Spotlight for Career Services Professionals

When it comes to measuring the physical attributes of career centers, it’s clear that there is nothing “typical” about these offices.

NACE’s 2015-16 Career Services Benchmark Survey asked about the physical attributes of career centers in three ways: square footage of the office, the number of rooms used for interviewing, and the number of rooms used exclusively for interviewing. Results were reported by Carnegie Classification.

Physical attributes varied widely. As expected, career services offices at Doctoral (particularly Research 1 and Research 2) institutions enjoy the largest facilities, boasting the greatest amount of square footage and number of interview rooms, both general and exclusive. (See Figure 1.)

On the other hand, career centers at Master’s 2, Baccalaureate Diverse, and Associate’s institutions were the smallest, having the least square footage and featuring a minimal number of interview rooms.

Data for NACE’s 2015-16 Career Services Benchmark Survey Report for Colleges and Universities were collected from September 14, 2015, to December 23, 2015, from NACE member institutions; there were 842 respondents, representing 42.9 percent of all eligible respondents. Highlights from the survey are available on NACEWeb. Participating career centers receive a complimentary copy of the survey results (see MyNACE > Research Reports).

Figure 1: Physical attributes of the career center, by Carnegie Classification