The Career Services Paradox was originally published on The Job Insiders.
Here’s the #1 thing I’ve NEVER understood about Higher Education:
🏫 There are over 4,000 colleges in the US…
🤑 The US is a hypercapitalist society with competition for everything…
🥫 Including over 100+ kinds of tomato sauce at last check! đ
And yet, as far as I know, there’s not one single college that has said:
We are the CAREER college.
Period.
Sure, there are lots of colleges with career initiatives, career metrics, and career ads that pop up on LinkedIn!
But has there ever been a school that said:
🌟 Our #1 goal is to help you build a great career and life
🛠️ So we’ll make sure that you spend most of your time experiencing real career paths and building in-demand skills for the ones that fit you
🎣 And we’ll make job searching skills (empathy, storytelling, relationship-building) a key part of the mandatory curriculum so that you can “fish” on your own for the rest of your career
And if not, why FRICKIN’ not? đ
There’s gluten-free tomato sauce, double-protein tomato sauce, tomato sauce from hydroponic tomatoes grown in the Swiss Alps…
…And yet we can’t have one single college that’s built around the #1 thing that students and families care about???
¯_(ツ)_/¯
OK, I’ve kept that little rant inside for about 20 years but was emboldened by this awesome quote from Rebekah Paré:
Because I think it speaks to the weird reality of our moment:
📉 On the one hand, we’re facing the WORST job market for new grads in at least a generation…
🙏 …But on the other hand, we’re still having to BEG leadership to prioritize career services!
So two questions for YOU:
1️⃣ What’s driving this weird reality – either at your school or what you’re seeing out there?
2️⃣ What would it take to really get that buy-in Rebekah talks about? Or maybe even to build that career-dedicated school I’ve dreamt of???
Let me know and I promise to incorporate your wisdom into a Jobscan workshop Rebekah and I are doing next month on empowered leadership! ⚡️
