Many students may want to negotiate after receiving a job offer but don’t know how, so it's up to career services staff to prepare them for this process.

Volunteering requires a willingness to contribute, but by doing so, you can learn from others and develop leadership skills.

UConn’s Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills created an AI Committee to develop a sustainable, intentional strategy for integrating AI into career services in ways that support student learning, staff confidence, and employer/alumni engagement.

Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship is designed to develop talent to meet the state’s workforce needs. A study explored the relationship between HOPE status and student major selection specifically connected to the state of Georgia’s workforce needs.

The University of Colorado at Boulder’s on-campus internship program is designed to help departments reimagine student employment as a more intentional and developmental experience by embedding career readiness skills directly into student work.

Results from NACE’s 2026 Career Services Benchmarking Poll on AI show a big shift in just a few years in how AI is integrating into the work of career centers. Eighty-six percent of career centers are using AI as an assistive tool when working with individual students—up sharply from just 20% in 2023 and 76% in 2025.

Volunteering is a great way to both grow personally and professionally and to positively contribute to impactful organizations.

Volunteering to serve as a mentor can be one of the most powerful ways to give back because it directly shapes future generations and helps them grow both personally and professionally.

While it can be hard to take the first step, but through volunteering, you can gain more than you give through connection, growth, and becoming part of something bigger.

Volunteering can be a meaningful way to stay connected to your community and the professional spaces that shape your life and work.

Volunteerism can serve as a reminder about why early talent work matters, and why, when done well, it has the power to change not just careers—but futures.

Volunteering is a great way to engage with colleagues, contribute to shared goals, and feel like part of a community while also refining the skills needed to grow personally and professionally.

Project Rebound at Sonoma State is a high-touch, relationship-centered program designed to support students who are formerly incarcerated and system-impacted from admission through graduation.

Last summer, Queens College incorporated the NACE Career Readiness Competencies into its summer internship program and used the NACE Competency Assessment Tool to quantify gains interns made.

Affirmation from career center staff shifted a conceptual spark into a departmental priority allowing the Sophomore Career Accelerator to launch as a signature initiative at Muhlenberg College.

The University of Oklahoma Career Center has been using the NACE Competency Assessment Tool since this past summer. Staff saw it as a viable device to help support their focus on developing their students’ competencies.

AI isn’t replacing career services; it’s making it more necessary to ensure students are being authentic, carrying themselves professionally, thinking critically, and not losing their voice in an increasingly automated world.

When universities, employers, and students collaborate effectively, college graduates are better equipped to transition confidently into the workforce while strengthening the talent pipeline for the future.

Hospitality—a strong component in building fruitful relationships with those organizations that recruit ECSU students—is a foundational element of ECSU’s efforts to overcome any potential limitations associated with its rural location.

Moravian University’s Elevate program aligns the school’s academic strengths with clear, tangible career and life outcomes, integrating leadership and teamwork development, experiential learning, global perspectives, and career preparation across the undergraduate experience.

As students prepare to enter the workforce, establishing a network of trusted advisers can be a helpful way to gain valuable insights.

Uncertainty surrounds the use of artificial intelligence among university relations and recruiting professionals and, to a lesser extent, among career services practitioners.

The traditional approach that separates academic, personal, and career development isn’t working. Colleges and universities must break down silos so they can align the curriculum to employer needs, include projects that build skills and relationships in all their courses, and integrate career development into everything they do. Here are nine ways to inform and inspire how you can collaborate to help students succeed.

In 2015, as part of a college-wide strategic plan, the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) at the University of Minnesota embarked on an ambitious journey to integrate career readiness into the undergraduate experience.

In spring 2023, the California State University Channel Islands Martin V. Smith School of Business & Economics launched a career readiness course that all business and economics majors are required to take.

Carnegie Mellon’s Career and Professional Development Center created a custom Google sheet dashboard to track career fair registrations and provide information that helps staff drive toward goals.

AI is creating new job opportunities for college graduates, and higher education and employers can adjust the ways they operate and interact to ensure students are prepared for these roles.

The winner of NACE’s 2025 Chevron Innovation Award, Arizona State University (ASU) Career Services partnered with ASU Family to develop a multi-model strategic communication and event plan designed to engage family members in support of their student's career journey.

The large-college winner of the 2025 NACE Career Services Excellence Award, the UConn Work+ Pilot integrated career readiness into on-campus student employment, enhancing the experience for more than 200 student employees and 40 supervisors.

The “career everywhere” model can add a layer of complexity to the coordination of services, but career centers can thrive in models that are partially or fully siloed. In this article, author Chantelle Wright highlights the benefits and disadvantages of decentralized models, and provide strategies for success in career ecosystems (decentralized or not).

As the needs of employers frequently change and potential career paths evolve along with them, students should begin working on career preparation earlier in their educational journeys.

The goal of the LER Accelerator coalition and for the release of its recent white paper is to be a catalyst for faster growth of the adoption of learning and employment records.

The college winner of the 2025 NACE Technology Excellence Award, the Kenyon College Career Development Office’s career rewards program incentivizes student use of career services in a way that makes it fun for the students and efficient for office staff.

The small college winner of the 2025 NACE Career Services Excellence Award, Furman University developed its “Four-Year Pathway,” a program that spans students’ undergraduate career and prepares them to enter the workforce.

The Olinde Career Center at LSU launched Talking Tiger Talent as a way to modernize and scale the center’s employer outreach efforts.

When the University of Texas University Leadership Network launched in 2013, it had two main goals that remain in place today: to help students graduate in four years and to provide students who are under-resourced with an opportunity to participate in various forms of experiential learning without having to work.

The North Dakota State University Career and Advising Center team has found that its Employer Town Halls held via Zoom are a great way to disseminate information in a different format than just an email.

The Career and Life Design process that Hassan Akmal created is evolving. Today, AI makes this pursuit more tangible than ever, acting as an unprecedented sounding board for self-exploration.

Large organizations can be intimidating, but getting more involved and finding your community within an organization can help you thrive both personally and professionally.

In the second of a two-part series, 13 NACE leaders offer their insight and guidance about what they have learned in their time in the profession.

Career center budgets for the 2024-25 academic year have increased across the board since 2022-23, according to results of NACE’s 2024-25 Career Services Benchmarks survey.

The University of North Florida (UNF) has historically offered innovative programs, services, resources, and events to ensure students are successful and career ready by the time they graduate. This approach led leadership to embark on a new path at the intersection of UNF’s core functions and NACE’s career readiness competencies.

Attendance numbers reflect the preferences employers and students have for the format of career fairs, results of NACE’s 2024-25 Career Services Benchmarks survey reveal.

The College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington recently launched its Pillars Undergraduate Experience, a framework designed to prepare students for academic achievement and lifelong career success.

For many, success is shaped by external factors, but career services staff can help guide individuals to reflect on what success means to them through their own lens.

Research findings underscore the need for organizations to invest in enhancing recruitment and retention strategies for Latinas in senior executive roles.

Among the main reasons why career center staff are not using AI with students are concerns about the technology collecting students’ personal data.

Networking is a valuable tool for students that offers both career exploration and access to opportunities, particularly in a competitive job market. To get the most out of its networking events, USC Viterbi School of Engineering Career Connections has taken them through several iterations to reach their current format.

There are two primary reasons that career centers might lack confidence in using AI in their work: speed and ethics.

The most prominent elements of a successful partnership between an HBCU and an employer are gaining understanding of challenges, demands, and goals and changing behaviors.

In the first of a two-part series, 13 NACE leaders offer their insight and guidance about what they have learned in their time in the profession.

Aurora University’s career services office uses ChatGPT as a tool to help its students prepare for job interviews and teach them ethical ways to use generative AI.

As a job candidate, students should pursue openings where their skills match the company’s needs, and by dissecting a job description and ensuring those key words find their way into their resume, students can stand out during the screening process.

To produce career-ready graduates, the Lehman College School of Business intentionally equips its students with competencies through the promotion of applied learning in its three programs.

Matt Purdy of Murray State advises career services professionals to think about the resources they are trying to obtain and find data that not only align with what they are asking for, but to connect them to the priorities of their administration or institution.

Many community College students take a nontraditional path to higher education, which means career services staff need to ensure an individualized approach to supporting each student.

The Georgia Tech Career Center, large-college winner of the 2024 NACE Career Services Excellence Award, hired eight new staff members across various functional areas within the office in a process that aligned with the institute’s DEI Blueprint to, in part, closely reflect the demographics of Atlanta.

With professional pursuits, quality invariably outweighs quantity, so career services staff should work with students to find good fits rather than trying to meet arbitrary deadlines.

Fear of AI has turned into curiosity, says Jeremy Schifeling, who reports seeing more and more career leaders getting excited about leveraging these tools for both their students’ and their own success.

The University of Illinois Chicago, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Career Development Office, winner of the 2024 NACE Career Readiness Excellence Award, designed an innovative eight-week, one-credit career strengths-based course for its students.

The college winner of the 2024 NACE Technology Excellence Award, University of California, Berkeley Career Engagement used Google Workspace products to create a data-visualization dashboard to tell its story in a low-cost, efficient manner.

The small college winner of the 2024 NACE Award for Career Services Excellence, Providence College’s Chirico Career Center has created and honed an engaging program designed to help students as they consider their majors and explore potential careers.

The NACE Liberal Arts Affinity Group reflects on its many accomplishments since last year's conference and looks ahead to next year.

Northwestern Mutual shifting the focus of its internship program to development of career readiness competencies seemed like a natural progression since the company was already focusing on themes similar to those identified by NACE’s competencies.

Winner of NACE’s 2024 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Excellence Award for colleges, the Georgia Tech Career Center’s Georgia Tech’s AuthenTECH Partnership initiative leverages staff to provide population-specific resources, expand programming, and cultivate partnerships to advance equitable career outcomes.

Because of the potential challenges of using career services effectively, international students may turn to artificial intelligence for their career-related questions without fully realizing the possible negative outcomes related to it.

Results of a NACE quick poll identify barriers and accelerators affecting the career paths of career services and university recruiting professionals.

Landmark College, an institution exclusively for students who learn differently including those on the autism spectrum, champions a strengths-based model and gives students the skills and strategies they need to achieve their goals.

Winner of the 2024 Chevron Innovation Award, the Gregory S. Fehribach Center at Eskenazi Health empowers Indiana college students with physical disabilities to achieve equitable employment following graduation.

When it comes to advising students on the importance of professional skills, demonstrating those skills in your day-to-day can go a long way.

Belonging at work—feeling that one is valued, accepted, and supported—helps to ensure a healthy, productive, and positive work environment. NACE surveyed its membership to better understand their experiences with belonging in the profession.

For Spring Hill College, the work to attain a high knowledge rate on its first-destination survey begins in the fall.

NACE offers many options to get involved, and those who choose their pursue volunteer opportunities can experience both personal and professional growth.

Because all talent acquisition specialists have had their own unique journeys, embracing those experiences can help them better understand and connect with students.

Career centers that integrate into all parts of a student’s journey in college are better positioned to effectively serve students and demonstrate their value on campus.

Cayuga Community College’s career services office launched its microcredentialing program in 2018. Since then, it has been building microcredentials in the non-credit and credit side of the institution, including developing its microcredential program and updating it to an online learning platform.

Despite achieving a knowledge rate of 90.6% on its most recent first-destination survey, the Roanoke College career center is tweaking the survey’s process to improve it.

Centre College’s three-year average knowledge rate for its first-destination survey (FDS) stands at an impressive 98%. This is especially notable given that the survey wasn’t required for students until 2023.

Because students may lack the professional network to get noticed, career services staff can help by leveraging their own networks to highlight students to potential employers.

The University of Dallas career development office listened to student feedback to pivot from texting students career-related information to sending messages via email. The results have been impressive.

Students who begin building their social media presence while still in college will have an advantage after graduating, and there are several easy steps they can take to get started on LinkedIn.

The University of Western Florida CDCE recently launched its AI Career Toolkit to address AI use, challenges, and possibilities by students exploring careers and the career coaches supporting them.

The Yale Office of Career Strategy enlisted the help of key partners to create an assessment tool that incorporates design-thinking principles and is available to everyone, not just Yale students and alums.

As Gen Z enters the workforce, there will be a shift in workplace culture and expectations, and employers who have embraced these changes have an advantage are positioned for success.

The career services office at Colorado Boulder launched an Artificial Intelligence Working Group to collect information on developments, discuss campus applications of AI, and more.

The classroom can be a valuable resource for students to develop the skill and mindset to think of themselves as professionals and describe how their skills relate to their field.

UCSD’s Rady School Career Management Center is addressing and creating resources around AI to guide students in its effective, safest, and ethical use during the college recruiting process.

This study, a collaboration between NACE and Break Through Tech, provides evidence that career services can help level the playing field for women pursuing STEM careers.

To make McPherson College students aware of the skills they are developing during their campus jobs, Amy Beckman incorporated career readiness competencies into student job descriptions and supervision.

Getting faculty buy in, having liaisons in different departments, and having the faculty be program champions was the key to the success of Georgia State’s “College to Career” career readiness initiative.

Career centers looking to increase FDS response rates might want to focus on communicating regularly with students, providing participation incentives, and ensuring the process is convenient for students.

Automated video interviews (AVIs) are an emerging recruitment tool. As success factors in AVIs may differ from face-to-face interviews, it is important for career services practitioners to know how to help their students prepare for these new types of interviews.

Not only does PathwayU offer student assessments, but it also provides guidance based on predictive knowledge that accounts for the user’s sense of purpose and meaning.

While moving to a virtual world and with little experience using virtual tools, William & Mary career center staff connected students and alumni by creating the Professional Development Academy.

Internships can provide students with valuable professional skills but also a professional network, which can be even more valuable upon graduation.

Dominican University, a Hispanic-serving institution with 64% of students identifying as Latinx and located just outside of Chicago, launched its successful career development program in its Brennan School of Business in fall 2017.

To prepare students for their transition to the workforce, career centers have to account for the standards of professionalism shifting over the past several years.

A new $1 million gift supporting career development at William & Mary will triple the number of students annually who can receive university funding for unpaid and underpaid internships.

The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) is a public Research 1 university with 52,000 students and 18 colleges and schools, including medical and law schools. Like many large universities, UT Austin has a highly distributed model of 15 career centers within schools, and each area operates independently.

During the pandemic in 2020, LaGuardia Community College—a public community college that is part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system—inaugurated a new president, who is an advocate for workforce development as well as for internships. In addition, the chancellor for CUNY established career services as one of his priorities.

A grant from the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) helped to move career services to a position of more prominence at Tougaloo College and embed career readiness in the school’s curriculum.

Career services at Michigan State University (MSU) is a centralized/hybrid organization of offices and is well-known for its Career Services Network, which is composed of career services professionals strategically located in central and college-based offices.

The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Engineering Job & Internship Fair Tours were created to engage more first- and second-year students in job fairs and to reduce barriers to attendance.

College graduates in their early professional careers report significant mental health issues and view their jobs as a contributing factor. How can employers and colleges provide support?

In terms of their career interests and goals, members of Generation Z have an increased appetite for and awareness of entrepreneurship.

Career services needs to be strategically positioned on campus to provide the vision, guidance, and relationships to demonstrate its importance and value and to maximize student outcomes.

Soon after Mark Peltz was hired as the associate dean and director of career development at Grinnell College, it began a process of institutional elevation and prioritization of career services.

Over the past 10 years, there has been a clear shift away from housing the career center in student affairs.

Schools that conduct an annual FDS to capture information on how their new college graduates fare following graduation can benefit their own institutions and demonstrate the value of higher education.