Felicia,
Perhaps both you and Vivian would consider asking the instructors to conduct some employment related activities in the classroom. If time allows, you could even conduct the activities with the instructors. Any activities where the students research and contact potential employers would be most beneficial. Can you think of an activity that would help on your campus?
Sheri Leach
Vivian
Your career service department sounds similar to our program. We don't really have a career service with several career advisers ( I wish). I'm the job placement coach and I pretty much just provide the students with leads, although the information from this course is giving me some ideas to re-design this area of our school, with us being an accelerated program it is really hard with the amount of time we have.
Stephanie ,
Meeting students one on one can help you assess their employability skills and determine if there are any barriers to employment. Are you in a position where you are able to meet with all of your students for an extended period of time? Do you think in schools with larger ratios of student population to career services professionals would benefit from a more formalized assessment?
Sheri Leach
We do not offer a formalized assessment. However, we do this informally when my team works with students one-on-one. This is the best approach for my students because I can offer personalized advice and activities.
Cathy,
Thank you for that Cathy, that is a great approach. By sharing your stories, it helps the student bond with you and makes them more comfortable to share their stories and challenges.
Sheri Leach
I usually begin by asking a student what they feel their personal and professional strengths are and then follow with asking them to tell me what they feel their challenges and roadblocks are.
If I sense that the student may be uncomfortable or reluctant I'll share with them some of the things that have challenged me in my career.
Cathy,
Since you are successful in getting students to open up to you, can you share what makes you successful? How do you begin a typical conversation with a student on this topic?
Sheri Leach
Yes, in my interaction with students, I think most are forthcoming about their barriers to employment and are willing to share that information with me.
Cathy,
Do you find thAt most of your students are forthcoming about their barriers to employment? Do they share these willingly?
Sheri Leach
Our Career Services Department staff initially meets with students regarding career goal-setting in their first or second term. Career Services gathers career goal information from each student at this meeting and then follows up with personal meetings with each student in order to assess employability skills and identify barriers as well as begin discussion about career resources and services available to them. Frequency of meetings is determined on an individual basis and continues through the end of the program and often beyond graduation.
Vivian, it is generally the ones that do not seek our assistance that would benefit the most. Think about how to implement a total campus wide strategy to identify when an intervention may be appropriate. Think about how to form partnerships between those responsible for job placement and others on campus. The instructors spend the most time with the students, can you think of ways to partner with them regarding intervention strategies?
Chasminh, I think you are in the enviable position of having the framework to meet with your students as you describe.
For those institutions who are trying to work out their structure, can you shed light on a few things:
at what point in the student's life cycle and at what intervals do you meet with them? Do you find that meetings at certain times are more effective than others?
At our institution, the Career Services department is responsible for assessing student employability skills and barriers to success. With one on one career counseling, Career Services Advisors are able to identify the goals of students and help create the plan of action to fulfill knowledge and skill gaps that contribute to successful job placement.
We meet with students at least three times during their program and at each meeting we are able to follow up on previous action items.
We do not have a specific Career Services Department to assess student employability skills and barriers. Career Services (in our case called Job Placement Assistance) is completely handled by the Program Director of our school. Graduates schedule an appointment with the Program Director to discuss job opportunities and also utilize our Alumni Resources page on our website that lists employment availabilities.
Some general assessments are completed in our Business & Marketing course but not to the extent to give our students much guidance for success and to give the Program Director information on potential interventions needed.
After studying this module I am going to work on researching effective assessments and also update the ways in which we present employment assistance to our students and graduates.
At this point our interventions are on a one-on-one basis and they are presented to those self-reliant students so I fear students that have employment barriers are falling through the cracks. Our annual placement percentages are always good, but I feel we can achieve a higher percentage by placing revised systems in place and offering greater support to ALL students, not just those that seek assistance.
