This month we celebrate the unsung heroes on college campuses...

November is National Career Development Month. As Jane Goodman, President of the National Career Development Association in 1995 stated, “National Career Development Month represents an opportunity to increase public awareness of career counseling – in schools and in the community at large – while mobilizing support for career development activities…”.

Today, more than ever, the tireless, and often unrecognized, work that career services’ counselors, practitioners and administrators do on college campuses across the country needs to be celebrated. Over the last nine months the COVID-19 pandemic has turned our lives upside down. Almost overnight, everything stopped. Everything that was certain became suddenly uncertain. Anything we thought we knew now was unknowable. For a while, chaos reigned supreme. The world and the workplace turned upside down.

The level of fear and uncertainty of hundreds of thousands of college students who were preparing for their summer 2020 internship or recent graduates who had their job offers rescinded or those preparing to enter the next chapter of their lives was unmeasurable.   These students were watching their dreams disappear right before their own eyes.

Who did students turn to for help, advice and guidance?  They called their college or university career center and the amazing people who work there. These folks, many of whom were just as frightened and scared of what the future would bring, put their own feelings aside and jumped into action to serve their students. From giving out their personal cell phone numbers to spending up to 11 hours a day on Zoom calls, career development professionals rose to this challenge.

This has all happened at a critical time in the career development profession. Over the last few years, technology in the career center space has changed dramatically. There are many providers who are solely focused on monetizing students and their information by selling it to those employers who can pay for premium access under the guise of “democratizing opportunities”. An environment has been created where the relationship between career center professionals and employer partners is being subverted and direct services to students are creating the real risk of career centers and those dedicated to the career counseling profession becoming irrelevant and obsolete.

Many senior campus leaders see this shift in the technological capabilities as an opportunity to “outsource” career development services to third-party providers. This is also being driven by employers who have for years requested a “common platform” to simplify student recruitment. However, by taking this path, schools may be eliminating the most important, dedicated and caring people on their campus. The career development services provided to students in helping them transition to the next chapter of their lives does not have a price tag and cannot be replaced by technology.

As we celebrate National Career Development Month amidst a global pandemic, economic and societal uncertainties, career development practitioners must renew the commitment to delivering thoughtful counseling, mentoring, job placement assistance to students launching their careers. Now more than ever, this meaningful, altruistic and life-shaping work needs campus wide support to drive meaningful systemic outcomes thereby ensuring future enrollments and the survival of higher education as we know it.