional strategy around career readiness. Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth interviews with today’s most innovative career leaders about how they’re building a campus culture of career readiness… or what we call Career Everywhere.
Mike Summers, Associate Vice President of the Gateway Career Center at Lafayette College, shares why he thinks career must be everywhere.
“Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. So we have to increase the social capital and access to all students,” Mike said.
In this episode, Mike talks about:
- How he and his team have implemented the Career Everywhere approach to career services
- Why it’s so important for career services to lead the charge
- What results his team has seen since implementing Career Everywhere—particularly in terms of improving equity and access
- And more
Mike said that since talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not, he and his team focus on making sure opportunities for Lafayette’s students are more equitable. For example, this fall, his team is hosting what they call a modern mentorship networking event where they’ll teach students about what social capital is, how to build it, how to use it, and more.
“I’m really excited about that and it’s something I feel very strongly about, that we make things as equitable as we can. And that's one of the centerpieces of why it is so important that career is everywhere across this campus,” Mike said.
Resources from the episode:
- Mike’s LinkedIn profile
- Mike’s Twitter profile
- Mike’s email: summersm@lafayette.edu
- Lafayette’s career center website (powered by uConnect)
Learn more about uConnect's Identity Kits: gouconnect.com/identity-kits
Beverly Johnson, Associate Director of Career Readiness at Arizona State University, shares how her team is engaging Indigenous students with career services.
Beverly talks about:
- The programming and initiatives her team has implemented to reach more Indigenous students
- What important cultural considerations to keep in mind
- How career services professionals can be good allies
- And more
Having worked with Indigenous students for many years, Beverly digs into the feedback she and her team received from Indigenous students at ASU about why they weren’t engaging with career services. One big piece of feedback from students was a lack of Indigenous representation on the website, at career fairs, in workshops, etc. Beverly shares how they’ve improved representation, how she found allies across campus, and why it’s so important to consistently show up.
Resources from the episode:
- Beverly’s LinkedIn profile
- ASU’s career center website (powered by uConnect)
- Indigenous People’s community page on the career center website
Learn more about uConnect's Identity Kits: gouconnect.com/identity-kits
Dr. Carissa Liverpool, Assistant Athletic Director of Student-Athlete Development for the Scarlet Knights For Life Program at Rutgers University, shares how her team is engaging student-athletes with career services.
Carissa talks about:
- The unique challenges student-athletes face in terms of career development and how to address them
- How her team uses technology to engage student-athletes, employers, coaches, and more
- Her best advice for meeting student-athletes where they are
- And more
Being a former Rutgers student-athlete in softball, Carissa knows better than anyone that student-athletes are one of the hardest populations to reach. Between athletics, academics, a social life, and more, student-athletes are notoriously strapped for time. In this episode, Carissa shares her best tips and tricks for reaching student-athletes and connecting them with employers.
“You have to meet them where they are. If you know they are in a specific building, or they're taking a lot of the same classes as their teammates, navigating their time and being present where they are physically is very helpful. That number one. Number two, going to their competitions is really important. I think slowly building that relationship and that trust and that rapport, because at the end of the day, they are students. They're students first, and knowing that you're supporting their athletic abilities and their student abilities is important too,” Carissa says.
Resources from the episode:
- Carissa’s LinkedIn profile
- Rutgers Scarlet Knights for Life virtual career center website (powered by uConnect)
Learn more and register for the Career Everywhere Roadshow in Boston on Aug. 1-2: careereverywhere.com/boston
Emily McCarthy, Senior Director of Career Development at the University of Arizona, shares how her team partners with the alumni office to support recent grads in their career development.
Emily talks about the services they offer recent grads (and why), what the partnership with the alumni office looks like, and how both teams partner to cost-share the uConnect platform to scale their support for students and alumni.
With the needs of current students and recent grads being relatively similar, Emily says it made sense for career services and the alumni office to share a virtual career center. In the episode, she walks through how the website is structured and what resources are available. She also shares her best advice for other career leaders looking to partner with the alumni office and/or cost-share technology.
“The career development office should not be the keeper of the keys and the holder of all the knowledge. We need to be thought leaders. We need to be educating our peers across the institution about what career means, what current best practices are, and what current industry practices are,” Emily says.
Resources from the episode:
- Emily’s LinkedIn profile
- Arizona’s virtual career center website (powered by uConnect)
- uConnect’s Identity Kits
Learn more and register for the Career Everywhere Roadshow in Boston on Aug. 1-2: careereverywhere.com/boston
Monica Clem, Vice President of the National Career Center for Teach For America, talks about how the Teach For America (TFA) career center supports its 60,000+ alumni in their careers after the two-year teaching program.
Monica shares how her team uses technology (like uConnect’s virtual career center) to engage alumni, how the national and regional TFA teams work together to support alumni all over the country, and what career resources TFA offers to alumni.
As a former higher education career services leader, Monica also digs into the differences and similarities between higher ed career services and career services within companies or nonprofit organizations like TFA. She also discusses why supporting alumni is so critical, for higher ed and the corporate world.
“College has become very challenging in terms of being affordable for a lot of people. And that has led to questions about the value of a college degree. And yet, those of us who work in this field know how valuable a college degree continues to be,” Monica says.
“So I think one way to really address some of those concerns is to tap into your alumni network. Not just for the purpose of mentoring or connectivity between students and alums, which of course is very important, but also for the purpose of engaging alumni with the resources the institution can provide to advance them in their careers.”
Monica also notes that organizations outside of higher ed face similar challenges with a tightening labor force and looming mass retirements of some of the largest generations of working-age people.
“I think a lot of organizations, when they think about long-term talent needs, are really tapping into some of their former employees. We call them boomerang employees,” Monica says.
“It’s about being intentional when employees leave your organization, thinking about if they’re leaving on a somewhat good note, like is this someone that could be interested in coming back to us in the future? And then continuing to keep them engaged. And again, adding value by treating them as alumni is critically important for organizations that have a long view of building a talent pipeline.”
Resources from the episode:
- Monica’s LinkedIn profile
- Teach For America Alumni Hub (powered by uConnect)
Learn more and register for the Career Everywhere Roadshow in Boston on Aug. 1-2: careereverywhere.com/boston
Leonelle Thompson, Manager of Early Career at Williams and a former career services leader at Langston University and the University of Tulsa, talks about how career services teams and employers can work together to get students career ready.
Having worked in both corporate recruiting and higher education career services, Leonelle discusses:
- What career readiness means
- What skills today’s students are lacking as they enter the workforce
- Why it’s so important for the two sides to partner
- What questions career services can ask employers to open a productive dialogue
- What programming ideas employers can approach career services with
- What both sides need to know about each other’s workflows
- And more
“This partnership is so important because it shows the importance of career services. Career services has got to move away from the transactional piece… the resume writing, the mock interviews, the posting of the jobs,” Leonelle says.
Leonelle also encourages employers like herself to be more proactive and creative when it comes to pitching programming for students. Discuss with career services what skills your current interns or new hires were missing when they started their roles and create a program addressing those gaps.
With that ongoing, open dialogue, career services and employers can both make sure today’s students are career ready.
Resources from the episode:
- Leonelle’s LinkedIn profile
- Langston University’s virtual career center (with digital corporate sponsors)
- Digital corporate sponsorship program podcast episode (featuring Leonelle and Harold Bell)
Learn more about uConnect's Identity Kits: gouconnect.com/identity-kits
For too long, career services has been an afterthought. Now it's time for career services to be in the driver's seat, leading institutional strategy around career readiness. That's why we're launching the Career Everywhere podcast! Join us every other Tuesday for in-depth interviews with today’s most innovative career leaders about how they’re building a campus culture of career readiness… or what we call Career Everywhere.