At Intead we spend most of our time blogging about international student recruitment and marketing and the use of digital solutions to ease those activities. So why are we writing about university career services today? How is your campus career services office connected to your work as an international student recruiter or marketer?
Career services is an integral part of the recruitment puzzle. Recruitment and retention are two sides of the same coin. With retention beginning from the first point of contact with a propective student, at least in an ideal world, career services should never be far behind in the minds of students, parents, recruiters and marketers. Besides the academic growth that will take place during a college experience, the end result should also focus on career readiness and eventual career placement.
As we've written in the past and frequently told our clients, and anyone else who is willing to listen, career services needs to play a more integral role in student recruitment and retention, for both domestic and international students. It certainly seems that our thinking is on the right track. In her Wall Street Journal article published on May 28, 2014 titled Job Search Meets Fundraising, Melissa Korn explains how several prominent institutions, including Amherst College in Massachusetts, Colgate University in Hamilton, NY and Williams College in Massachusetts, have moved their career services offices under the auspices of alumni relations and development. This move has allowed career services to establish a deeper connection with alumni and donors, resulting in a different dynamic for fundraising, networking and alumni job placement.
Here's another realignment we find even more exciting:
"The University of Chicago took a different approach when restructuring its career-services reporting line two years ago. It moved careers into "student advancement," which also includes admissions and enrollment management...Now admission officers connect with employers when they're dispatched around the world seeking students, and first-year students are assigned career counselors even before they arrive for orientation."
Aligning career services with admissions and enrollment management elevates the importance of the mission of career services. There isn't enough space in this blog to quote all of the recent articles that highlight the importance of post-graduation career options. Students and parents have become increasingly savvy researchers of post-graduation employment. Rising tuition costs, increased student debt, and horror stories of unemployed grads have contributed to the focus on post-graduation employability. Just as this is important to domestic students, international students and their parents are equally interested in institutions that provide a track record of career placement and alumni networking capabilities.
An institution, like the University of Chicago, can leverage its creative approach to career services. Showing the connection between career services and recruitment allows U. Chicago to highlight its commitment to post-graduation student success. Institutions of all rank and reputation can emulate the work being done by the University of Chicago. Think about how your institution might be able to improve the reputation of its career services office through one of the innovative approaches outlined by the recent Wall Street Journal article.
Even without making a drastic administrative structuring change, we want to use this blog to remind you, our readers, of the importance of your career services office in recruitment and retention. Creating increased interest and appeal in the international student population might be achieved through a dedicated approach to improving, and then highlighting, on-campus career services. Remember, when retention starts day one, a focus on career services can also begin day one.
