Abstract
University career services face several challenges when seeking to provide career support to their students. Examples of these challenges include (i) a lack of student awareness and engagement, (ii) a lack of institutional commitment, (iii) student demands for health and wellbeing support, and (iv) issues promoting social mobility. Each of these challenges has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen record levels of demand for career-related and wellbeing-related support from university students. A lack of resources to meet such demands requires innovative strategies to engage students, foster social mobility, and produce diverse talent for organizations. In this chapter, the authors explore each of these challenges before offering five engagement strategies, including (i) raising awareness and visibility, (ii) accessible, timely and tailored support, (iii) peer mentoring and alums mentoring, (iv) embedding employability into the curriculum, and (v) additional partnerships and resources. Four lived experience insights conclude the chapter.
TopIntroduction
University career services can play a crucial role in helping their students acquire employability capital and personal resources to enhance self-perceived employability, employment outcomes, and career sustainability indicators of health, happiness, and productivity (as discussed in Chapters 1 and 2). University career services can also help their students signal employability to prospective employers (which we will explore further in Chapter 4). However, Gradleaders (2022) reported that student engagement is the number one issue that university career services currently face. The same survey of 236 career services worldwide found that 67% struggled with student engagement, whilst only 22% of their cumulative students had engaged with them in the last year. In response, the aim of this chapter is to look at four interlinked challenges:
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A lack of student awareness and engagement
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A lack of institutional commitment
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Student demands for health and wellbeing support
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Issues promoting social mobility
Five engagement strategies are then presented:
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Raising awareness and visibility
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Accessible, timely and tailored support
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Peer mentoring and alums mentoring
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Embedding employability into the curriculum
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Additional partnerships and resources
The chapter concludes with a series of four lived experience insights providing examples of real-world challenges, strategic approaches, and outcomes related to the issue of student engagement.