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In 2024, Sean McGowan and Nicole Weaver of Carnegie Mellon University’s Career and Professional Development Center (CPDC) created a custom Google sheet dashboard that tracked all career fair registrations by month of registration and booth count since 2017.
“We live in a data-backed world and this dashboard can provide us with something to base our hunches or feelings on with facts and help us drive toward goals,” explains McGowan, director of employer relations in the CPDC.
CPDC staff begin outreach for fairs five to six months prior to fall recruiting, and three months prior to spring recruiting.
“In prior years, we never fully understood if we were trending in the right direction related to employer registration, and I needed a way to provide data to our superiors and other across campus when they asked how we are currently looking for this year’s fairs,” McGowan says.
“This dashboard has allowed us to answer that question more confidently.”
McGowan worked with Weaver, the CPDC’s employer engagement and operations coordinator, to develop the dashboard, which tracks major annual events like career fairs, networking events, and career sponsors. (View and download a copy of the Carnegie Mellon CPDC dashboard.)
“I had the vision and basics, but Nicole was able to ensure that everything was tied together through formulas, so we can just update as we progress through the months,” McGowan explains.
“Nicole now makes this part of her week to update the registrations and to report to the employer relations team on how we are progressing.”
McGowan and Weaver started with the basic information, putting the total number of registrations for an event by the end of each month.
“We then total this up and also include the booth totals—which helps with multi-day events like our STEM Career Fair,” McGowan explains.
“Once we were able to add in the totals by month and year, we were able to look at averages per year and month and see the trends. We are also able to take this information to develop our base, target, and reach goals for the upcoming year to see how we are performing toward the goal as well as to the previous year.”
McGowan notes that this year has been interesting and reflective of the decline in career fair attendance many career centers are experiencing. Since mid-July, he says that Carnegie Mellon’s numbers were a few percentage points higher than they were in 2024 at that time. However, they came to a standstill and had a lower percentage of registrations through the end of July and August.
“We ultimately ended up with a 15% decrease in employer registrations for our STEM Career Fair from 2024 to 2025 in total employers,” McGowan points out.
“There was also a similar percentage difference in total booths. Our average employer registrations in July the past two years was 43, but this year we came in at 35. Our average employer registrations in August the past two years was 43, but this year we came in at 38. All in all, Carnegie Mellon is still in a good situation, but our dashboard revealed a decline in the past two months of our registration season.”
McGowan and Weaver use the dashboard to report results to the employer relations team weekly. They also share this with the associate dean as well as the employer relations collaborative across campus.
“This dashboard allows us to use historical data and registrations to inform our team on progress,” McGowan says.
“We no longer wonder how we are doing and it gives us something to work toward. This allows us to add additional marketing touchpoints for employers during times that are historical peaks. It also informs us that there are valleys during certain times of year.
“I thought it was fun to provide a base, a target, and a goal to run toward. The dashboard shows our team the finish line. In some ways it is like a competition, but it is with ourselves. Many of us in career services have the data in Handshake, and you can easily look at the information regarding registrations. It is not hard to use the dashboard, but ensure that you plan to use and update it regularly.”
