Spotlight for Career Services Professionals
Class of 2015 STEM students are most inclined to use career center services tied closely to a pending job search, according to a NACE’s Students in Demand: An Insight Into Class of 2015 STEM Graduates report.
These services included resume writing/reviewing, career center job listings, and job-search assistance.
Students’ perceived helpfulness of these and other services varied by major the three majors included in this analysis. While resume writing/reviewing was considered very helpful across these majors, other services were more helpful to one or two majors in particular. (See Figure 1.)
For example, although computer science and engineering majors found career center job listings quite helpful, fewer than 20 percent of biology majors gave the listings a high rating.
Although job-search assistance was widely used by all three STEM majors, only engineering majors considered this service among the most helpful.
Despite having not been widely used by biology and computer science majors, practice interviewing was among the resources they viewed as most helpful, a disparity that was also present among the Class of 2015 overall. A similar dynamic manifested in regard to computer science majors and career workshops.
Students in Demand: An Insight Into Class of 2015 STEM Graduates will be available later this spring.
Figure 1: Career center services—use and helpfulness
| |
Computer Science |
Engineering |
Biology |
| |
Used |
Helpful |
Used |
Helpful |
Used |
Helpful |
| |
% of respondents |
| Resume writing/reviewing |
70.4% |
40.0% |
80.6% |
45.1% |
89.1% |
49.0% |
| Career center job listings |
76.1% |
46.3% |
85.7% |
41.4% |
72.2% |
17.9% |
| Job-search assistance |
69.0% |
26.5% |
71.9% |
34.6% |
76.4% |
19.0% |
| Individual career counseling |
52.1% |
37.8% |
58.5% |
30.7% |
76.4% |
28.6% |
| Internship/co-op search assistance |
62.0% |
36.4% |
65.1% |
34.3% |
63.0% |
20.6% |
| Researching a potential employer |
42.3% |
30.0% |
58.5% |
33.9% |
47.3% |
23.1% |
| Career workshops |
42.3% |
43.3% |
52.1% |
21.2% |
40.7% |
18.2% |
| Career skills testing |
35.2% |
20.0% |
42.4% |
18.5% |
49.1% |
11.1% |
| Practice interviewing |
35.2% |
56.0% |
47.9% |
28.8% |
38.2% |
33.3% |
Source: Students in Demand: An Insight Into Class of 2015 STEM Graduates, National Association of Colleges and Employers. Figure 1 displays the percentage of job-seeking STEM students who visited the career center at least once in the past academic year and rated the listed service as a 4 (“very helpful”), using a 4-point scale. Please note: Due to a small number of responses, only computer science, engineering, and biology majors are included in this analysis.