2004 NACE Excellence Awards
Educational Programming—College Winner
“Navigating College Career Services in Indiana”
Purdue University Center for Career Opportunities
In recent years, career centers have faced many challenges. These
include how to engage small and mid-sized organizations that have
underdeveloped or no human resources functions and have no history
of interaction with a career center, and how to best address the
mounting concern about new college graduates leaving their state.
To help career centers at colleges and universities in Indiana meet
these challenges, the Purdue University Center for Career Opportunities,
with funding assistance from the Lilly Endowment, developed a publication
and PDF that contain content relevant to campus recruitment visits
and provide information applicable to most career centers. Why provide
help statewide?
“Purdue University is a public land grant university,”
explains Tim Luzader, director of the school’s Center for Career
Opportunities. “It’s a priority for all of us at Purdue
to engage the state. In support of our university’s strategic
direction, we are reaching out to our colleagues and employers who
traditionally might not have sourced college students.”
Navigating College Career Services in Indiana promotes college career
services to prospective employers that have not historically sourced
candidates through college and university career services in Indiana.
The career center conducted employer focus groups, distributed employer
surveys, and analyzed survey responses to form the foundation of
the publication.
“[We found] that small to mid-sized organizations are frequently intimidated or even defeated at the notion of contacting career centers, or at the prospect that once there, they will be competing head to head with the big organizations,” says Carol Barrett, executive associate director of Purdue University’s Center for Career Opportunities. “This is partly due to these organizations’ lack of information about how career services offices view their role in helping students connect with prospective employers. Navigating College Career Services in Indiana is designed to close that information gap, and to give these employers a level of comfort in using career services offices at universities and colleges statewide. It also provides an idea of the variety of ways employers can reach out to students through the typical career services operation.”
