Spotlight Online for Career Services Professionals, October 13, 2010 

Jamie Belinne believes that, just like a public company gives an annual report to its shareholders, student support offices—including career services—should have reporting for its shareholders.  

“When we can clearly define our goals and measure our outcomes, it’s much easier to have credibility with faculty and administration,” says Belinne, assistant dean for career services at the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston's Rockwell Career Center. “It’s better to clearly measure and define my shortfalls so I can come up with specific plans for improvement than it is to just tell people I’m doing a great job, without any supporting evidence.” 

At the beginning of each year, Belinne tells the faculty, business advisory board, and the administration her goals and challenges for the coming year, and asks for their support and feedback. She also reports on the successes or failures of the previous semester and year, and talks about what she and her staff have learned and what they will change as a result.  

“When people know you’re legitimately and non-defensively open to feedback, they are much more likely to give their feedback and support,” she says. “When they see you actually using their ideas, they move from being advisers to being partners. And they want to see you succeed.” 

Belinne reports on standard measures, such as the numbers of jobs, interviews, companies, internships, and student appointments. In addition, the career center surveys all employers after their interviews, their job postings, and their career fair participation, and it surveys students after career counseling appointments, workshops, and event participation. Belinne then shares the results with faculty, the administration, and the business advisory board.  

“We report both the good and the bad,” Belinne explains. “As a result, our ‘shareholders’ will brag to others on our success rates, because they know we’re being honest. They’ll also offer advice and suggestions because we actively request this to help us improve areas that aren’t scoring as well as we’d like. Transparency really increases the sense of trust and partnership.” 

Belinne says that the greatest success career services has experienced from this approach was the support from the college and the employers for the construction of a new and expanded facility.  

“Based on our data and reporting, our shareholders saw that our greatest constraints were inadequate meeting, interview, and office space,” she points out. “When the college received the budget for a second building, all faculty and administration were on board to make our office a top priority for space in the new building. As a result, the entire second floor was given to career services.” 

Another example is the success of the career center’s required career development course. When the course was being developed, Belinne asked each academic department to assign a representative to an advisory committee that would provide suggestions, feedback, and advice on the development of course content.  

“I also get feedback on course content from our employer advisory board each year, and we make changes based on the feedback,” she adds. “We invite key faculty to moderate the career panels held as part of the course, as well.” 

As a result, Belinne reports that there is tremendous college-wide buy-in for the course.  

“Faculty are aware of the content and extremely supportive of the goals of the course,” she says. “They continue to come up with new ways to support and grow the impact of this class’s curriculum on the college each year. A week doesn’t go by without me getting a video clip or article that a professor thinks would be good in our career development course, and I use nearly all of their ideas.” 

Belinne points out that being willing to run numbers differently without getting defensive and accepting feedback with an open mind are necessary components of a fruitful relationship.  

“One of the greatest services I can provide our faculty and administration is data management,” she says. “I should be able to run reports or find data to answer their questions about our students’ career development and career outcomes.” 

Still, Belinne recognizes that, criticism or suggestions can sometimes “sting.” She encourages practitioners to look past that.  

“[Practitioners should] try to see it as an opportunity to build a new alliance,” Belinne recommends. “If they truly listen to the ideas, and even try to incorporate some of them without immediately going into ‘yes, but’ mode, [the practitioners] can win a tremendous new partner for their office.” 

Finally, and most importantly, she advises career services not to do anything unless it can say why it is doing it and how it will measure its success. Belinne says it’s critical for a career services office to know the goals of any program or service before it launches, and notes that the goals need to be “SMART”: specific, measureable, attainable, relevant, and time-limited. 

“If the goals are SMART, then determining how to measure them should be easy,” she says. “Unfortunately, many people develop programs because they seem like a good idea. However, unless they can say specifically why a program is a good idea and how they will know if it was successful, it’s difficult to be taken seriously by faculty or administration.” 

In the C.T. Bauer College career center, Belinne requires her team to include a “how will we know if it worked” section in every new proposal. 

“Otherwise,” she says, “I will not support it. It forces us to be more strategic and more accountable. While it may be a little more work on the front end, the paybacks in terms of learning, performance, and partnership are well worth the effort.”