Ja’Net Glover:
I think on our, as we’re thinking about ourselves as recruiting career services professionals, so being intentional about how to make sure, and I know I tell employers this as well, how do you make sure that your job posting or those experiences attract the people that you want right. Or repel them. So how do you make sure that they see in, in that job posting and on your website the, the alignment with values and what’s key and important early on, and you say that up front so that they can weed themselves out from conversations and points of engagement.

Keith Edwards:
Well, we usually do these podcast recordings over zoom. So I’m used to being able to see my screen and everybody right in front of me, but now I have to look down. So I’m very unsettled, but I’m really glad to be here with you. In person Student Affairs NOW is a podcast premier podcast. For student affairs professionals, we just crossed a hundred episodes, 20,000 YouTube views. And 50,000 downloads. Don’t tell them, because they’ll get nervous and we don’t want them but they’ll be fine. So I want to welcome you. My name’s Keith Edwards. I’m one of the five hosts of Student Affairs NOW. And I’m delighted to be able to be here to host this conversation with our two great guests in partnership with Simplicity. As I mentioned, Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast for student affairs and higher education.

Keith Edwards:
We release new episodes. Every Wednesday, it’s free. You can sign up for a newsletter. All of that stuff is available there, lots of different topics. And I’m excited to add this conversation today to that. Today’s episode which we’re recording we’ll share out later is sponsored by simplicity. A true partner, Simplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. And today we’re here to focus about how career centers can reconnect. That’s the big word, reconnect with students with employers and connect, reconnect students and employers together. Couple things I want to mention, as I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him, his and I’m a speaker consultant and coach. And you can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. I want to begin by acknowledging that the Portland Metro area rests on traditional village sites of the and many other tribes who have made their homes along the, what we now call the Columbia river for the past 11,000 years. I’m really glad to both of you being here. We got to chance to talk a little bit ahead of time. We have some questions. But I think first we should hear just a little bit from each of you about you beyond just your name and information. Ja’Net, we’re going to start with you. So tell folks a little bit more about you.

Ja’Net Glover:
Great. So my name is Ja’Net Glover and I have the honor of serving as the senior director for career services at the University of Florida. University of Florida is a flagship institution in the state of Florida. So we’re their home of the Florida Gators. If you’re familiar with that, we have 56,000 students. My office is the centralized and comprehensive career services operation in our state. So we support students, alumni, faculty, and staff, and employers, to be able to support our efforts. So I get to run that the center for career services to help students, whether they’re choosing or changing their major or trying to figure out how they’re prepared for the world of work. I have 33 full-time staff and about 50 part-time staff. The other part of my job is to bring the university community together around career development. So being able to have these conversations at an institutional level, as well as the state, as we think about how do we prepare students for the world of work

Keith Edwards:
And Susan, you have a brand new title that’s two weeks old. So let’s see if we can get this right.

Susan Bauer:
I do have a brand new title. So I’m Susan Bauer, my pronouns are she her hers. And I’m the assistant vice president and executive director for the Shevet Glaubach center for career strategy and professional development. That’s

Keith Edwards:
A big business card. right. Congrat

Susan Bauer:
Thanks. We’ve kind of always been the career center, but then when you have a family that, you know, endows the university with $10 million, you get to change the name of your center and do a lot of really neat things. So I have a team of, of 14 people. We have a really robust, you know, employer relations side. We just started a marketing and data part of our department. And then we have the career advising side. Yeshiva University is in New York city and in Jerusalem and Israel in New York we have one campus in Midtown, very close to the empire state building that’s the women’s campus. And then the men’s campus is up in Washington Heights, which is a little bit past Yankee stadium trying to give landmarks that everyone’s familiar with. But yes, the, the men and the women, they do study separately.

Susan Bauer:
You know, it is the, the flagship Jewish university in the world. It’s modern, Orthodox, it’s very religious. Our students spend their freshman year in Israel and then they come back and they spend their sophomore junior year and senior year in New York. We have three undergraduate colleges, five graduate schools, but a total population of like 3,400 . So it’s, it’s very, very small, but we have a very large staff and talking to Ja’Net, you know but our students are used to like a very high touch environment. They all go to private schools growing up very small class size very insular communities. So our services really go beyond just the, the, the career department, you know, we’re really there for them in so many aspects of their life. And I love it.

Keith Edwards:
It’s great. well, I’m so glad to be in conversation with the both of you different perspectives, very different institutions, very different student population, Florida, New York Jerusalem. We’re here in Portland, I’m from Minneapolis. We’re sort of bringing all sorts of things here together. So I have some questions, some of you submitted some questions we’re going to try and work some of those in. And then we we’ll see where this takes us. So the, the first thing we wanted to do Susan is begin with you by asking you what is really exciting for you about reconnecting with students. We’ve been through not just COVID and not just social distancing and not just masking but other events in news and social life and antisemitism, which I’m sure affects your student population shootings and Uvalde Texas are sort of salient now by the time others see this there’ll be other things. So , as you’re looking at reconnecting students what is really exciting for you as we move into this

Susan Bauer:
I’m a strategist at heart. So this is really an opportunity to kind of redefine the way that we do things to ask for forgiveness instead of permission. , it’s really a whole new playing field and you can take a lot of risk. We, we’re very nimble. We’re a private institution, so we can really experiment with different things. We collect a ton of data and we can be very reactive to what the employers want, what the students want. You try something one way. It works. You do more, you try something, it doesn’t work, you know, you do less we’ve come up with some really, I mean, of course technology, that’s like, you know, a no brainer. But we, we redeveloped our whole career advising system to be community based completely online to bring the faculty into career advising like things that you could never bring the faculty into a tech based career advising situation.

Susan Bauer:
But now that all the faculty know how to use your learning management system, it works. It works a lot better. So like we developed, we used canvas, we developed a canvas course that all students are automatically enrolled in as are the faculty, so we can partner together. And in that environment, that’s been really exciting. Having faculty buy in is amazing. As those of you know, who work in career centers and services. But I think the most exciting thing is what we’re learning from the students. You know, it’s like at first it’s like, let’s do this, let’s do this. But it’s like, well, do they really want that? , you know, so we made so many decisions initially, oh, let’s do this. This’ll be great. Everyone wants to come back. Everyone wants to be in the room together. And it’s like, well, why don’t we ask them what they want? You know, oh, employers want to come back to campus. And it’s like, well, recruiting teams are so lean and they became even more so. so who’s coming back to campus. Right. And you know, if you have alumni employers, they may want to come back to campus. If you have like corporate non alumni employers and recruiters, they don’t want to come to campus. So how are you accommodating all these different things? It’s just trial and error. It’s like a really creative time.

Keith Edwards:
Well, and it, and it, time to innovate. Yeah. I got that line. You had about asking for forgiveness rather, and permission means you get to try things that not be so tied to getting it all figured out and have it perfect and make sure it succeeds and then launch it, but try some things learn really quick. Right. it’s more of a Silicon valley way of doing things than a traditional launch.

Susan Bauer:
I was just going to say that yeah, 100%. And I mean, the Israelis are known for innovation right. And entrepreneurship. So that’s just kind of like our parallel for everything. We’re so entrepreneurial, we’re going to try this a new way and you know, it goes really far.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. So try those new ideas and then learn, you’ve mentioned data driven, learn as quickly as you can, this work, this didn’t work. And I also, I hear from many others beyond career centers that the pattern that you sort of noticed is that students really wanted to come back. They really wanted to be in person. They all wanted to be in the room together, and then they were like, but it’s also kind of awesome to do this for my room. yes. And not have to commute and not to do this. So there’s sort of a swing. Yes. And then swing back. And I still think we’re trying to figure out where that pendulum is.

Susan Bauer:
Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

Keith Edwards:
Ja’Net what’s what are you finding? That’s exciting about reconnecting students for that career readiness and that early career placement?

Ja’Net Glover:
Yeah. I think just like Susan this, the excitement to keep our mission and vision at the forefront of what we do. So we didn’t get into this work because of the paycheck and our ability to be able to engage in that way. But it’s the, our efforts to have an impact right. On our campuses on the students and their experiences on the world of work and how we do that and an intentional way. So really being excited to keep that vision and mission at the forefront of what we do, but also this engagement with the university community. What we saw on our campus is that alumni and faculty and staff and parents and family members really were invested in our work. And so they were stakeholders, but contributors and partners to make sure that their company was recruiting on our campus.

Ja’Net Glover:
We had alumni who wanted to be present in virtual spaces with our students to make sure they understood what it meant to be a student at our institution and at our university. So they were willing to mentor students. They were willing to be what we call career consultants. So having conversations with students about professions and industries and degrees, that they would have to make sure those students weren’t left out. And they didn’t miss out on opportunities to be able to engage, even though they couldn’t be present on our campus for some, and for others, they missed out on some of those university traditions early on. So really having that level of engagement with our community to be able to support and our employers who did the same, who wanted to figure out on our campus, how could they connect with their campus? How could they connect with students? If they couldn’t come on campus, what could they do and how technology supported them to be able to do that. So that excites me the connections that we’ve made, but the opportunities to leverage those connections as we think about the future and how do we innovate and take it to the next level.

Keith Edwards:
I’m wondering if you’re seeing both of you, if you’re seeing with zoom and virtual and having done all of this, that there’s more opportunity to integrate that in this, in going forward, where maybe alumni who live in LA , well, I’ll come and do this thing. I’m not going to fly, but I can come and zoom in. And I, so the ability for people to be there, or even if they live near the campus, , well, I’ll do an eight o’clock thing from home. right. I can have dinner with my family and come home from work and be able to do this. So I’m wondering if that is open up possibilities and then also asynchronous where employers might be able to record something and share it, and students can watch it whenever they want to watch it or review it whenever they want. Are you seeing some of those things?

Ja’Net Glover:
Absolutely. during this two year COVID in and out experience, we’ve had over 450 alumni who have signed up to be career consultants. So this idea of being able to give back to the university, seeing themselves in the work that we do, but also wanting to make sure that our student population is not left behind because that’s important and it’s dedicated to their efforts and, and intention around it. We’ve also integrated, as you talked about the technology, I think you shared with students wanting the ability, one of you did, about students wanting the ability to be able to stay in their room for some activity, but then being in person for others. And we’ve looked at the data and, you know, for some exploratory activities, students are fine with doing that online and with technology, but when they’re really wanting to have a meaningful conversation with a career services staff person about what matters to them and how to make sure that their values are aligning with career and making these hard decisions about their career decisions and, and choosing and changing a major, or figuring out a job that would be better aligned with their values, they want to talk to somebody and they want to do that in person.

Ja’Net Glover:
Yeah. And so really for our office, thinking about the services that we offer, where technology can help us, but also making sure that you have those connection points for students to gauge in person.

Keith Edwards:
Yeah. I can’t tell you how many career counselors I’ve had coming into residence halls at eight, nine and 10 o’clock at night for multiple weeks on end to try and do that first resume workshop with first year or second year students and then three students are there and then they gotta do another one. And now ability to really do that really well in a 30 minute or less video that then students can watch whenever rewatch, they can send it to their parents. Yeah. I mean, I think there’s just some real utility to maximizing everybody’s time, energy, and effort.

Susan Bauer:
there are a few things that each one of you mentioned in the past few minutes that I wanted to touch upon. So for us, we talk about values, right? and what’s important to the students. So our students are very tied to Israel and if they could, they would do their experiential learning there, which is a little bit prohibitive with the time difference and just the amount of miles right. In between the two institutions. So what happened was we had alumni right. When you, when you graduate university and you move to Israel, it’s called making Aliah we’ve had thousands of alumni move to Israel. So what really happened was we had the students in the dorm room who, before the pandemic wanted to be in person doing an internship in New York in the same time zone.

Susan Bauer:
Whereas that very first summer we created the summer of opportunity. And we had like over 80, within like a week, we had over 80 alumni come to the table in Israel to offer remote opportunities. And, and not just with Israel, you know, students who might not interview for a job that was outside of the tri-state or interview for a job you know, different time zone, whatever it is, the pandemic enabled them to have an internship in Los Angeles to have an internship in Chicago to have an internship in Miami. So now what we’re seeing is super exciting because now the students are like, oh, well, you know, I saw this position for Deloitte and it’s in Texas and I’m like, you’d go to Texas. Oh yeah. My friend did an internship remotely last summer and had the best experience. So that’s been really, really exciting for us. So the students kind of, you know, crossed these bridges into these areas where they never would’ve gone before and they’re loving it

Keith Edwards:
Well. And they might also find they don’t have to move to Texas, right. Where you work and where you live might be two separate things in some sectors. Well, we’ve talked about reconnecting with students, Ja’Net, how are we reconnecting with employers? What are the challenges there reconnecting with employers? How are we doing that differently and reconnecting them with students

Ja’Net Glover:
With employers? I think one of the things that I think about with a question is the, just a reminder of how essential and centric the relationship is that career services has with employers and bringing that relationship and that intention for the relationship back to the forefront. So again, being mission and purpose driven we are in the relationship business in career services as career services professionals. And so our ability to focus on having good relationships on our campus, but also having good relationships with industry partners is key and essential to what we do. So the pandemic is created an opportunity for us to one, continue to focus in on those relationships with those companies who continue to be on our campus ongoing, but also being knowledgeable and aware that many of those companies are having in experiencing their own forms of turnover. So they’re getting new recruiters that are on their campuses, and they’re getting new folks who are now charged with their college campus recruiting portfolio.

Ja’Net Glover:
And for a short time period, they’re going to support what’s written in the, in the notes for from that past recruiter, right? Who said, this is the school I need to be. But at some point they’re going to say, do I have a relationship on that campus? Do I see the value add that that institution is bringing and how are they connecting and, and listening to my needs and being intentional about that work. So the pandemic has allowed us at UF to really focus in on the employers who’ve been tried and true and making sure that we’re listening to their needs and being intentional about what we do, but also seeking out other companies that our students have an interest in working in, but also the new and innovative organizations that are coming out that maybe in the past, we might not have given attention and effort towards because that’s important for our students. And that’s important for the economy and going back to mission and vision driven about the work that we do. so keeping relationships at the forefront being nimble, as you talked about yeah. Of being able to reinvent and reimagine services and levels and points of engagement for our campus. And never saying that, no, there’s not something that we can’t do. There might be a different way that we might have to introduce this to our campus, but being open

Susan Bauer:
I think excuse me, coming from a small school, you know, some of you may work at a smaller institution. That’s not as well known, and you’re trying to make those inroads with employers. Oh, well, we have our core schools that we recruit from. We go to their campus and, and we brand there. And then we have our core virtual schools that we work with. And I’m like, well, if you’re not a core in person school, and you’re not a core virtual school, how is anyone else getting a job at your company? Oh, they just apply through the website. So that has all shifted. because the going on campus went away. so recruiters, their, their units, their departments became very, very lean. Right. And now what we’re finding is we’re not hearing the core school anymore. We’re hearing we have a posting and we’ll give you a unique code for your students.

Susan Bauer:
We’re not coming to your campus, but it’s not applying into the Bermuda triangle either. And we’ve had more employers coming to us since, since the pandemic, which has been really, really amazing. We have a huge alumni population, a very we’re blessed with a very successful alumni population. You also mentioned , you know, the alumni really coming to the table now. So we are relying on them more than ever before to make those inroads too, because before the alumni would go to their HR partner, I know we have a lot of people here from your school, but there’s still not a core school. and now it’s wow. We do have 20 people here from your school. Let’s recruit there. because we don’t have to go there. It doesn’t cost us anything. So our students are getting more and more opportunity than, than ever before post pandemic are. I hate this word. And after I say it, we’re going to pretend, I never said it, but our placement rate. Yeah. has it’s higher the past two years than ever before.

Keith Edwards:
and we’re getting a variety of place, right. So we can bring in more employers from broader places, right. Students are maybe willing to go to more places than they were before. We had a question from one of our audience members beforehand that we were chatting about earlier and is a bit of a stumper. So here we go. Someone wanted to know, what are the strategies for connecting with employers that are not working? Are there any strategies to connect with employers that you’re seeing failing and the innovation and trying that that’s not working?

Ja’Net Glover:
I think one piece the listening to the statement that you just shared. And, I know it was a stumper, I was like, what are, what are the things that are not working? Because a strategy that might not work for one company might work for another. So for me, that strategy doesn’t go off the table. It, it might, you know, go in the drawer and it’s like, okay, this doesn’t work for Deloitte, but it might work for PWC. So we don’t, we don’t leave that off. But the point of really taking advantage of, or leveraging this opportunity that we have to have, whether it’s alumni or some type of engagement with a company is a strategy. That’s something that we’ve been using that has been helpful. So I am working with our IT department, our purchasing department on our campus, looking at our graduation survey data about where our students are going after graduation and being able to use that data and information to inform our decisions about what types of companies or what particular companies that we might go after for recruitment, and then connecting the dots, really telling the organization why you were selected, why at the University of Florida, we’re seeking you for an entity to be able to hire our students, because you, you know, you, we have a contract with you, Pepsi, you know, on our campus.

Ja’Net Glover:
And so that is the only software, not software. What is it called? Drink, bottling company that we can use on our cups, whatever yeah. That we could, that we can use on our campus. And for that reason, this is the reason why that you should be hiring students at the University of Florida. And so really being able to partner with other entities on our campus, that’s helped. I will tell you my senior leader for purchasing has been open to add that component into contracts, to make sure that they’re hiring our students for internships and jobs, and as an expectation for them to do that. So if you haven’t asked that question, that’s an opportunity to do that as well. Also say your IT department, the senior leader for it, for technology is willing, has been willing to be able to add that component in, to talk about if you’re doing business at the university, you should also be hiring our students and taking advantage of that as well. So I think with the strategies, one might not work with a particular company organization, but keeping those ideas in the drawer and trying to figure out which one might work and bringing them out as needed.

Susan Bauer:
We had a few bombs. Good.

Ja’Net Glover:
Yeah. Here we go.

Susan Bauer:
Yeah. Yep. We definitely had some misses. So before the pandemic, you had fairs, right. You’d have your general annual fair for all majors. And then maybe you had a fair for a certain graduate school or a liberal arts fair or a business fair. Right. So all of a sudden, all of that’s gone, right? So the employers don’t know how to recruit in a virtual environment. I mean, Simplicity has a platform, a million different platforms popped up to do virtual fairs, so are bombs. Okay. the thing that was really good about this was that it needed to happen. And I think some of you will agree the career fair needs to go away. It just, it, it, it, it does that. Everybody coming, all the employers in the room, everybody you need to do targeted recruiting events you know, you need to have you, don’t call them fairs.

Susan Bauer:
You call them meet and greets, networking, socials, you call them different things. And, and more people come to the table because there’s not that hiring pressure. You know? So we started doing everything virtually and for some disciplines that worked really, really well, like our virtual tech fair. Right? Really well, lots of employers, everybody on board, everything’s sinking working really well. The virtual nonprofit fair, not so much, not so much. It was a tech nightmare on the employer side, on the student side, literally we came to the decision that, okay, we’re going to have a fair for this, and we’re even going to call it a fair. This is one area where you always just have to call it a fair . But you know, we, we had, we never had a unique event for real estate before. Right. And we have a ton of alumni in real estate and we thought, great, we’re going to do this virtual real estate event.

Susan Bauer:
The feedback was awful. What do you do in real estate? You shake hands, you make deals, right. You make eye contact and you do all the lingo and the language in, in a virtual environment. There’s no connection. Right. Similar with marketing. So now we know what needs to be in person, what needs to be virtual just because of the nature of it. Like with tech, we’ll always do it virtual because it’s a thing, you know and, and as we, we build upon this model, you know, we have a community model now, so we’re doing different recruiting socials and, and things like that for each different community. We’re learning what needs to be in person, what needs to be virtual. And then we’re also building a space where we can do both at the same time, a unique, dedicated space because I was able to get that $10 million so we can have

Susan Bauer:
So good. We can have a space where we can have a certain amount of employers in person for students to come and meet with, but you also have these individualized rooms where you can do all the virtual, where the employer from LA or Israel, or wherever can do 15 minute sessions, and the students can have both

Keith Edwards:
Great. There’s some key terms that are coming up here. I’ve heard both of you focus on innovation. I’ve heard both of you focus on purpose, right. When we don’t know our purpose, then we can’t improvise when things don’t go as planned. And when do things go as planned engagement relationships, and then also data informed. So those are some themes that I’m hearing. I’d love to shift us to what are the challenges and opportunities you see going forward, both when working with employers and with working with students Susan, I think we’re going to start with you.

Susan Bauer:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So something that is really big and like in my department, and I’m sure with a lot of you just because of the nature of what we do, the relationships you have with your team, right? So you’re in person before the pandemic, you’re in person you’re doing kumbayas, you’re going hatchet throwing or whatever you’re doing. You’re doing all these like team building things.

Keith Edwards:
So I would’ve bet the hatchet throwing. Would’ve been Florida, not

Keith Edwards:
That’s just me, but okay.

Susan Bauer:
We have some really fun alumni so, you know, it was, it was all about like community within our department, within our broader alumni community culture work culture. So then you go into the pandemic and we all start to separate and we had two new hires start within two weeks of the pandemic so they never experienced us. right. So now there’s no us, they’re kind of detached. They don’t get our sense of humor. they don’t get the alumni vibe, you know, they, they never had that. And then you’re apart for 16 months. Right. And then people start realizing, wait a minute, I can get a remote gig anywhere. I want work from home all the time. Like I don’t need to go back to campus. So then you have shifts in your team and then you have all these openings.

Susan Bauer:
Right? How do you bring people in? I have openings. Now, if anyone’s interested, you contact me. We both do. Alright. We both do, we’ll have a booth outside for that’s. Right. but how do you develop your team? Redevelop your team, reinvigorate your team to be mission driven and, and to, and to learn about the institution and why students attend this institution. Is it because it’s public? Is it because it’s religious? Is it because it’s first generation whatever the reason is, I feel now the recruiting conversations for the positions, I’m trying to feel well, what’s the remote policy and it’s like, well, how much do you know about our, our values and our mission here at Yeshiva university? Wait, I heard you could work from home four days, wait, and it’s just, it’s lost. So those relationships and everything I just described that transcends employers feel our values, employers like the continuity, an employer, especially a recruiter, you know, they don’t want a different person all the time.

Susan Bauer:
Reinventing the message who has the crib notes, who like . So that that’s really something that we’re struggling with right now is how do we fill our open roles? How do we keep that sense of community? How do you hire people that are mission driven that aren’t just looking for? You know, how many remote days, or can I get my graduate degree here for free? If I come here it’s, it’s totally changed the landscape. It’s we want to keep the warmth and, and a warmth and, and the passion and the love for what we do. And I think when we’re all together doing that, the employers feel, the students feel it, our team feels it and now it’s, it’s very, very different. It’s more trans not totally transient , but but, but yeah, that’s the challenge and I think everyone’s feeling it

Ja’Net Glover:
yeah. I would say in similar, along the same lines, the, the competing priorities, right? So when you’re talking about for students for that matter, like how do we try to get their attention about our services and resources on our campus and for the employers, they want us to have the students’ attention, but also we want the employer’s attention to recruit on our campus. and to make sure we’re one of those core schools, regardless if it’s in person or virtual, we just want to be a part of the, the team of select schools that employers will come on. But then also, even in our career centers, as we think about our staff and, and our, our offices and operations, I mean, we are being pulled in so many different avenues to focus on how do we engage students? How do we help the campus community?

Ja’Net Glover:
How do we support employers? If you’re a state public institution, how do you support your governor and the state economy and expectations around that? , if you’re a private institution, you have your donors to be able to support and how do you cater to their, their needs and being intentional in that work that I think creates an opportunity for us to be able to go back for me, the mission driven, right? The, the impact that we can make and being intentional about what we decide to focus on, to be able to support our campus community and what we’re trying to do. And that’s aiding our students to be able to see that as well. Right? So helping our students, we have a mental health concerns on our campuses, right? When we’re thinking about our students and how they engage. So helping our students to see the agency that they have, right.

Ja’Net Glover:
And their decision their intentional decision to make a choice, to take action, to apply for a job or an internship experience to participate and get involved in some sort of activity or effort, or to meet with one of our staff to help them in their career development, that they have that ability and effort to do it. I think on our, as we’re thinking about ourselves as recruiting career services professionals, so being intentional about how to make sure, and I know I tell employers this as well, how do you make sure that your job posting or those experiences attract the people that you want right. Or repel them. So how do you make sure that they see in, in that job posting and on your website the, the alignment with values and what’s key and important early on, and you say that up front so that they can weed themselves out from conversations and points of engagement. And I know I’ve said to my team, and, and we live that I am not afraid to keep a job posted and keep it open. So we just won’t hire anybody because it has too much of an impact. It really does. Right. It changes the culture. Yeah. It changes the work and the people. And you want to be working alongside of colleagues and partners who, who aligned with purpose, vision, and values.

Susan Bauer:
Something else. It’s, you know, people work in accounting maybe because they love numbers and they’re good with spreadsheets, right? Yeah. So people work in, in career services because they really want to help students succeed. And sometimes what I’m finding now is that you have to sacrifice some of that because the pressure for enrollment , , you know, we’re admissions people now , , we’re like part-time admissions people. Yes. Like we have all of our post-graduation data visualized in Tableau. Now , on our website and I do trainings with admissions . So when they’re on the road and a parent says, well, if my daughter majors in this, how much money will she make and where will she work? They can go into Tableau and pull up all these different visualizations. And God forbid, if there’s an error or a mistake or something, and it’s not like 10 students were given misinformation, even if one prospect is given misinformation, you know, it’s so we have so much pressure right now.

Susan Bauer:
We’re we’re pillars. Yeah. Of our institutions, you know, it’s where, where is my student going to get a job? Where is my student going to, to be placed? And the parents are just like, in this, COVID in this post COVID, you know, they’re like all over the place and, and the admissions people are just like, go talk to Susan, go talk to the career center and then it’s like, yes, this is what we’re going to do for your student. because everything’s different now post pandemic, they want to engage. They come see us all the time. Like, no, they’re still the same kids, you know, but the, the, the pressure that we’re under yeah. To make the career center, the crown jewel of the institution, it’s hard. If some of those things don’t align with your own values right. , what you have to do

Keith Edwards:
well, and I think higher ed as a whole has sort of seated the argument that the purpose of this education is not lifelong learning. It’s a job placement on the day after graduation. Right. When we’ve seated that argument, that’s what people come expecting. Right. Right. And so how do we, how do we remind them that there’s a bigger purpose here and it’s not just the, the first job, but it’s also the seventh job. That’s right. I mean, how many of you are on I’m on my seventh career. Yeah. Right. I, I remember reading that and being told that in elementary school you have seven careers. I’m like jobs, there’s no careers. Yeah. And I was like, oh, but that is the way life is played out. I have a question from the audience here about the challenges which we, one we haven’t gotten to, but how do we ensure a unified, equitable experience for all students when some are being left out because of their own access, their own choices, their own limitations, and then the systemic ones that are in place. So yeah. How do we, how do we do that? How do we foster equity? When I think we see so much that the past 16 months, two, two years, two and a half years, whatever timeframe you want to say the folks that the world worked well for, it works better for, and the folks who struggled are struggling more, the haves and the have nots have gotten sort of greater. How do we foster a greater equity?

Ja’Net Glover:
Yeah. I heard a colleague say, and I’ve taken it under my belt to keep saying it. But that in career services we are and have been in the work of diversity equity inclusion from the beginning. So if anybody is working and focused in, on social justice work, that’s what we do in career services. So we’re really focused and intention intentional about making sure that all students on our campus. So whether it’s my campus or your campus, we’re looking at all students having a unique career experience and making sure that they have opportunities available to them regardless of their background. I think the pandemic has allowed for technology and for us to grow in our use of technology and digital tools to be able to help and engage students. But I have found in my team and I is that there’s more emphasis on work that we need to do to educate our students on how to use the tools and how to use them responsibly.

Ja’Net Glover:
So we can have these tools that create opportunities for access. But if our students don’t know how to use the tool to be able to support them as they’re, they’re sourcing and looking for opportunities, then they are set behind and this continuation processes continue to propel itself in that way. So I think our mission being, you know, continuing to be driven by that. And when we say all, we really truly mean all. And so Susan, we were talking about job postings on my campus. We don’t deny legitimate employers the opportunity to post jobs and experiences on our campus, even if we don’t like them. So that is related to genetically modified foods on our campus or experiences with marijuana and other substances. All of those things are open on our campus. They’re from a legitimate employer and it is not my job or my responsibility to decide what opportunities are available to my students.

Ja’Net Glover:
That is the student’s responsibility to decide on what’s available to them. So taking that all component and really embodying that I think is really important for us to be able to figure out and then in encouraging our students to use their values, to help guide them as they look at a company as an organizations that they want to align with. So if, if they have things on the website or their presence does not embody somewhere where you would like to see yourself growing, then that’s a company that should go off of the plate for consideration and just helping them to see their power and their agency. In that process.

Susan Bauer:
We have, you know, unique consideration. So the whole diversity and equity and inclusiveness has had an adverse effect on our student population. So we have a very, very, very small population of international students if, if that’s considered diverse. But 99.9% of our students are white and Jewish and have all grown up in the same communities with the same values and, and, and the same beliefs. So we get so many postings post this for your veteran students post this. Now yes, we do have students that are in the Israeli defense. Like if we have Israelis that, you know, go to Yeshiva university, they have to serve . So we have a small, like, you know, veteran population, but the, the only thing that we really push is women in stem because our women’s computer science program and our stem programs are just booming.

Susan Bauer:
And we have like a hundred percent placement in that area. So that’s our big diversity thing. We’re like, what do we have for the women in stem? What do we have for the women in stem? And it’s, it’s been really, really challenging because we sit around like how you say on one hand and that you won’t deny an employer, the opportunity to post, we have to like sit around in our staff meetings. So if a manufacturer wants to post a job with us and they manufacture actual women’s swimwear, can we post that? Can we not post that? Anything that has to do with marijuana? Can we post that? Can we not post that? And a lot of times I’ll bring in a rabbi or the provost, or, and we have to have these conversations about what we can post, what we can’t post, but the amount of things that, that we’ve been getting for diverse candidates, we don’t post it’s either we don’t post because we don’t have them or we don’t post because we just don’t post .

Susan Bauer:
So that that’s been a challenge. You know, we’ve tried to think outside of the box. So being that we have so many students in, in stem related fields, Google, for instance, they do something I don’t know, has anyone ever heard of the Google games? okay. So they, before the pandemic, they have this annual event, the Google games, and then every year it has a theme and different universities and different, you know regions of the country. They all compete all their stem students compete. And these games traditionally were on Friday and Saturday.

Susan Bauer:
So we went to Google. We’re like, look, we don’t have a lot. I mean, come on, you gotta work with us here. Like you’re hiring our students, give us a chance, you know you do this thing on, on Friday and Saturday night. And they’re like, well, if you can get this many teams and this many women and this many men and whatever, and we did it, we’re like, okay, well, we’re coming to the table, we’re doing it. So it was like us New Jersey Institute of technology Stevens R it like a, you know, a bunch of schools in the area and they moved it until after sundown on Saturday and all day Sunday. Yeah. So we were able to put our students into the environment where their uniqueness, where they could be competitive , you know, with everyone else . So I know every institution has different, you know different ways of working and in things that you challenges that you create workarounds for. But you know, on one hand it was like, you know, we’re not a very diverse institution, but on the other hand, we’re able to go to all of these, like, you know, big tech employers and, and, and get them to do things on Sunday, because if they don’t,

Susan Bauer:
We’re going to tell everybody, there

Ja’Net Glover:
You go.

Susan Bauer:
We’re going to tell everybody that you’re excluding the Jews, so you have to do it on Sunday. And, and, and that’s, I mean, you would never really think of religion as you know. But in a lot of aspects, it is a lot of the super days, investment banking, super days. These things happen on, on Friday at happy hour time, our students are home by four o’clock , you know, so it’s a lot of that has shifted to accommodate, right?

Ja’Net Glover:
Yeah. Which I think to your point, it makes me think about the importance of modeling and representation. Right. So why that matters and why that’s important. And for you doing that for your student population, who’s Jewish, but the opportunity for others to see

Susan Bauer:
Right. 100%

Ja’Net Glover:
That they should also, and they can, they can also request an accommodation, an

Susan Bauer:
Accommodation,

Ja’Net Glover:
Right. To be able to support them in that space.

Keith Edwards:
I’d just love to get from both of you. I think technology made some things that weren’t accessible before, more accessible. I’m thinking about students with mobility issues, students with different learning disabilities students on the autism spectrum, things like virtual might be more accessible to them than the in person and, and reading body language and things like that. I’m wondering what are the obstacles that technology has put in place that you’ve had to navigate around to create equity and accessibility for students

Susan Bauer:
Want me to take? Yeah. Okay. You know, you’re talking about, you know, neuropsychological disabilities and autism whether it’s anxiety, depression, things that have really come to the forefront that have always been there, but now are like really out there, those students don’t do as well virtually , they, they really don’t, and it’s hard to engage. And you don’t know where, where they’re looking, where their mind is, you know, what’s going on. If they step out of view, where are they going? Are they coming back? And I think in person it’s a lot easier to work with those student populations. You know, so we have started doing hours in the residence halls. We do hours on Sunday mornings because the Sabbath is over Saturday night. So Sunday morning, a lot of kids are really anxious, you know, like I haven’t been communicating for like 25 hours and I have to get a job and it’s Sunday morning, whereas a lot of career centers would be like, yeah, it’s the weekend .

Susan Bauer:
But for us, we’re like, you know what? We have these kids and they are really anxious and they’ve been inside with their parents. with no technology for like 25 hours. So we’re going to start offering them appointments on Sunday morning to try to help with that going into the communities the, you know, the synagogues, the where the students have religious services working with the rabbis more to bring programming into their congregations, which again, like you said, it doesn’t just have to be because it’s a Jewish institution. Right, right. It can be really any type of a service, but those are students that, you know, maybe on one hand, it’s easier for them to access things virtually. And then through all these, all the technology, if they have physical limitations, , but those with neuropsychological disabilities and limitations, I think it makes it a lot more challenging. and you really have to think about how you’re going to reach those students. And also knowing that a lot of them are home and their parents have the soup can up to the wall, you know, trying to listen to everything that’s going on

Ja’Net Glover:
Or their password to

Susan Bauer:
Whatever, or their passwords or whatever it is. Yeah. You know, where in person, the students feel more comfortable regardless of their, their disability or their accommodation, they just feel, you know, more comfortable for a lot of reasons. But you take that student, put them at home, a million distractions, you know, hovering parents or siblings or dog or, or whatever it is. And it makes it really, really challenging. So trying to create equal services for those students, I think is incredibly important. Yeah.

Ja’Net Glover:
I think the reality that in person engagement will never go away. And the value of it is just key. Right. So we can have the, all of the technology, and we’ve done that with the pandemic. Like we did everything online and virtual and remotely. And I think about the example that you gave about folks that you hired during the pandemic. Right. and I won’t take a poll, but folks that you might have hired on your campus during the pandemic, and now that you’re in person, did those, those individuals really connect with your culture with the organization in that way. And some of the opportunities that we have with person to read body language yeah. To, to touch, to see, and to engage those, those, those concepts don’t go away. So technology can be a tool that we use. Artificial intelligence has helped our recruiting partners, as well as us, even on my campus, we were able to use some of the, the systems to be able to support, helping to screen candidates sooner and early to, to make sure that folks align, but the education again, to our students about how to use these tools successfully and the ethics around these tools.

Ja’Net Glover:
Yes. And making sure that the, the information that is in those tools are going to be able to support all students again. And that process is going to be key. But the in person piece, the opportunity to engage in person and for people to be able to see and connect is still a value add. When we’re talking about relationships, the candidate experience recruiting and career services. Great,

Keith Edwards:
Great. Well, we are running out of time and the podcast is called Student Affairs NOW. So I always like to end with our last question being, what are you thinking about pondering troubling? Now it might have something to do with the conversation we’ve had today or Ja’Net. It might just be things that you’re thinking about. So and you can also share with folks where you might want them to, if people want to connect with you, maybe where they would do that. But but what are you troubling now? Yeah,

Ja’Net Glover:
I think it’s a, it’s a people, right. So I know on my campus, we’re hiring in career services. So if you know anybody who is interested in moving to the great state of Florida but it’s the people like the people are the most important component of our job, right? Like we, and our team bring our work to life and that passion and the commitment for students to be successful, but our campus to be able to take those efforts to the next level is so important. And to being intentional about thinking about students, right, who are now in college and about the pipeline into career services and what that looks like as, as folks continue to think about what, what their career trajectory looks like and can be, and the possibility of that also being able to support our staff and our teams.

Ja’Net Glover:
Yep. We’ve had a heck of a past two years when you’re thinking about everything that we’ve been asked to do on our campus and our care for students. And if somebody says pivot one more time, right. About how we’ve had to be able to work creatively and being innovative and pillars on our campus, right. to help with enrollment management and alumni and everybody else. And so thinking about the people and really hoping and desiring that, you know, we’re hiring great people who see themselves aligned with the mission and the vision of what we do and they’re able to see opportunities and to take action, to use as opportunities to take care of themselves, right. that higher education will continue to evolve. So as we talk about the ability to work remotely, or working with people with their schedules and showing concepts of care and health and wellbeing, that those pieces are integrated into our work. So that’s the stuff that keeps me energized, but also keeps me up of thinking about how are we going to support our people and making sure that they’re feeling the care and the support that we’re committed to providing for our students in our campus.

Susan Bauer:
You know, you mentioned pivot, right? People, yes. Pillar Uhhuh.

Ja’Net Glover:
Oh, look at that.

Susan Bauer:
There’s a block. It’s a block post. Okay. There’s that, there’s, there’s that other P word that I mentioned earlier that placement

Ja’Net Glover:
Word .

Susan Bauer:
So I think a challenge now, I think we were really making some headway with the fact that it’s not placement, that it really is strategy and design and career decision making self-efficacy that all went out the window and the people at the very top, you know, your trustees and your donors and the president and his, or her, you know, cabinet or C-suite, if you will it’s semantics in a lot of ways, but right now it’s placement placement, placement, placement placement. So the challenge that we have is we want to keep all of them very happy, and we want them to believe that we’re doing placement in the traditional sense of like a third party recruiter, but that’s really not what we’re doing. Right. So we’re still doing like our strategy and all of our other stuff. And we just like package it all up and, and call it placement to keep them happy. We came up with a really unique talk track to the higher ups to kind of convince them that we’re doing placement in the way that they think it’s placement and it works. I can talk to anybody about that at a different time, if you want that pressure off your shoulders. But, but that’s something that we’re really struggling with now is, is I felt like we finally made progress. Like no one said placement in like 60 days.

Susan Bauer:
And now it’s like, oh, that’s where you start your career planning. Is that what it’s called Susan or passing? Or what is it, you know, now it’s like placement office. And I get it, I get it. I get the pressures, I get the admissions pressures, the enrollment pressures, the parental pressures. I understand. And placement’s a very familiar word that has a very intended meaning. And how do you provide that and reassure everyone while still maintaining our passion and love for what we do and that we’re not machines just cranking out job offers and, and everything else. I think that’s something that we’re really struggling with now. . Yeah.

Keith Edwards:
Well, and I think we’ve seen this, not just in career education, but across all of higher education is when resources dwindled. We lost staff. I mean, I don’t know anybody who’s fully staffed. So if you are fully staffed, congratulations, don’t tell people they don’t want to hear it. We have had to cut back and what we’ve done is we’ve cut back to survival, the, just the bare basics, the placements, the bear functioning. And that makes sense. , , there’s no joy in survival. There’s no renewal there’s no rejuvenation there. Right. So I think a different method is how do we go from cutting back to just the basics to how do we cut back to the thriving, to our purpose, right. To what really nourishes us and how do we say there’s a bunch of other stuff we could do, but we’re really going to get focused on that.

Keith Edwards:
And I think that’s a very different thing, but it, it is shifting from the short term, whether that’s enrollment, whether that’s housing numbers, whether that’s placement to, we are here to offer a long term that’s right. Career decision, making pathways all of that. And if you do that, well, it will work here in the next’s 100%. That’s what that’s right. And then Ette, you’re pointing to something that I see with so many folks, which is, and, and I know we’re all hearing it is that potential employees want to be treated like people, not employees, , , they don’t want to just be seen as another cog in the widget Nike machine. They want to be seen as people who have their own values and their disagreements and their schedules and their flexibility and, and ways of doing things. And I think you’re speaking to that in terms of how we bring people into the operations we run as we go.

Keith Edwards:
Well, this has been fabulous. Thank you to both of you for sharing and contributing, thanks to your leadership on your campuses and the broader career education community and your contributions today. We really appreciate it. And thanks to Simplicity who hosted this event and made all of this possible. And simplicity would like to invite all of us to a happy hour at forte wine bar and coffee shop, we will be there. We will be able to chat with you. We hope we’ll be able to connect with you there. And so thanks for all of you for being here and joining us. My name’s Keith Edwards, thanks again to our fabulous guests. We hope you have a wonderful experience here in Portland at the NACE conference and expo. Have a great night.

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