Perspectives

As part of its 50th anniversary series, the NACE Journal takes a look at shifts in key areas: demographics, accountability, and technology.

A Historical Look at Demographics of the New College Graduate Pool—How has the new college graduate candidate pool changed over the years? Quite simply, it’s more diverse, with women and racial/ethnic minorities accounting for a larger portion of the pool. In addition, in many cases, short-supply candidates are in even shorter supply. Here’s a look at how the pool has shifted.

The Importance of Accountability—The last half century has brought with it a greater focus on accountability, say career services practitioners and employers.

Management and shareholders, among others, now hold the college recruiting function of organizations accountable for how staff spend time, how they recruit, and the number of successful candidates they bring to the organization, explains Vanessa Strauss, senior advisor to director and deputy director, division of administration for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and NACE Past President.

Technology Influences the Profession—In 1956, the year NACE was founded, IBM invented the first hard disk on which to store data; an IBM team completed FORTRAN I, the first full-fledged computer programming language; and UNIVAC introduced the first commercially available computer. Today, technology is an active force affecting daily life, personally and professionally.

In commemoration of NACE’s 50th anniversary, this article takes a look at technology developments that have improved NACE members’ ability to perform their daily work, as well as the association’s ability to connect with and serve its members.

Innovations in technology have been and will continue to be an integral part of the forward progression of the career services and HR/staffing profession as well as the association. Could those who published the first issues of School and College Placement in black and white have envisioned the colorful magazine that the NACE Journal has become? Telephone technology now enables NACE committees and task forces to hold conference calls, saving time and the cost of bringing people together from all over the country. Those attending the first programs offered by NACE probably would have been skeptical if told that the association eventually would offer virtual seminars that members could attend without leaving their offices.

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From the Summer 2006 NACE Journal

In commemoration of NACE’s 50th anniversary, this article takes a look at a few of the many people who have been instrumental in building and shaping the association over the years—some of the professionals elected to the NACE Academy of Fellows. Here are their reflections of the past, observations about the present, and expectations for the future.

Established in June 1994, the NACE Academy of Fellows recognizes those individuals who have contributed to the career services and HR/staffing professions through the advancement of knowledge, leadership, or excellence in professional practice.

When Sylvia Camacho began working at Suffolk County Community College (SCCC), a colleague paid her an unusual compliment.

"Sylvia, I like the way you walk," the woman said.

Camacho, director of career services and cooperative education at SCCC, asked her colleague to explain what she meant.

"She would listen to my footsteps in the hall and said that I walked softer and slower than anyone else in the office," Camacho laughs. "Then my colleague warned, 'Don't become one of us.'"

A native Texan, Camacho had come to SCCC in Selden, Long Island, New York, from what is now the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA). And she brought with her a different pace.

That was 17 years ago.

"I've picked up speed since," Camacho says.

Has she ever. In fact, for Camacho, that's nothing new. Camacho was one of seven children growing up in rural Texas. Her father was a custodian; her mother a housewife. Her family also worked as migrant workers who took jobs as far away as California. It was hard work.

"I didn't want to work in fields the rest of my life," Camacho says. "I wanted to be educated. My life helped me to develop a strong work ethic, but I didn't have support [as a college student] because I was first-generation."

Upon graduating from college, Camacho took a job in career services at UTPA. It was then that she found a mentor in her director, Romulo Martinez.

"He encouraged me to go out in the world and evolve," Camacho says. "He sent me to conferences and taught me to learn as much as I could from other people."

Camacho followed Martinez's advice and joined the Council on Career Development for Minorities (CCDM), where she worked with Alva Cooper of Hunter College and André G. Beaumont, then executive director of CCDM, both of whom Camacho said were "inspirations." Camacho's work with the CCDM—which included a stint on its advisory board—allowed her to connect with minority practitioners from other colleges and universities.

Her travels opened doors and opened her mind. But they also sometimes demonstrated how much work needed to be done. For instance, Camacho attended a conference in Kentucky in the early 1980s.

"I walked into the ballroom and it was all white on one side of the ballroom and all African-American on the other side," Camacho recalls. "There was one other Hispanic there. I just thought, 'Where do I fit in?'"

It's a question that she has asked throughout much of her career.

As SCCC's director of career services and cooperative education, Camacho would attend functions with a white co-worker. People who met the pair automatically assumed that the co-worker was the director, Camacho says.

Another time, a colleague at a meeting in New York was introduced to Camacho and asked flatly: "What are you?"

"I was shocked," Camacho says. "But I think that some people just don't know any better."

Camacho—who says she was raised to be respectful at all times—explains that she finds it hard to be assertive, except when it comes to helping the students with whom she works.

"In the 27 years that I've been in this field, I've had to stand up for students and be an advocate for them, especially in discrimination issues," Camacho explains. "These are people making positive changes in their lives. Through my work, I've forced myself to be more comfortable with who I am."

Camacho strives to serve all students as effectively as possible. Of today's minority students, Camacho says, "They are more aware of their options. Many of them are first-generation [college students], and a lot of them didn't know what was out there. But today, they have broadened opportunities, experience outside what they have traditionally known, and the confidence to pursue higher education beyond a bachelor's degree."

Perhaps one of the best compliments Camacho has received came from a student she was meeting with the other day.

"Eventually, I'd like to be someone like you," he told Camacho. "You seem so happy and in control of your life."

"If he only knew," Camacho deadpans.

Still, Camacho relishes her role as career services director for all students and a mentor to minorities. Want proof of the resolve and sense of mission Camacho has developed during her career?

Just listen to her footsteps.

(from the March 31, 2006 edition of Spotlight Online)

During a press conference in July 2003, President Bush praised community colleges for their adaptability and accessibility. This is an example of a shift in perception that Jeff Nardo, career services coordinator at Coastal Carolina Community College in Jacksonville, North Carolina, has noticed during his 12-plus years at the school.

In recent years, Nardo has seen a growing sense of awareness of two-year colleges as a viable means for useful training and education.

"The perception has changed from the stereotype of two-year schools as those primarily offering 'basket weaving' and other fluffy classes," he explains. "People are realizing that we are an affordable, quality option for individuals to pursue the first two years of their studies toward a four-year degree."

Nardo says that many individuals appreciate the small-class environment and attentive faculty that community colleges offer.

That shift in perception in't just among potential students, but among employers, as well.

"For local entities, particularly employers, we are becoming the primary solution for work force development needs," Nardo notes. "As most people in the field of career development are aware, there has been substantial growth in careers requiring two years or less of training, for which employers have job openings and [in which] job seekers are interested as a viable option to jobs/careers requiring a four-year degree."

One challenge community colleges currently face is meeting growing student enrollment trends and demand for training requests from employers, with a limited budget.

"The vast majority of two-year schools are state entities, depending on public funding, which is limited and shrinking in some states," Nardo explains. "[President Bush] has addressed this in some of his initiatives, realizing that the work force of the 21st century will depend significantly on skills that two-year schools can develop."

One of the things Nardo encourages career services practitioners at two-year colleges to do is , as they move forward, to help themselves by connecting with one another and by becoming involved in initiatives that benefit their institutions. (For instance, NACE just released its first Salary Survey for Associate Degree Candidates. This pilot report contains salary information for the Classes of 2003 and 2004. NACE expects to begin collecting data for the Class of 2005 later this year.)

Explains Nardo: "It is of critical importance for those of us at two-year schools to participate [in Salary Survey for Associate Degree Candidates] because it provides us a resource to be more effective in providing accurate, up-to-date information on a topic of importance to our students, in careers for which information resources that surveys graduating students is limited or non-existent."

Having current and accurate information—especially data specifically for two-year colleges—is also a critical way for career services at these schools to demonstrate the affect they have on students, graduates, and the work force, Nardo says. That's an important arrow in the quiver going forward as the changing perception and increased interest in two-year colleges will present new challenges for these schools.

"Providing quality, personal, and effective services—whether they be instruction, job placement, or anything else—while addressing the need to do so at an increasing level of quantity, is a challenge that these schools will have to address in the future, and they'll have to do more with less in terms of funding for staff and resources," Nardo says.

"Also, we will have to effectively evaluate, select, and use technology to enhance delivery of all services, while not becoming overwhelmed with options, and do so without losing the 'personal touch' that sets many two-year schools apart from others."

When Theres Stiefer worked at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma, years ago, she became embroiled in a geographic imbroglio.

A student came into the career center and began looking at the job binders, which were divided into the states that most the career center's jobs came from—Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas—and another titled "Miscellaneous."

"After a while, I asked the young lady if she found anything interesting in any of the binders and she said, 'All of these jobs look good but I not sure how far some of these jobs are in Miscellaneous. What state is Miscellaneous near?' " Stiefer recalls.

Stunned, Stiefer let the student continue to search for the phantom state on a map.

"Unable to recall a state named 'Miscellaneous' or find it on a map, the student suggested that we just throw them away because these jobs had to be scams," Stiefer says.

The jobs stayed, as did Stiefer's warmhearted recollection about the incident. Stiefer—who says her sense of humor was developed at an early age ("I was a late-in-life baby, also known as a tax dividend for my parents, so when they had guests over I was cheap entertainment")—infuses her sense of humor into her career services philosophy.

"I believe that humor in my position is invaluable," says Stiefer, now the director of career services at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville's Sam M. Walton College of Business. "Life is so serious, but learning should not be; it should be exciting and fun. Students tend to be nervous, uptight, overconfident, not confident enough, and wavering about their job search, and if we can get them to relax with a bit of added humor, it only makes it easier for them."

Stiefer has a wealth of hilarious experience to draw from. Her first job was as a ranch hand on a dude ranch in Colorado. In addition, she has conducted legal research on personal injury and criminal cases for a law firm, sold waterbeds and prepaid legal services, and was a day care teacher while trying to figure out what she "should do" for a career.

These experiences have combined with her humor to create a novel outlook on life and work—one that translates well to career services. For instance, Stiefer and her staff recently transformed the career center office into a rock-and-roll backstage area with old album covers on the walls, CDs and records hanging from the ceiling, and a guitar case filled with candy for visitors. They designed concert-style T-shirts for staff to wear that say "Career Center World Tour" that lists the services the career center offers. This has enabled the career center to better connect with students, faculty, staff, and employers at all levels.

"Students are much more comfortable in a less intense office," Stiefer notes. "We actually have faculty members and administrators that come and sit in our office to visit for no reason or they stop by our office for a cup of coffee on their way to their office. [Our career center has] a staff of four and one of us usually has a funny story for that morning. Faculty members are very open to our office, and, because of the fun atmosphere that we have created, they like to be a part of it and are terrific partners for us. They send students to us and help us connect with employers."

Stiefer explains that it is critical that leaders separate humor and creativity from silliness and goofing around. Creativity, she says, involves drawing on the career center staff's unique capacities, outlooks, and insights.

"People should want to come to work, and if they don't, then our jobs as leaders is to figure out a way to make the office a place of expression for them," Stiefer recommends. "Attitude is critical. If there is a positive atmosphere in a career center, then it can only help those who enter there to view challenges as opportunities. We have to constantly be recreating our offices, recreating ourselves, recreating culture. Change is inevitable, but growth is optional, and if career center administrators aren't growing, then I would be very concerned."

It also helps staff, says Stiefer.

"Humor and laughter are great stress relievers and I am a strong proponent of both of them," Stiefer says. "I believe that humor can contribute to an organization's goals, make it a better place to work, and lead to happier, more productive, and less-stressed employees."

Stiefer explains that her personal prescription for health is to accomplish four things each day: drink plenty of water; exercise her mind and body; laugh as much as humanly possible, which involves looking at the world in a very different way; and meditate because everybody needs moments alone to reflect and refocus.

"When I wake up in the morning I know that really there are only four things that I have to achieve that day and if I do them, then everything else—family, job, community service, etc.—will be easy," Stiefer explains. "It makes it so much easier to face each day to find the joy in living ... and if I don't, the fault lies within me. I take what I do very seriously, but I really never take myself seriously."

Peter Bowen has learned much about relationships in his 36 years—including his first 18 in manufacturing—at General Electric. And much of it has evolved to meet the needs and desires of current students.

Take, for instance, this past holiday season. Bowen—manager of campus relations—and the HR staff members at GE have been seeing an increase of parental involvement in the children's job searches in recent years.

"In fact," Bowen says. "I had a call from a mother about 18 months ago because she wanted to negotiate her daughter's salary."

For one of GE's larger target schools, Bowen suggested that his staff send its 2005 holiday cards to the homes of recruits to whom GE has made job offers instead of to their campus mailing address.

"I was hoping that the parents would see the card," Bowen says. "Because what it would promote is that we are personally interested in their sons and daughters and, hopefully, make a positive impression on them. Business is all about relationships with people. When I was in manufacturing, relationships were critical as we worked to create a product. Now in HR, my 'product' is people."

Those relationships, Bowen says, "always have been and probably always will be" a challenge for staffing professionals.

Another challenge that has bridged the almost 20 years that Bowen has been in the HR function at GE is finding the proper balance between technological efficiency and value from establishing personal relationships.

Advancing technology has had many benefits for staffing departments. For instance, Bowen explains that technology has allowed employers to process more job candidates in a much more efficient manner and has helped employers to reduce the cost of back office work.

But, there is a tradeoff.

"I think we're losing the personal aspects of our relationships," Bowen says. "There have been a number of fads and trends that have come through our profession. As an old timer, I see them as such. The challenge has become finding the best technology to facilitate personal relationships. Technology should be used as a tool, but not as a driver."

One thing that Bowen fears is that technology will overtake these personal relationships and create an expectation of high tech among college students. A strong proponent of face-to-face interviewing ("You can read a lot about a person by meeting them") and accepting hard copy resumes at career fairs, Bowen hopes that technology doesn't permeate the profession to the point where these former standards are no longer valid.

"If the bulk of employers stop interviewing students face-to-face and direct students online to submit resumes, what's going to happen is students are going to feel as though they don't have to attend career fairs and that they can just do everything from their room," Bowen explains. "Where I still can and want to meet students to interview them and accept resumes, I may be driven toward the technological means because students may not show up to career fairs anymore."

Going forward, one of the biggest trends staffing professionals will be facing is understanding generational differences, Bowen says.

"There are different things that affect people and how they think of employers," Bowen says. "I think it all comes down to understanding your customer. Is my customer the university or is my customer the student? I would argue that they are both my customers. Then, you have to be responsive to the needs of your customer. These needs can be identified through personal communication."

Through effective communication, you can determine what motivates members of a generation. For instance, Bowen notes that the current generation is much more aware of work-life balance—and not merely salary—when considering job offers. And, because of scandals such as Enron, an organization's integrity is much more important to today's college graduates.

"They want to be associated with an employer that has good ethics and integrity," Bowen says. "When we tell them we're going to do something, we'd better follow through on our promise."

Bowen says that for HR functions to succeed in the future, they will have to:

• Understand and use technology wisely.
• Maintain strong partnerships with universities. ("I'm a big advocate of partnerships with universities," Bowen notes. "When the university wins, I win.")
• Have a good brand on campus.
• Strong maintaining of integrity.

As for the woman who called to negotiate her daughter's salary with GE, Bowen had a ready response.

"Fortunately, it's easy for me to respond in those situations, because GE has a defined salary structure," Bowen said.

But Bowen—whose grandfather and father both spent their entire careers at GE—didn't mind the call. In fact, he understands why the call was made.

"It just carries through for this generation, who have planned their sons' and daughters' entire schedules as they grew up," Bowen says. "This generation of student has a good level of communication with their parents, and to some degree, they expect their parents to be a part of this process."

How does Bowen understand this so well? His two sons recently graduated from college—and became fourth generation employees of GE. Bowen, though, says he did not actively recruit his sons to work GE. In fact, he told them they should consider other employers in their job search.

In that regard, Bowen was much less "helicopter parent" and more the type of parent to keep his children grounded. Even when it's family, it still boils down to managing personal relationships.

(from the February 2, 2006 edition of Spotlight Online)

When Dan Nagy was at Gulf Oil in the early 1980s, the oil industry was in its heyday. Big budgets and aggressive hiring characterized HR functions for these companies, and there were many opportunities for geologists and petroleum engineers.

"It really was their market," Nagy explains.

But markets can be fickle and karma can be cruel, as one recruit found out.

During the boom, this particular recruit walked into the office where one of Nagy's colleagues was scheduled to interview him. Without introduction, the recruit said, "Let's not waste any time here," as he began spreading sheets of paper with offers from other oil companies on the desk.

"Tell me if you can beat these," he said bluntly.

"That's not the way we work," Nagy's colleague replied. "From the offers you received from other companies, I can tell you're a good candidate. But I'd like to get to know you before making an offer."

Unsatisfied with the pace of the meeting and lack of an immediate offer, the recruit gathered up his papers and brusquely left to take his credentials elsewhere.

A year and a half later, the bottom had fallen out of the oil market. Layoffs were common and jobs were harder to come by. Gulf had since merged with Chevron, and Nagy was attending a career fair with his colleague from Gulf; both were now working for Chevron.

The recruit who 18 months earlier had his choice of offers walked up to their table with a much humbler demeanor. Nagy and his colleague recognized the recruit; however, the recruit didn't recognize them.

As the recruit stood there, Nagy's colleague began to spread papers out on the table. "Let me show you the opportunities we have for petroleum engineers," he said.

At that point, Nagy said, the recruit began to connect the dots and remember the meeting with Nagy's colleague. The recruit began to go flush.

Nagy's colleague then removed the papers until the desk was clear, looked the recruit in the eye, and said, "And these are the positions we have for you."

Chances are, the recruit got the point. Watching the exchange take place, Nagy certainly learned another lesson about how to deal with people, one that he reflected on as he spent time on both sides of the desk.

A five-year run as the manager of college recruiting and employment for Gulf Oil (and, after a merger, Chevron) was sandwiched around two stints at the University of Pittsburgh. He also worked at Moravian College and the consulting firm Drake Beam Morin.

Nagy—currently associate dean for admissions and recruiting at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business—believes his experience as both a career services practitioner and a staffing professional has served him well throughout his career.

"Clearly, it's a unique perspective," Nagy says. "Taking the knowledge of the way both sides work keeps you grounded in reality. It allowed me to realize who the people were that really made operations work."

For instance, when Nagy visited colleges as a staffing professional, he put that knowledge to good use by getting to know the person who did the scheduling on a personal level.

"Besides a genuine interest in getting to know them, I knew they might be able to help me out someday," Nagy says. "Maybe even more so than the career services director."

Back when Nagy started in career services, he and many of his colleagues saw eventually joining a corporation as a natural progression.

"We viewed the other side as a type of 'grass is greener' situation," he says. "We aspired to move to the corporate side. We felt there was more money and more prestige. When we got there, we realized that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It was pretty nice on the college side."

Nagy said that if you break into career services on the undergraduate level and move to the corporate side, the pace is the biggest adjustment.

"The corporate side has a bottom-line orientation," he explains. "You're moving away from a helping profession to one that is profit- and goal-driven. You are responsible to line managers, who tell you their needs and if you can't meet them, they'll do it themselves. You're held accountable and the pressure is ratcheted up. That said, I really enjoyed my five years at Gulf Oil."

"I always admired and appreciated people who take risks," Nagy says. "At the time, we knew how hard people used to work but would not get recognized for their innovative programs. I had a discretionary fund and was looking to do some PR work with colleges as well as recognize outstanding individuals in the college area."

Nagy says it was embarrassing how much money he had to work with in the oil market's heyday. Conversely, after the market collapsed, it was embarrassing how little budget he had.

"Corporate professionals are asked to do more with less," Nagy says. "Budget is always a big challenge. They feel the pressure to do lots of things with fewer resources."

The transition from HR professional to career services practitioner is a good one, according to Nagy. Just like he thinks every faculty member should go out and work in the business world so he or she can speak from experience, Nagy thinks HR professionals who transition to career services have an advantage. These individuals know how organizations hire people, what selection criteria they use, how they screen resumes, and what technology they use.

"They know what it takes to work with recruiting managers," he says. "They seem to be more sensitive to the needs of the employer and have strong corporate relations skills."

Nagy says that the common challenge for career centers is having enough staff to effectively serve all of their customers. However, he recently found an emerging challenge—for both career services practitioners and HR professionals—that surprised him.

"The new challenge is helicopter parents," he says. "I was stunned by how much the parents of students get involved now. It's a whole different generation of parents, who maybe didn't get much support from their parents, and become very involved in their child's academic career and job search. I found that it's not uncommon for parents to jump in and negotiate job offers and salaries for their kids."

With all of the changes and challenges Nagy has seen throughout his professional career, he is convinced of one thing—the sustainable future of college recruiting.

"If someone asked me about it a year ago, I would have had a different answer," Nagy says. "We were coming off a three-year recession, one in which a lot of experienced professionals left the field and a lot of young people without the experience moved in. Now it's cycling back, and I'm certain that as long as there are needs that companies have, there will be college recruiting."

(from the January 20, 2006 edition of Spotlight Online)

According to the results of the Scott Resource Group's (SRG's) annual surveys, college students consistently report that organizations with the most effective recruitment programs are represented by staff members who favorably impress them.

Maybe that's why Mary Scott—founder and president of SRG and a fervent University of Notre Dame football fan—took so long to be able to laugh about an incident that happened to her nearly two decades ago. At the time, Scott was a recruiter at Aetna. She was traveling to the University of Michigan, one of her company's top feeder schools, in "dress-down mode" on a Sunday when her luggage got misdirected.

"I arrived in Ann Arbor so late that all the stores were closed," Scott recalls. "I wound up interviewing students at the University of Michigan the next day … wearing a Notre Dame sweatshirt. To make matters worse, the guy I reported to at Aetna bled [Michigan] Blue."

According to Scott, everyone on campus was very nice about her predicament (at least in her presence), including one student who observed, "Could have been worse. You could have been wearing a Michigan State sweatshirt."

"I have NEVER again traveled in jeans, let alone a sweatshirt," Scott says. "I learned so many lessons from that sorry episode!"

They are lessons that Scott used during the rest of her 10 years at Aetna, during which she became director of recruiting in what was then called the employment office, and beyond. She has seen many changes in the ways things were done and many similarities in the ways things are done today.

"Recruiting at Aetna—which, at the time, was a Fortune 50 company—was evolving from a very transactional function with all kinds of image and execution issues," Scott says. "The biggest challenge at the time was to hire recruiters with a different skill set—much more consultative, much less clerical.

"That same issue still looms as a major challenge at many organizations, but in different ways. Recruiting, whether for new graduates or experienced hires—and yes, there is a difference—requires a unique combination of competencies and skills, and is far more difficult to do well than many assume."

And, Scott adds, although not widely regarded as such even within the HR community, recruiting has such a profound impact on a company's success. If an organization hasn't attracted and hired the right people in the first place, she explains, then what it pays them, how it develops them, and whether it retains them become far less significant.

What is significant is the ways in which organizations address issues and adapt to changing trends, many of which—such as the competition for college graduates—are amazingly cyclical.

"Yet, despite the wild swings in demand, students' needs and expectations have remained remarkably consistent," Scott notes. "And that has reaffirmed my commitment to taking the longer view as regards emerging issues and trends, rather than getting caught up in the fad du jour."

That view led Scott to leave the corporate world in 1989 and head out on her own. She cites several reasons for forming SRG, chief among them, the desire to focus her career on university relations and recruiting by offering services to client companies. Concerned by the lack of unbiased information available to those in the staffing profession making major strategic decisions, Scott also wanted to provide the "voice of the customer" by gathering objective feedback from students that would be valuable to her clients.

Take, for instance, the issue of face-to-face interviewing. According to Scott, data from SRG surveys gathered over the years have found several immutable findings: First, company representatives have a powerful impact on students' desire to pursue opportunities with an employer. Second, students value personal contact and object to employers' replacing face-to-face contact with technology.

"To that point, I no longer survey students regarding their perceptions about video interviewing, because several years of ratings and commentary have been so consistently and overwhelmingly negative," Scott says. "That said, there is an ever-growing array of products and services that enable organizations to introduce an electronic interface into the recruiting process, and there will no doubt be an increase in the number of organizations that contemplate using such products and services."

It may be, Scott adds, that future generations are more welcoming of electronic interviewing than are the Millennials—but it may also turn out that a preference for face-to-face interaction is simply part of human nature.

Going forward, Scott has some advice for organizations looking to succeed.

"First, senior leadership must understand and champion university relations and recruiting," she says. "I have yet to work with an organization that had a successful program where this critical element was not in place. Second, that top-down commitment must be part of the organization's DNA. Where that is not the case, it is far more likely that college recruiting will get thrown overboard when business conditions soften. And third, the function itself must be staffed with individuals who are subject matter experts—who have credibility with and have earned the trust of their line of business customers."

As NACE prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2006, a number of us have pored over old CPC and NACE publications, and leafed through other documents and old pictures. What a difference 50 years make! There are obvious changes, such as in clothing and hairstyles for men and women.

“But more importantly for NACE and its members, many changes occurred in how we do what we do in our profession,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. “And those changes at the association level have been prompted in anticipation of or in response to the shifting needs of NACE members.”

So, before we embark on this significant year, we’ll travel back to the beginning to revisit the origins of the career services profession, then called “placement,” and how it connected with employers during those early years.

Every day, Kitty McGrath, executive director of graduate and undergraduate career management at Arizona State University's W. P. Carey School of Business, reminds herself that as intelligent and capable as students are, they are at a different place in their lives than she is.

The catalyst for this daily practice came early in McGrath's career. According to McGrath, a recent alumnus returned to campus and stopped by her office to chat.

"He had accepted a great job in Chicago but felt a bit out of place because everyone he worked with was at least 10 years older than he was," McGrath explains. "His astonishment was apparent when he talked about the informal staff lunches. He said, 'Kitty, they actually have long conversations about snowblowers!'"

When McGrath began working in the field in 1976, peer advising was very much in vogue as was the growing emphasis on experiential opportunities. The transition from a focus on campus recruiting and job placement activities to a career development emphasis was in full force. Career counseling centers were being created and others renamed to include career planning as part of the title.

"The office where I worked at Indiana University-Bloomington was just being established and was an all-campus career counseling center, separate from the decentralized placement centers in individual colleges and schools," McGrath notes.

Another significant issue centered on the continuing struggle for legitimacy with faculty for offering career assistance at all.

"'Creeping vocationalism' was the phrase bandied about in academic circles, especially in the liberal arts," McGrath says. "Providing support for student career planning was perceived by some in academe to be anti-intellectual."

While career services practitioners were pushing for legitimacy on campuses in the 1970s, today their administrations—and others—require them to be accountable for measurable results.

"We are being asked much more frequently than ever before to quantify the effect of our efforts and demonstrate our value-add," McGrath says. "Public-supported institutions have more external accountability than private institutions, but we are all under pressure to show that we make a positive difference in order to justify the institutional resources we use."

To effectively provide this evidence, practitioners must articulate their mission much more clearly, collect and disseminate much more data on student outcomes, and develop ways of measuring not just student participation, but indicators of the benefits they accrue from career services, McGrath says.

"The media that purport to rank schools and programs, the state legislators and the taxpayers who elected them, accreditation organizations, prospective students and their parents, and many other important stakeholder groups will all continue to demand that we quantify the difference that we can make in students' success," she says.

A large part of ensuring success is providing effective coaching. It's an area that McGrath says has benefited from the implementation of technology in the career exploration and job-search processes.

"Among the many ways technology has helped us, the ability to retrieve volumes of information on careers, companies, job opportunities, etc. via the web is probably one of the most important," she says. "The pervasiveness of the Internet as an information source has freed us to focus more on our role as counselor/coach."

According to McGrath, the high-tech vs. high-touch debate in career services is all about finding an acceptable balance.

"I don't think that there is anyone in a career services function who believes that high tech vs. high touch is an either/or decision," McGrath says. "We have to succeed at both in order to serve students well. Where the appropriate balance lies, however, is often a function of our particular context."

McGrath notes that one size certainly does not fit all. For instance, the best balance point for her at a business school in a public institution with more than 60,000 students may be a world apart from what would work most effectively for a career services professional at a small, private, liberal arts school.

"The high-tech/high-touch debate is then a question of resource allocation," she says. "Making decisions on resources requires that we set aside any personal preferences for tech or touch and determine how we can best address the myriad career development needs of our students.

"Think about the soul-searching that underlies a decision to invest heavily in new technology as opposed to bringing on board or possibly laying off career counseling staff."

When John Steele was a student at Indiana University during the late 1930s and early 1940s, there was just one professor to help with the placement of graduating students. It was inadequate.

Steele made it his life work to provide for others what he did not have. Steele retired in 1982 after a long career that included work at Boston College, Harvard Business School, and The Ohio State University. He was also instrumental in the formation of the College Placement Council (CPC), which eventually became NACE.

Steele recalls that as a time charged with excitement and frustration. While the World War II years saw a respite in hiring, the years that followed the war brought frenetic recruiting activity, Steele says. Small budgets, however, prevented college placement offices from offering little more to students than interview scheduling.

The late 1940s saw the formation of several regional placement associations. Even though college representatives were the primary leaders in the formation of nearly all of the placement associations, it was not because of a lack of employer involvement. In fact, as Steele points out, the leaders "had the support and cooperation of many industrial members who worked diligently behind the scenes to help the educators with their attempts to organize a formal structure."

The reason for this system of governance was simple: With this type of arrangement, the placement organizations could avoid being taxed by the federal government.

"The IRS took the viewpoint that if an organization was profitable it had to pay taxes," Steele explains. "It believed that organizations that were run by college people were nonprofit, while those run by business people had to pay taxes on the income they brought in. To avoid being taxed, we had college people in all of the governing offices in the placement field. Slowly, this view relaxed and we finally got the IRS off our back."

Employers did a lot of advising then and, "because college people had small budgets, the employers were very helpful in paying the expenses of college people traveling to conferences," Steele recalls. "Chances are if we got along with each other, an employer would lend a hand with transportation. For instance, I remember being at Ohio State and Ford [Motor Company] flew planes in to Columbus to pick a group of us up for a meeting in Chicago."

While the number of regional placement organizations grew, there still was not a unified voice for the profession. Steele wrote in his piece "A Brief Look Back…a Confident Look Ahead" that ran in the December 1972-January 1973 edition of the Journal of College Placement that: "In 1950, the Korean War began. The entire college placement field was embarrassed because no one could answer an inquiry from the U.S. government as to the viewpoints or recommendations on the military draft. Although there were a good number of organizations by that time in the placement field, there was no real coordination of activities so that no one could serve as a spokesman in dealing with the federal government."

Talk of collaboration among the regions gained steam. As the regional associations continued to grow in both size and complexity, it became obvious that coordination and communication on a larger scale would require the creation of a national association. That realization led to the work to form CPC.

The new association—with its foundation in the Journal of College Placement—served an immediate need. Besides serving as a clearinghouse of information invaluable to career services and staffing professionals, it provided the profession with a national presence and a voice that—when needed—could answer any call.

One such call came during a meeting in the early 1960s, when the director of the United States Employment Services (U.S.E.S.) "admitted that the objective of his agency was to take over the placement function of all colleges in the United States," Steele explains. "The people who attended the meeting were furious."

The director went as far as to tell placement personnel attending the meeting that he would have their jobs within five years. Needless to say, college placement officials and employers were shocked by the government's plans.

The argument the U.S.E.S. presented to the colleges, Steele says, was that the government could provide placement services to colleges and their students for free.

"Some colleges at that time were not too supportive of the idea of having placement organizations in the first place," Steele says. "The U.S.E.S. was very persuasive and influential with some college presidents."

CPC and the regional organizations joined together in the fight and according to Steele, after a lot of hard work, successfully rebuffed the U.S.E.S.'s attempts to take over the placement of college students. Talk of the government taking over the placement function on all U.S. college campuses eventually died down, primarily because—for the first time—the voice of the profession was heard loud and clear.

In 1982, the career center at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., received a call from an elderly woman in the area seeking a student for a small job. The posting in the career center read:

Get small animal out of my home. [She doesn't know what it is, but it looks like a pigeon with whiskers and it's getting bigger every day.] Hours: Before noon, if possible. [It's driving her crazy.] Salary: $150; will pay extra for poison if you decide to capture it that way.

"I still have that ad in my scrapbook," says Alan Goodman, director of career services at The Catholic University. "I laugh every time I read it. But I can't remember if anyone took the job or the outcome."

While the ethics of using poison to get a "whiskered pigeon" out of the woman's home are debatable, the ethical issues career counselors faced at the time the ad was posted were not. Safeguarding students' privacy was an issue that was front and center as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) was passed just eight years earlier.

"The use of alcohol in recruiting was also a big issue," adds Goodman, who has been in the profession for 31 years. "Employers would serve alcoholic beverages at recruiting events and it presented some problems. When the ethical standards were changed, career centers had a much easier way of dealing with employers who want to do this by simply saying 'Serving alcohol is against our standards.' "

The primary reason why career services practitioners have ethical challenges, Goodman explains, is because the career center is in the middle of the employers' need to get the best candidates possible as efficiently as possible, and their institution's need to have students get the best possible jobs and have employers provide support—financial or otherwise—for the school.

According to Goodman, the core reason why ethical issues for career services practitioners arise hasn't changed, "but the topics have. The bottom line is that our job, as always, is to look out for the best interests of our students no matter what employers or institutions need."

One ethical tightrope practitioners walk today is meeting the need for funding and having to turn to employers to get it, Goodman explains. Further complicating things is how to balance that "fundraising" while trying to provide equal services for all students.

Such a dilemma for career services might occur when, for instance, representatives from a high-profile organization—one where alums or big-time donors work—come to campus and a member of the school's administration insists that the interviews be conducted in the president's suite. Or when the administration issues a directive to make sure a student—who happens to be the daughter or son of a prominent alumnus—is scheduled for an interview even though the student is on a crowded waiting list.

Of course, organizations hiring college students face myriad ethical challenges, as well. Chief among them, Goodman says, is recruiting the best and brightest students in the most efficient way possible.

"Career centers are not going to pick [the best and brightest] out for them, and even when employers give money and support to a university, there's no guarantee that they'll get an advantage," Goodman says.

The challenge is amplified in a hot job market, when competition for students is intense.

"You may have managers who do some of the recruiting in a pinch and are not trained in the ethical standards in our field," Goodman explains. "Some do things that are not in line with our ethical standards."

And some employers cut out the career services component altogether to access students, which in itself is not unethical, but can lead to other ethical dilemmas.

"Employers don't have to go through career services to access students," Goodman notes. "Some will go to faculty members for the resumes of their top students. The role of faculty in all this has really grown, which can present a conflict of interest if, for instance, the faculty members receive research funding from employers."

Why are ethics important?

"Because, assuming you are reasonably competent, your standing in your institution ultimately depends on your good name," Goodman says. "If people know you're honest, that you make good on your commitments, and you intend to do good, they will be willing to trust and work with you. A lot of things we do are voluntary. A faculty member doesn't have to collaborate with you. An employer doesn't have to provide support. Our reputation comes down to how we play out our personal ethics."

When Julie Cunningham was in HR at Tellabs several years ago, one of the assignments she gave a committee of the company's interns was to choose the social event for the end of the summer. The committee had a budget and its members chose several events to consider. It was the responsibility of each individual to explore the feasibility of one event.

"One of the ideas this particular year happened to be a boat trip," recalls Cunningham, now president of The Cunningham Group. "So, the intern whose job it was to explore this option called the CEO of the company and left him a voice mail that said, 'Mr. Birck, I'm calling on behalf of the interns. We'd like to borrow your yacht for a party.' "

A short while later, Cunningham got a call from the CEO's assistant saying she was screening the CEO's voice mails and got the message from the intern.

"I had no idea the intern had done this," she recalls. "The assistant said our CEO didn't have a yacht, and even if he did, she was sure he wouldn't lend it to the interns for a party. Although she and I had a good chuckle about this, I asked her to erase the message before Mr. Birck listened to it, which she did."

Cunningham has seen a lot—some funny and some not so much so—and gained a wealth of perspective into the workings of both career services and college recruiting. She began as a college career services practitioner at Illinois Central College, served as director of engineering career services at the University of Kansas, and worked her way from technical recruiter to manager of global college relations at Tellabs.

Through her experience in the field and her work at The Cunningham Group, a consulting firm that provides college relations training and advising services to employers, Cunningham has identified challenges that employers and colleges face.

"One thing employers are facing is a lot more pressure for accountability than in the past," Cunningham says. "That usually translates into having to demonstrate your value to your organization as a non-revenue generating area, come up with some metrics, and devise a strategy that's in line with that of the business."

Another challenge for many employers, Cunningham says, is that they are being asked to focus their college recruiting programs primarily on diversity recruiting instead of making it one part of their college recruiting program.

"There are more employers focusing on diversity recruiting, so there's a lot of competition for a limited number of candidates," Cunningham says.

And, of course, "There's always that shortage of resources: money, people, time," Cunningham says. "Part of that challenge is trying to get the job done without the ideal amount of resources. This affects both employers and career services."

Like employers, career centers face many challenges. One of the foremost, Cunningham says, is trying to do employer development at a time when many employers are trying to recruit without making as many visits to campus.

"It's a challenge because career centers are still using the traditional model of measuring their value by the number of employers that visit campus," Cunningham says. "Many are doing virtual career fairs, and have very good web sites where employers can post opportunities, but still, their clientele—the faculty members, the administrators, and students—are asking, 'Yes, but how many employers were at the career fair and how many employers are interviewing on campus?' "

Therefore, Cunningham explains that a real challenge for career centers is to not only identify appropriate employers, but to find the time and resources to go out and call on the employers and convince them that coming to campus would be a good business move.

Still, she doesn't see drastic changes in the way college recruiting programs or career centers will do business in the future. Experiential education programs, she says, will continue to be important and some employers will begin placing more emphasis on advanced degrees, but, overall, the bottom line is that it comes down to individuals and the connections they make.

"If you look at how people choose careers and jobs, it's a very personal decision," Cunningham explains. "Regardless of the person's major, or if they're a minority or nonminority, or female or male, that job-seeker is trying to choose an organization in which they're going to live out their career dreams and interact with the same people day after day year after year. To make a decision that they can be comfortable with, they must have the kind of contact that college recruiters and career centers facilitate.

"Although the tools we use to recruit may change over time, I think the big picture isn't going to change because, when you think about college recruiting and career services, it's all about facilitating the relationships that are at the very core of hiring and career decision making and hiring."

When Sue Hansen—director of recruiting for Deloitte & Touche—served as NACE president in 2001-02, she would always tack this to the end of her introduction: "Deloitte by day and NACE by night."

The opportunity to serve NACE and the profession, no matter the long hours required to do so, has been a component of Hansen's career that she has relished.

"I have been allowed and encouraged to play a major role in initiatives affecting the profession," Hansen says of her decade-plus involvement in NACE that was punctuated this year with her induction into the NACE Academy of Fellows. "I have done things through the association that I never would have experienced in my 'paid' position."

In her current role at Deloitte & Touche, Hansen is collecting "best practice" information from the other organizations. The connections she has made through the years with NACE has made it easier to do so.

"Having met and worked with a number of professionals from the country's premier organizations gives me the ability to pick up the phone or send an e-mail, and voila, the answer," she notes. "Where else but NACE can you have folks on both sides of the equation available to you and eager to share their knowledge?"