Spotlight for Career Services Professionals
January 9, 2013 

Career services can play a significant role in their students’ offer rates, according to results of NACE’s 2012 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey.

The survey found that employers that emphasize the helpfulness of career services staff in selecting target schools are more likely to extend offers to students at those institutions.

Overall, employers that chose a target school based on the career center extended offers to an average 72 percent of students interviewed. In comparison, overall, employers extended offers to an average of 40 percent of the students they interviewed.

Other attributes that correlate to above average offer rates include students’ salary expectations and the organization’s retention of the institution’s alumni.

Despite this, most employers tend to select schools based on other criteria: Academic majors offered; perceived quality of the school’s programs; the organization’s recruiting experience at the school; and the school’s location are the most popular selection attributes, but do not correlate to employer satisfaction with the talent pool, as expressed by a high offer rate.

The 2012 Recruiting Benchmark Survey was conducted June 15 through August 15, 2012; 242 employer-member organizations took part. A report based on the survey will be available later this winter.