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.

The American Heart Association’s approach to its internship program is to create intentionally designed experiences rather than a collection of activities.

For decades, one of the pervasive arguments in college recruiting has been the effectiveness of high-tech versus high-touch practices. According to research conducted by Mary Scott, that argument persists with the integration of AI into college recruiting.

Internship programs are about more than just getting quality hires in the door: Retention metrics reported in NACE’s 2026 Internship & Co-op Report demonstrate the long-term ROI of having a program.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the workplace, but one of its most important implications remains unclear: What does AI mean for early-career jobs?

Career fairs have a role in a student's career journey, but instead of being a focus, they are best used as part of a broader, more innovative ecosystem that prioritizes skills and relationships.

Employers are going into the classroom to share expertise and establish relationships with students and faculty, according to results of NACE’s 2026 Internship & Co-op survey.

Employers are increasingly reporting attempts by fake candidates to obtain jobs—and gain access to the organization’s systems and properties—for unlawful purposes.

Employers expect to increase new college graduate hiring from the Class of 2026 by 5.6%, a projection driven upward by the more than one-third of respondents reporting plans to bring in additional hires, according to results of NACE’s Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update.

When reviewing the resumes of Class of 2026 candidates for entry-level positions, employers are seeking graduates who provide evidence of polished teamwork, problem-solving, and communication skills, according to results of NACE’s Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update survey.

Approximately one-half of employers responding to NACE’s 2026 Internship & Co-op Survey report that they provide financial relocation assistance to interns, a benefit that they say also boosts their experiential education programs.

Key metrics for internship programs—offer, acceptance, and conversion rates—all increased among 2024-25 interns compared to 2023-24 interns.

Employers expect to bring in 3.9% more interns in 2025-26 compared with 2024-25, according to NACE’s 2026 Internship & Co-op Report.

Jeff Crume, an adjunct professor of cybersecurity who has spent more than four decades in the IT industry, provides insight into the ways companies and college students are adapting to AI’s impact on the entry-level workforce.

Because Insperity has long-used behavioral-based interviewing to identify candidates’ qualities and experience, the transition to more skills-based hiring has been a relatively smooth one.

For many, joining the workforce can be an opaque process with little insight from employers, but by embracing more transparency, career centers and employers can work together to illuminate this journey.

Students hoping to demonstrate their skills during a skills-based hiring process should share examples and situations when they used their skills to solve problems, according to employers responding to NACE’s Job Outlook 2026 survey.

An important consideration for employers offering paid internships—an undertaking that should be performed annually—is setting intern salaries.

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.

In an effort to strengthen retention and quality of hire, Kiewit Corporation refined its college hiring strategy to place greater emphasis on career readiness skills.

Williams, a Fortune 500 energy company, bases its college recruiting and early career hiring on NACE’s Career Readiness Competencies, particularly communication, professionalism and critical thinking.

As we enter the new school and recruiting season, NACE is conducting a Fall Quick Poll. The focus of our poll is on two important issues– the impact the end of Affirmative Action is having on our work and state of unpaid internships.

Employers looking to ensure they have a robust pool of college candidates consider several factors when selecting the schools at which they recruit.

When it comes to offering experiences that interns find beneficial, what are employers doing well and what can they do better? According to respondents to NACE’s 2025 Student Survey, interns valued their colleagues who were friendly and helpful and made the internship a good experience.

Among employers participating in NACE’s Job Outlook 2026 survey, 70% report using skill-based hiring, up from 65% last year. Furthermore, among this year’s employers, 71% use this approach at least half of the time.

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

Employers looking to maximize their campus recruiting efforts should establish and grow relationships with career services. There are several key steps they can take to do so.

Students embrace hands-on skills development through experiential learning and report that employers are helping them develop key skills they need as they prepare for the workplace.

In 2024, Protiviti created a PowerBI dashboard to holistically evaluate the performance of more than 300 of its interns and share the data with leadership teams to use when considering full-time offers.

Reflecting an uncertain job market for college graduates, employers are projecting just a 1.6% increase in hiring for the Class of 2026 when compared to the Class of 2025.

Since the creation of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s Buckeye Pathways Summer Internship program five years ago, career readiness has been a central priority.

Launched in 2024, “V Teamer for a Day” is an in-person experience at several key Verizon hub locations designed to immerse potential interns in the company’s culture and develop a sense of belonging.

Students appear to be unfamiliar with the concept of skills-based hiring, despite being asked to demonstrate their skills and working to develop them, according to results of NACE’s 2025 Student Survey.

In response to a national and extensive industry workforce shortage, Garver’s recruitment team has crafted a dedicated university recruiting program that ultimately serves as a pipeline for eventual full-time employees.

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.

Although the Class of 2025 faced a tough job market, they responded in ways that suggest they were aware of the challenges they were facing. A number of results from NACE’s 2025 Student Survey support this.

Salas O’Brien clears common hurdles when trying to keep interns engaged during the academic year, such as being passive and assuming students will remember their internship experience without ongoing connection.

There are many strategies employers can use to maintain—and even strengthen—ties with their interns when they return to campus and throughout the academic year.

The Maximus Summer Internship Program is a mission-driven talent pipeline that advances workforce leadership and strategically engages with students to achieve excellent outcomes.

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 employer winner of the 2025 NACE Technology Excellence Award, GM Financial's intern social media strategy tells the authentic story of the firm’s intern experience and grows its pipeline of students for internships and early career opportunities.

The small employer winner of the 2025 NACE Recruiting Excellence Award, heritage Moss Adams’ (now Baker Tilly) Summer Internship Experience is designed to build a strong pipeline of skilled career professionals who will elevate the profession and the firm.

In positive news for the Class of 2026, nearly 87% of employers responding to NACE’s Job Outlook 2025 Spring Update survey said their organization will be actively recruiting for both full-time and internship positions in fall of 2025.

There has been much discussion about whether a degree is necessary for every job. The answer is “no.” About half of employers responding to NACE’s Job Outlook 2025 Spring Update survey said their organization has positions that are flexible in terms of degree.

Research conducted by Mary Scott shows candidates’ increasing “lack of enthusiasm” about employer use of AI as a screening tool.

What do Class of 2025 college graduates want most in a job? According to NACE’s annual student survey, they are looking for stability. They also would like a healthy workplace culture and friendly coworkers.

Almost two-thirds of employers responding to NACE’s Job Outlook 2025 Spring Update survey reported using skills-based hiring to help them identify candidates with potential.

The traditional office visit has evolved into an opportunity for an organization to give job candidates a glimpse into its culture and a vision for the candidates’ career there.

Although overall hiring projections are up just 0.6% from last year, nearly 90% of employers anticipate increasing or maintaining hiring for the college Class of 2025, according to NACE’s Job Outlook 2025 Spring Update.

NACE surveyed early career talent—those who graduated in 2021, 2022, and 2023—to determine if (and how) experiential learning impacted their careers once they had graduated and landed in their first job. The results showed that those who took part in experiential learning while in college had higher rates of career satisfaction and a higher average salary than those who did not engage in experiential learning.

Moving to skills-based hiring opens opportunity for a broader demographic of students to access positions where they otherwise would not meet the qualifications. Many employers include skills development in their internship programs to enhance their interns’ career readiness and bolster conversion.

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.

To persist toward successful conversion of interns, organizations must not view engagement as a 10-week summer pursuit. Instead, engagement must gain momentum through recruiting and pre-internship, accelerate during the internship itself, and be maintained after interns return to campus.

Understanding the experiences, preferences, and goals of the early career Gen Z professional will help employers craft meaningful experiences that will ultimately enhance productivity and retention, while career centers will be able to better guide their students.

The goal for employers should be to keep autistic employees from “hire to retire,” which is the ability to sustain these employees by providing them with the support they need to build their career in an organization.

By measuring employment brand strength, companies can identify areas to improve their employer brand, pinpoint strengths to leverage, and assess the effectiveness of their recruitment strategies, ultimately aiming to attract the best candidates and reduce hiring costs.

When recruiting and hiring students with autism, it’s important for employers to train hiring managers so they understand how the hiring process might look different and adjust their criteria on how they evaluate candidates.

Over the past five years—and maybe because they weathered the pandemic and got a giant taste of how quickly things can change—new grads’ wish list has largely reflected one thing: their desire for security.

When students responding to NACE’s 2024 Student Survey were asked to identify the obstacles preventing them from participating in internships, their responses revealed they attributed their decision to a lack of time, concerns over pay, and scant opportunities.

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.

There are several factors linked to the decision to convert for Class of 2024 graduating seniors, according to results of NACE’s 2024 Student Survey.

There is a clear and persistent disconnect between how students and employers perceive students’ development of the competencies they need to be career ready as they enter the workforce.

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.

Hyster-Yale Materials Handling is developing a pre-onboarding program to engage and build excitement among its interns prior to their start date next summer.

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.

Close to two-thirds of employers responding to the Job Outlook 2025 survey reported that they use skills-based hiring practices for new entry-level hires, and more than half use these practices always or most of the time in their hiring process.

Hiring for the college Class of 2025 is expected to increase 7.3% over hiring for the Class of 2024, according to NACE’s Job Outlook 2025 survey.

Disney provides resources to the College Fund to administer the latter’s scholarship program, called the Future Native Storytellers Program. Recently, a smaller group of program scholars was selected to receive additional enhancements to increase the awareness of opportunities at Disney for Native students.

This past summer, Arup expanded its career readiness programming for summer interns by working with its internal learning and development team to implement a series of competency-focused workshops.

Global Atlantic Financial Group, the small employer winner of the 2024 NACE Recruiting Excellence Award, addressed a pressing need for increased diversity and innovation and a robust talent pipeline.

NACE is conducting a quick poll and would like your input to assess ways that campus recruiting may be impacted. Last spring, we saw increased campus protests and lockdowns in response to student activism. As we prepare for the fall semester and campus recruiting, there is a potential for increased campus unrest in response to global and national events (i.e. Presidential election, war in Middle East). This Quick Poll is intended to get an overall understanding of the ways university recruiters and campus career centers are preparing for possible campus unrest related to the recruiting process.

The employer winner of the 2024 NACE Technology Excellence Award, Freese and Nichols implemented talent acquisition platform Yello and modified its roles and processes related to its on-campus career fair strategy to significantly increase its university hiring.

Providing a candidate experience that meets—or better yet, exceeds—students’ expectations is the “secret sauce” that drives successful results.

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.

Recruiters who foster a sense of belonging among potential hires have a positive impact on the candidate’s view of the organization.

Consultant Katie Donovan offers tips for employers to eliminate the main causes of pay inequity for women, including that women are underpaid doing the same jobs as men and are underrepresented in leadership roles.

Hourly wages for interns have kept pace with inflation, signaling the value of these programs to employers.

Although new college graduates looking to enter the workforce and employers hiring these graduates agree on which competencies are most important for job candidates to hone, their perception of student proficiency in them differs.

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.

To foster a truly diverse and inclusive workplace, employers should expand their DEI efforts to encompass what is increasingly being referred to as DEIA—or diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

Mary Scott compared data from 2016 to that from 2022 to gauge students’ assessment that an employer “made it seem as though they were interested in me.” What she found was astonishing.

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.

The large-employer winner of the 2023 NACE Award for Recruiting Excellence, DISH’s “Recruit Once, Hire Twice” college recruiting process brings in top interns and works to convert them into full-time hires.

Among the key information recruiters need to know to successfully navigate their careers is to stay informed and value relationships.

Research conducted by NACE and The Center for the Study of HBCUs underscores how important it is for companies to conduct audits to assess gaps and inequities in their recruiting efforts.

Through its Experiential Learning Platform™, Saxbys builds individualized academic partnerships to open cafes that provide exceptional paid experiential learning opportunities for students.

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.

After witnessing the impact that the pandemic had on early undergraduate students from underrepresented groups in the tech industry, IBM scaled up its early talent ID program.

Two critical factors for limiting bias in AI systems are building diverse AI teams and implementing an enterprise-wide trustworthy AI framework.

Developed by the NACE Tribal Colleges & Universities Affinity Group, this resources includes insights to consider in engaging Native American students and provides links to a variety of Native American organizations.

New graduates and their potential employers can agree on which skills are most important for job candidates, but differ on how proficient new graduates are in those abilities.