Julie Cunningham has been a member of the national association since 1984. “Everyone in career centers joined CPC, it was the ‘go-to’ organization for salary information, resources, professional guidelines, legal advice, and so on,” she says.

Cunningham says Vernon Geissler, her boss in her first job at the University of Kansas, was on the CPC Board and important to her career. “He was very supportive and pushed me toward leadership roles,” she remembers.

Many others in the field have influenced her over the years. “I’ve always learned a lot by observing other people, so in that sense, one can have many mentors throughout one’s career,” she explains. “Some people don’t actively mentor you, but you learn a lot from observing their leadership or management style.”

She was also influenced by working with engineers for much of her career—engineering professors at the university, and engineers at Tellabs, an engineering company. “When you work with engineers, you learn to present and persuade using logic and numbers. You learn to think on your feet because they question everything.”

“They also taught me to think outside the box, and the concept of ‘defining your requirements.’ In a nutshell, that means to decide what you want and seek it out, rather than just choosing from what appears in front of you. That concept has many applications in business—and in life!”

Over the years, Cunningham found that leadership roles in professional associations provided her with opportunities for personal and professional growth and development that weren’t always available on the job. “I’m good at facilitation within groups, building consensus, organizing, and planning,” she says.

“I try to see the big picture and everyone’s side of each issue,” she continues. “These things characterized my leadership style—I wasn’t the type of leader who came up with big ideas and then asked others to follow my vision. Both styles have their place, though.”

Cunningham also developed an interest and expertise in training. “For the last five years I’ve been involved in NACE’s development of customized training services,” she explains. “Nancy Mikkelsen [NACE’s director of education] and I developed a number of training modules that I’ve delivered to more than 1,100 college recruiters.”

In addition, Cunningham has presented a number of web seminars for NACE and written or edited books for NACE on topics that members say are important to them, such as diversity, internship programs, interviewing, and college relations program management.

Over the years, she faced numerous challenges, but says the biggest was taking the Tellabs college relations program from one that hired about 30 new college graduates per year in Illinois to a program that hired hundreds of students and new grads per year in multiple locations around the world.

“In seven years, we went from two recruiters and 1,700 employees to 54 recruiters and 9,000 employees,” she says. “It was a wild ride! I had to develop new skills as I went along: negotiation, consensus-building, persuasion, team-building, training, and management.”

Another challenge that Cunningham met successfully was switching from working on the college side to working on the employer side. “They are two very different worlds,” she says, “but having been on the college side contributed to my success on the employer side.”

In meeting challenges at work, she often used her network of NACE-member contacts. “Once, during my time at Tellabs, I was told to rescind some job offers to new grads due to a business decline,” she explains. “I called several of my NACE colleagues, on both the college and employer sides. They gave me great advice, and I managed to persuade my VP and CEO not to rescind the offers. I wouldn’t have been able to devise a good strategy for that without help from my colleagues.”

As to the future of the association and the profession, Cunningham says, “It’s bright!” She adds that the work that NACE is doing now on top issues and trends is important and relevant to the members. “The challenge now and in the future is to structure services around those issues and trends,” she says.

Cunningham says the things that will help NACE continue to be strong include providing leadership and professional growth that might not be available on the job; offering networking opportunities to share information and support ideas and a big-picture view; helping members to view what they do as a profession, not just a job; and addressing the human need to connect with others in similar situations.

Marcia Harris, director of university career services at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC), joined NACE early in her career. “NACE directly relates to career services,” she says. “It’s a critical organization for career services professionals and employers that recruit on campus.”

Harris counts many professionals in the field as mentors and role models. “Neil Murray, Jack Rayman, Frank Carney, Maurice Mayberry, Kathy Sims, Tom Devlin—those are just some of the many that have been inspiring to me,” she says. “They were and are innovative thinkers and have moved our profession forward in a positive way. They also took an entrepreneurial approach to their departments, which is important.”

Watching those innovative thinkers spurred Harris to become involved in the leadership of the association. “I tend to choose carefully and selectively which organizations I join, and then I believe in getting involved—it’s important to be an active member.”

Over the years, Harris has served on a number of NACE committees, including the Chevron Award selection committee, the diversity committee, and the assessment task force. “I’m proud of the work of that group; we developed some good tools to use in assessment.” Some of the programs and services Harris’s office has developed have been helpful in providing improvements for the membership, she says.

“We instituted a web-based alumni data base program—and won an Award of Excellence for it. It was a very novel program at the time.”

Harris and her staff recently worked with a vendor to develop a resume creation tool. “About 30 other schools have decided to purchase that particular tool that we developed,” she says. They also created a contact system using students’ ID cards that the university is now selling to other institutions.

Developing programs and systems that can bring in money is important to Harris and other offices in dealing with a lack of resources.

“It’s true for many departments and true of mine for many years,” she explains. “[We had an] inadequate budget, shabby and too-small quarters, and staffing shortages. Fortunately, we have met most of those challenges. Of course, we could always use more of everything!”

To build a case for what they needed, Harris says she and her staff built credibility for her department and established a reputation and respect on campus. “This demonstrated that we’re a needed, valuable service and that we’re appreciated by users. I’m a firm believer that you don’t go to the higher level with only a problem, but also with several creative solutions.”

Another challenge faced by career services professionals is reaching students, reaching them early, and having them use the office more frequently.

“Most of us can demonstrate that we have a fairly high usage of students, but does that mean freshmen and sophomores are using the center? And how many times [are they using the center]?” Harris says she and her staff look at additional ways to market their center’s services, and they also survey students for input and feedback.

“One of my biggest challenges when I came to UNC was the use of technology,” Harris says. “There was not one computer in the department, and people didn’t want them, either! I wasn’t particularly proficient myself, but I had to drive the effort.”

Harris knew that technology was not going to go away and that it would be useful. In fact, now “we strive to and pride ourselves on being cutting edge in terms of use of technology. We ask, ‘How can we be early adaptors?’ Technology offers practical ways to streamline our operations and provide valuable services.”

As technology and its use continue to develop and improve, Harris says that her staff is looking at using cell phone technology to serve students. “Students look for the latest technology, and there’s always going to be something new.”

She also sees the profession moving more into the extremes of high touch as well as high tech. “Certainly in services for our students, my feeling is that they want services either one-on-one with the person sitting across from them giving undivided attention or via technology,” she says. “They don’t respond as well to group workshops because they want the focus on them in individual settings.”

Harris also sees the emphasis on assessment and accountability increasing. “NACE, career services offices, and directors need to be very well-informed about assessment techniques,” she advises. “Benchmarking with peers and peer institutions is very important. I also think more and more institutions will be calling for more formal external reviews for all departments, career services included.”

As for the profession, Harris says that people look to an organization like NACE for information and resources on areas such as assessment and benchmarking, and networking, especially for those new to the profession.

“Even for those of us who have been in the profession [for many years], NACE membership is a wonderful way of connecting—through the conference, committee work, member directory—with employers and other career services professionals to continue relationship building.”