Spotlight for Career Services Professionals

Where are your new graduates working? Are they full time or part time? If you’re asking employers who have posted openings, attended events or career fairs, or participated in campus interviewing about your new graduates—have you received the answers you need?

NACE Community members admit that they struggle with getting answers from employers. Here are some of their strategies:

• We directly e-mail employers and survey them, asking for information about who they have hired from our school.
• We send an e-mail to those who have recruited through on-campus interviews and resume collections.
• We also ask students to self-report and have received a good amount of responses.
• We have an automated e-mail that goes out to an employer about 30 days after a job posting closes. We want to query them while it is still fresh in their minds, but not too early that they might still be involved in the interview process.
• We found that it is helpful to survey employers the day they come to campus for a fair or recruitment. We ask them how many students/grads they anticipate bringing in for an interview and how many they anticipate hiring based on their interactions that day. While these are not concrete numbers, it is feedback from employers on campus.
• We “process” grads one semester prior to graduating. We ask students to provide us with updated employment information, including the name and contact information of an employer (and sometimes salary information). Post-graduation, we use e-mail, Facebook, and LinkedIn to track students’ employment. Students sign a release form so that we can gather employment information from their employer.
• We (a community college) use several methods: we send a survey and congratulations letter with a self-addressed return envelope with their diplomas. Social media and faculty supply some information.
• We contact the student to ask them to give the survey to their employer who then sends it directly back to us. This method has been successful.
• We ask students to provide us with a copy of their offer letter, with their acceptance, for our files. This provides us with confirmation of salary, bonus structures, hours, relocation amounts, benefits, and direct contact information for the employer.

Join the NACE Community and help your colleagues find answers to their issues.