A Comparative Study of How Career Services Staff Responds To Students' Employment Search

Abstract

Every year thousands of college graduates seek employment. In preparing for a career, many students turn to the Office of Career Services for assistance since it is a resource that they can use in their job searches as they navigate through an increasingly tight job market. Despite the obvious importance of Career Services in higher education, not enough is known about how these offices work and how they utilize the various resources available to them in assisting graduates to find employment. The core purpose of the present study is to fill this gap in the literature. This qualitative case study compared the activities of the Office of Career Services at two institutions of higher education (St. Peter and St. Thomas will be the names used throughout this dissertation). While both institutions are Jesuit, they differ in a number of ways that allowed meaningful comparisons about how the staff members in the Office of Career Services responded to the needs of undergraduate students in their employment searches. Data were collected through open-ended, semi-structured interviews of critical members of the staffs of both institutions. The interviews focused on how staff members provide services to their students and alumni as well as to the employers of these alumni. The study attempted to understand the formal and informal processes used by the Office of Career Services at these two universities as a measure of the institutions' organizational culture (Tierney, 1988). In addition, the study examined how the staff of the Office of Career Services develop and maintain connections to the academic community and to local and national businesses. The results of the study indicate that the Career Services staff members at these two universities informed students early in their academic careers of the services afforded them in preparing for their job searches. Both offices are focused on their students, but believe they are under-utilized by the students. St. Peter's has an advantage with employment opportunities for students due to its location. St. Thomas has a stronger relationship with the institution's academic community. The implications of these results for career services in general were discussed.