Spotlight for Career Services Professionals
Engaging students early in their academic careers continues to be a challenge for career services offices. NACE’s 2018 Student Survey offers insight into which career services bring freshmen and sophomores into the career center, and which services they find more helpful in person rather than online.
Among the career services college students are more likely to participate in at the career center, most are high touch. Freshmen and sophomores participating in the survey indicated that they not only prefer to visit the career center for resume writing and reviewing assistance, but they also find doing so in person more helpful than receiving this help online.
This pattern also holds true for career or employment workshops, individual career counseling, individual career coaching, and practice interview sessions.
On the other hand, while both freshmen and sophomores prefer to review career center job listings, receive job-search assistance, get help with their internship/co-op search, and research potential employers online, freshmen feel that only receiving job-search assistance is more helpful online rather than in the career center. Sophomores, meanwhile, rate all of these activities more helpful online.
The 2018 Student Survey Report details the attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes for bachelor’s degree students at all class levels. (Note: Previous reports provided data only on graduating seniors.) The focus of this report is the 22,109 bachelor’s degree students from the 2017-18 academic school year (July 1, 2017 through June 30, 2018). Breakdowns by class level are as follows: 4,336 freshmen, 4,174 sophomores, 5,709 juniors, and 7,890 graduating seniors. Data collection took place from February 14, 2018, to April 30, 2018. The 2018 Student Survey Report will be released this fall.
Figure 1: Percent of students who used in-office and website career center resources, by class level
| |
Freshman |
Sophomore |
| Office |
Website |
Office |
Website |
| Resume writing/reviewing assistance |
31.0% |
25.5% |
35.3% |
26.9% |
| Career center job listings |
24.4% |
30.8% |
27.2% |
35.8% |
| Career or employment workshops |
22.8% |
16.3% |
22.4% |
16.0% |
| Individual career counseling |
21.6% |
13.1% |
15.4% |
11.4% |
| Career skills testing and career assessments |
21.4% |
22.8% |
19.5% |
18.6% |
| Job-search assistance |
21.1% |
29.2% |
22.4% |
33.1% |
| Internship/co-op search assistance |
17.4% |
19.4% |
21.4% |
26.8% |
| Researching potential employers |
16.2% |
22.2% |
17.6% |
25.3% |
| Individual career coaching |
15.2% |
11.3% |
15.4% |
10.8% |
| Branding/social media presence |
14.7% |
13.8% |
13.8% |
14.1% |
| Practice interview sessions |
13.1% |
10.8% |
14.5% |
10.4% |
Source: 2018 Student Survey Report, National Association of Colleges and Employers
Figure 2: Percent of students who rated in-office and website career center resources “very” to “extremely” helpful, by class level
| |
Freshman |
Sophomore |
| Office |
Website |
Office |
Website |
| Resume writing/reviewing assistance |
31.0% |
16.4% |
24.8% |
16.2% |
| Career center job listings |
17.8% |
16.7% |
14.6% |
19.2% |
| Career or employment workshops |
16.0% |
8.8% |
13.0% |
8.1% |
| Job-search assistance |
14.6% |
15.3% |
11.3% |
17.1% |
| Internship/co-op search assistance |
14.6% |
9.5% |
11.4% |
13.7% |
| Practice interview sessions |
14.5% |
5.6% |
9.4% |
5.6% |
| Individual career counseling |
14.1% |
7.5% |
12.2% |
6.1% |
| Researching potential employers |
11.8% |
11.1% |
9.6% |
12.6% |
| Career skills testing and career assessments |
10.8% |
12.0% |
10.5% |
9.2% |
| Individual career coaching |
10.5% |
6.1% |
8.8% |
5.5% |
| Branding/social media presence |
7.8% |
6.9% |
7.0% |
6.4% |
Source: 2018 Student Survey Report, National Association of Colleges and Employers