Why Higher Ed Should Invest More in Career Services

Meredith Metsker:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Career Everywhere Podcast. I’m your host Meredith Metsker, and today I am joined by David Kozhuk. He’s the Founder and CEO here at uConnect. Thank you for being here, David.

David Kozhuk:

Thank you for having me, Meredith. It’s exciting to be here. I think we launched the podcast about a year ago, and it’s been a great hit, 30 episodes and thousands of streams, and so excited to be here and be your guest today.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, it’s hard to believe that it’s been a year already, ’cause it’s been so much fun.

David Kozhuk:

I remember when it first showed up on the Spotify app, and it showed up in my stream.

Meredith Metsker:

It was so exciting.

David Kozhuk:

It was an exciting day, for sure.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. Well, I’m super glad to have you and I have been looking forward to this episode for weeks because today, listeners, we are getting spicy. So David and I are going to dig into some of the recent criticism we’ve seen around the value of higher education and then the value of career services in particular. And long story short, we have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it, and we’re ready to rebut some of these uninformed claims about career services. So this will be a little bit different than our normal episodes. So buckle up folks and let’s get into it. So David, to kick us off, I want to ask you a question that I ask all of our guests, and that’s what does Career Everywhere mean to you? And I believe you kind of came up with this concept years ago, so I’m especially excited to hear your answer.

David Kozhuk:

Great first question. So Career Everywhere to me means every student meaningfully engaged in career planning and exploration throughout their entire journey. So ideally before, during, and after college, spending time thinking about different career paths, which ones make the most sense for them, which ones spark their interest and excitement and having that actually inform their path versus sometimes the other way around, which is, students go through their journey and then at the end think about what they want to do for their career. So Career Everywhere engages all students at all stages of their journey.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. Well said. I love that. The more I have learned about this concept of Career Everywhere through this podcast, through working at uConnect, the more it makes so much sense. And I wish that that had been how I had approached career development when I was in college.

David Kozhuk:

Yeah, so many people say that to me when they hear about uConnect or in interviews to work at uConnect, they’re always like, I wish I had used career services, or I wish I had been more thoughtful about what career path I want to go down. So that to me says that there’s still a big need and we’re excited to continue to chip away at it.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. So now I kind of want to dig into our topic for today, and I think we can all see that the value of higher education is under attack right now. And even career services is facing a lot of criticism as well. There was an article last year in Forbes, for example, by Ryan Craig that proposed that institutions abolish career services. There was also a recent episode of Michael Horn’s podcast titled Goodbye College Career Services. And then on top of that, there was also a recent white paper digging into why college career services is “terrible” for students with low social capital. So there’s just a lot of discussion about this right now, and I’m curious, what’s your take on all of this criticism around career services?

David Kozhuk:

So yeah, there is I think a good amount of discussion around the topic. I think it would be beneficial to students and institutions if there was even more conversation around the topic. I think generally speaking, as it relates to the two articles or topics that you brought up, I think they’re probably masking suggestions and recommendations for how to change career services behind a spicy, as you said, title or headline to get people’s attention. I think with the abolish career services piece by Ryan Craig, Ryan is not a higher ed administrator and probably hasn’t spent much time talking to career services professionals or really understanding the student experience. But from his point of view, I think the TLDR on his article was abolish career services and make it a faculty facing function, which I frankly think that the latter is there’s something there and it’s a thread that should be pulled on more so by companies, by institutions, by higher ed leaders.

Higher ed has a lot of student services, most of which are optional, and career services is one of them. And I think that that’s had a pretty significant impact on engagement. I think part of his point is making it a faculty facing function, is about sort of engaging students in a place where they more or less have to be, in the classroom, in front of faculty members. And so while I don’t think that it’s a good suggestion or a sustainable or really effective suggestion to abolish career services, I do think that it’s really important to bring career services into the places where students are every day and make sure that the people that students are engaging with every day are able to talk about career services, are able to guide students in the right direction, are able to provide meaningful support for students. It doesn’t necessarily have to be counseling or coaching.

It could just be inspiration, information, ideas, anecdotes, providing more exposure for students. So the classroom is a great example of that. Again, because students have to be in the classroom, they oftentimes look up to faculty. Faculty have this sort of reputation on campus that in a lot of cases require students to listen to them and hold their opinions in high regard. So I think there’s a lot to be said for that aspect of Ryan’s argument. There’s a lot in there that I and we disagree with, and I think there’s highlights of that in the article that we wrote in response to it.

But that’s my thought as it relates to Ryan’s article, as it relates to the goodbye college career services podcast and the white paper around career services being “terrible” for students with low social capital, I actually thought that there was some good nuggets in that article as well. I thought that their general point was that there needs to be a sort of different approach to counseling and advising with regard to career services. And they’ve spent, the authors of that white paper have spent a time working with students, first gen students and other students with low social capital, and they have a playbook approach that has worked really well. And I think their point was that counseling doesn’t necessarily work in career services in the way that it’s approached at most institutions today because they’re not necessarily pushing those students as hard as they could be.

And they’re not also taking, or their point is that they’re not taking a, sort of very action oriented approach, meaning that once you’re done with a counseling appointment, there are specific actions that need to be taken. And that’s sort of reflective of the point that finding a job and finding your career path or the one that makes sense for you does require a lot of work, requires networking, requires understanding your interests, what drives you, what inspires you, and then acting upon those realizations to make sure that you’re sort of constantly grooming your view of what the right career path might be. And that requires, at a minimum intentionality, but also probably a lot of actual time dedicated to it.

So a part of me is glad that these articles were published because I think it brings more attention to the fact that career services needs to continue to evolve to support students. So I think those are my thoughts on those two articles, and hopefully there’s more to come and hopefully Ryan and others who are talking about this are continuing to dig into the conversation and have similar conversations with different people. None of the people who were interviewed here or wrote the articles are either working at an institution or influencing how college career services actually evolves. So hopefully they are continuing the conversations with career leaders that can implement those changes.

Meredith Metsker:

That’s what I was thinking too, that there was a bit of a lack of input from actual career services leaders. And I know that’s something that we mentioned in the article that you wrote to kind of rebut Ryan Craig’s initial article about abolished career services. And for those of you who are watching or listening, I’ll be sure to include a link to that in the show notes so you can go check that article out. But one of the things that you talked about in that article was that you have talked with hundreds, if not, maybe, thousands of career leaders at this point over the 10 years since you’ve launched uConnect. And what he was saying about career services is not what you’ve been hearing, is not what you have observed in these conversations with career services leaders. So I’m kind of curious, what have been some of your observations from those conversations? I mean, you talk to career leaders every single day.

David Kozhuk:

Yeah, thousands at least. It’s been over 10 years. And yeah, I have the pleasure of leading an organization that is supporting career leaders and as part of that, I talk to career leaders all the time. I think observations are that most of them are in a situation where they’re trying to do a lot with very little. And one of the challenges in doing that job and doing a lot with very little in general is the sort of barriers to collaboration and partnership where we talk a lot about the opportunity for career leaders to partner with other offices, other departments, other influencers of students on campus. And higher ed is not the most collaborative working environment that you’ll find out there. I mean, there’s all these comments around things being in silos and things being sort of separated and disconnected and I think that that’s definitely the case.

A lot of departments work independently of one another, and it’s not incredibly efficient. There’s a lot of redundancies. There’s not a lot of visibility and transparency into what your colleagues across campus are doing every day, what their goals are, how you can support your colleagues in helping them achieve their goals. So my observations, broadly, are that career service professionals are trying to do a really big job without a lot of support, without a lot of resources, and oftentimes face more surface level criticism than people rolling up their sleeves and making the case for them to have better support, better resources, different strategies, different approaches, and that’s just not particularly productive. So it’s a hard job. And in higher ed, I think we’re doing a good job of recruiting students from different backgrounds, different circumstances, and investing in more diverse student populations, which is great and super important to the growth of higher education.

But in a lot of cases, that makes it even harder for career services professionals to do their job effectively and at scale. You think about an office of four or five, six people on the staff, supporting 10,000 students, can you imagine the number of permutations of backgrounds, interests, passions, goals, skills that all of those students have? And to be able to support them in a relatively personalized way is very difficult and it’s almost impossible without resources to be able to scale your work. So I think that’s probably one of the biggest common observations that has unfortunately stayed true by and large since we started uConnect all the way to 2023.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s definitely in line with what I’ve been hearing even from career leaders I’ve talked to on this podcast, is that it’s just, they are trying to do so much, and it’s such important work, as you said, but there’s a lot of barriers. There’s a lot of obstacles in the way to being able to do their best work for students. So on this note, David, why do you think people don’t understand or don’t quite get the value of career services?

David Kozhuk:

It’s an interesting question. I think that a lot of people understand the potential and the value of providing really effective career services. If you ask students why they enroll in higher ed, they’ll tell you, in most cases, that it’s some variation of launching a career or achieving economic and social mobility. Career services is one of the most, if not the most important department office function on a college campus to help students realize that outcome, especially today. And more and more, like lots of big employers aren’t requiring a degree, Google, Amazon, others are going to follow suit.

I mean, I sometimes say I never looked at a transcript. I probably hired over a hundred people in the last 10 years. I’ve never looked at a transcript or a degree or followed up whether that degree was exactly what was communicated to us. It’s just not that important as it relates to recruiting. And so with this sort of diminishing value of just the piece of paper that you get at the end of your journey, it becomes even more important than students have the skills that they need to launch a career and have the vision and have the clarity about where they want to at least start their career and what that path might look like, because just having that degree is just not enough anymore.

And so I think a lot of people understand that, and those are trends that are talked about all the time in national media and industry specific publications and things like that. I just really feel like there hasn’t been enough of peeling back the onion and really understanding what are the challenges that career services professionals face, that that function faces, to be able to enable those folks to scale their impact and support more students. And so there’s a lot of these surface level conversations like we talked about with the two articles that were published, but not enough to really understand what the root causes of the challenges are and how to start thinking about solutions and change and evolution to be able to support career leaders in having a bigger impact. So I think people get the value, but unfortunately the follow-through is not really there.

Meredith Metsker:

Why do you think that is?

David Kozhuk:

That’s a loaded question. I mean, it depends, right? It’s like, whose responsibility is it? And it’s probably not Ryan Craig or Michael Horn’s responsibility to figure that out. They’re media figures talking about trends, and so it’s not their responsibility to find solutions. They’re surfacing challenges. It’s probably an easy argument to make that senior leadership in higher ed is probably where, beyond career services, is probably where there should be much more sort of thoughtful consideration about how things are working and how things could be improved. Why isn’t that happening or why isn’t happening nearly enough as it should be? Probably because of the lack of consequence. I mean, everybody knows that it’s really important to students to be able to provide the service in a really effective way and in a way that supports all students at scale. But what happens if that doesn’t change or if we don’t reach those goals, there’s just not enough measurement, there’s not enough consequence for higher ed leadership.

Again, beyond career services, I’m talking about the senior leadership. And without consequence, urgency and follow through usually suffer. And so I’ve seen countless cases where career services professionals are out there talking to senior leaders, asking for budget, making the case for different programs, making the case for different solutions, but are not being heard nearly as much as they should be. So I get that there’s probably a lot of competing priorities and you got to figure out what you want to focus on, but I feel pretty comfortable in saying that there just really hasn’t been enough investment, not necessarily of dollars, but definitely of dollars, but not only of dollars, of time and resources and interest in helping career service professionals do more. So yeah, I think that’s been a common trend that I’ve noticed for sure.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. So on the note of investment and why we need more investment in career services, in your opinion, why should higher ed invest more in career services?

David Kozhuk:

Well, it’s just what their students are motivated by. It’s what their students ultimately need to lead more meaningful lives and careers, right? I mean, the career choice that you, the career path that you embark on immediately after college, the first job call it, has such a significant impact on a person’s long-term career path and quality of life, frankly. And so as an institution, if you are thinking about students as your customers, like we as a business, we have customers, we think about our customers and their needs all the time, and make that a major priority in a lot of decisions that we make.

So if you’re a higher ed institution, you’re thinking about students as your customers and students are telling you that that’s the reason that they’re enrolling in higher education, a lot of them making really significant sacrifices to enroll in higher education, ultimately to launch or advance their careers. We just at uConnect, right? We just recruited a new member on the marketing team, and when I was talking to him before we made him the offer, I asked him about his career path and what he envisioned for his career path. And in that conversation, he told me that he’s pursuing two graduate degrees at the same time because he feels like that’s really critical to him achieving his professional potential. So he’s working full time, he’s got other responsibilities, and he’s pursuing two graduate degrees at the same time.

Meredith Metsker:

Wow.

David Kozhuk:

That’s a sacrifice of time and money. And he is not doing that because he’s intellectually curious. He’s doing that because he feels like it’s critical to him realizing his professional potential. So again, so if students are telling you that that’s why they enroll in higher education, then that’s just sort of be the long and short of it. That’s why they should be investing. But the other side of the coin is that if students don’t have a good career services experience or don’t realize a great career outcome, they’ve spent time and money or maybe not seeing the return that they expect. And if you’re a higher ed institutions, you want happy customers who are going to give you the thumbs up. If we have this podcast, we want people to give it a five star rating.

You want your customers to be like, that was an awesome experience and I really benefited from that. And that will ultimately, hopefully lead to more loyalty from alums. Alums may be coming back to their institution for continuing education and lifelong learning. It may result in those alums wanting to be a resource for students when they’re well beyond graduation. There’s lots of value of making sure that all of your students or as many students as possible are walking away from their experience feeling like they benefited tremendously and they got the outcome that they were looking for. So those are some of the reasons I think higher ed should be investing in career services.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, this reminds me of a recent survey or survey result that Lightcast put out recently about how students who engage with career services were, I think, 2.8 times more likely to say that their degree was worth it.

David Kozhuk:

Yeah, that sounds about right. And probably if you were to be able to drill down that number and students who engaged a lot and really committed to leveraging the resources and programs and services that career offices offer, then could be twice that number.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, it just goes to show the importance of career services as we’ve been talking about.

David Kozhuk:

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. So kind of switching directions a little bit here, career services has changed a lot over the years. We’ve talked about that a little bit, particularly in the 10 years since you founded uConnect. From your observations, what has that evolution looked like?

David Kozhuk:

I think there’s been some changes in the office, strategies, technology, schools have invested in technology, like many other organizations across different industries. I think what has been noticeable is probably what stands out is probably the thoughtfulness and the quality of leadership. I think of some of our customers who we’ve been working with for years, especially the ones that we’ve been working with since the early days. A lot of them have laid a foundation for doing more with what they have, and they’ve blazed the trail in some ways to show the broader industry what can be achieved as sometimes with more financial resources, sometimes not so much.

They’ve implemented new strategies, they’ve implemented new models, and a lot of that has been really valuable for the industry more broadly because as in a lot of other cases, when your peers see greatness, it inspires a lot of folks to pursue that path or pursue a variation of that path. So I love working with career leaders, frankly, and I love to see career leaders really take the next step and level up, whether it’s getting more resources, getting more recognition, seeing their engagement and outcome rates improve.

And I think we’ve seen more and more of that. And I think that there’s a really big potential downstream effect of that, of more career leaders wanting, more people wanting to be in the space, and the people who are in this space seeing more of what greatness looks like and being able to implement some of those strategies and feeling empowered to be able to step outside their comfort zone and potentially try to do more than they have in the past. And I think that’s a big opportunity for all career services professionals, just continue to ask for more, continue to take chances, continue to take risks, and I think the great career leaders that have come before them have given them a little bit of a blueprint for that.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I mean, we’ve seen that on this podcast and the stories that some of our guests have told and how they are asking for more, as you said, and how they are facilitating the entire ecosystem of a university. It’s not just talking about career within the walls of the career center. It’s engaging faculty, it’s engaging staff, it’s engaging alumni, employers, senior leadership, and making sure everybody is prepared to have those career conversations with students and to help them, as you said, have meaningful lives and careers.

David Kozhuk:

Totally, yeah. I mean, one of the things I love about the work that you and Ashley and the team are doing with the career movement is you’re putting a lot of these great stories out there, either through the podcast or through articles or case studies, and that to me is so valuable because it shows others what can be achieved and that if this is happening at this school, it could happen here. And if this person’s doing this with these many staff members, I can do this, right? And so the work that you all are doing, hopefully, is going to just continue to be more and more of an inspiration for others.

Meredith Metsker:

So I hope so.

David Kozhuk:

Yeah, and the podcast has been tremendous from that perspective as well. Some of the folks that you’ve had on this podcast have talked about their work in ways that are truly inspiring, and so I’m excited to just continue the momentum.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, yeah, me too. It’s such a fun project. So I’m curious, we’ve kind of talked about this evolution of career services, but what do you think the future of career services will look like or maybe should look like?

David Kozhuk:

Well, those are two different questions, which…

Meredith Metsker:

What do you think it will look like? Let’s start there.

David Kozhuk:

I think that the future of career services, well, so there’s a couple of different sort of ways that at least I think about the future of career services. So in an ideal world, career services is something that is accessible to the masses, not just all the students on a college campus, but all the people in society that need it most, right? We talk about oftentimes 6-7 million people being unemployed. Gallup ran a study that found over 80% of the global workforce struggles to find meaning or purpose in their careers. And career services just doesn’t exist for the overwhelming majority of people. So in an ideal world, career services is something that is accessible to the masses, is baked into the education ecosystem well before college, middle school, high school, encouraging people to think about what their career path might be very early in their lives.

And I think there’s the infrastructure to do that. There’s obviously a lot of work that needs to happen for us to truly unlock access for the masses beyond just higher education. And we could talk about that for a long time. But I think going back to what does the future of career services look like in higher ed, my hope is that it just becomes a much more connected part of the entire campus ecosystem and that career services are, or at least the work that’s being done in career services, is being used and leveraged in admissions, in first year experience in across all student services and academic affairs in the classroom and in alumni relations to be able to continue to support people after they graduate.

And so it’s a little bit of that Career Everywhere mantra, and I think we’re seeing lots of examples of that being implemented in pieces on different campuses. I think the more we see that continue to happen and the more we continue to see great outcomes of that, of course student outcomes, but things like institutional rankings, things like people who run career offices being elevated either by title or with more resources.

Hopefully it becomes an inspiration for more people to implement on their campuses because it becomes a little bit of the norm. So yeah, hopefully the future looks like Career Services being a facilitator for all their partners across campus to engage students at all stages, and also having a bigger impact on an institution’s strategic initiatives. If you’re a prospective student or the family of prospective student, you’re thinking about a particular institution, you’re asking questions about what employers are recruiting students here, what are common outcomes look like? What are the resources and services you provide?

You don’t have to be overly creative to realize how the content or the work being done in career services could inform and inspire more students to enroll in a particular institution. I think as we see sort of outcomes that are beyond what we would traditionally consider to be career services outcomes, hopefully that will also be a source to leverage, that career services professionals can leverage to be able to have a greater impact. And hopefully once senior leadership sees that, hey, if we were more strategic about how we invest in career services, how we support career leaders, we can see better enrollment rates, more persistence, more completion, better rankings.

Maybe there will be this aha moment that, hey, we should have been doing this, we should have been doing this long ago. But that is my hope. And we’re seeing that and not only from tier one Ivy League institutions, but across the board from lots of different institutions, lots of different types, lots of different sizes, and so hopefully that, again, that continues to inspire career leaders and that becomes the norm and that’s what the future looks like.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. So how does uConnect fit into all of this?

David Kozhuk:

So at uConnect, our mission is to improve access to career services. On college campuses, it’s about making sure there’s more visibility, more accessibility, and just more utilization of the resources that schools already offer students. And so we do that in a couple of different ways. One is through the consolidation of all the resources and data and information that a career office has, and frankly, all the career resources and data and information that an institution has into one single place. I mentioned earlier the silos, the fragmentation, there’s lots of challenges that come as a result of that reality, but I think access to resources is a huge one. And so if students can go to one place to find those resources, that in and of itself simplifies access and engagement. The other thing that uConnect does just very practically to support the progress of career offices is providing visibility into the work that they do.

Career offices have really valuable resources. They have relationships with hundreds if not thousands of employers. They have all these opportunities, internships, jobs, experiential learning opportunities, they’re facilitating alumni networking. They have labor market data, they have assessment tools, they have e-portfolio resources. They have all these different things, but they’re in most cases sort of locked behind these closed systems. And so you have to log in, sign up, register, create a profile, do all these things to even sort of realize that those resources are there. And so what uConnect does is sort of surface all that in a way that’s accessible for anybody with access to the internet, right? So obviously if you’re a student, it simplifies that sort of search and discovery experience. But if you’re a prospective student or if you’re a parent at home who wants to support your child, if you’re an assistant coach on a college sports team and you want to help one of your students who’s thinking about this and thinking about what life after sports looks like, you can access those resources and point that student athlete in the right direction.

So short answer is the ability to improve access and engagement through consolidation, and then just making sure everybody has visibility into the really, really powerful and in a lot of cases, transformational resources that are offered in career services. And we’ve done that through the development of a virtual career center. And so that virtual career center makes it easier for anybody to access those resources, whether they’re a traditional student walking across the quad with a backpack or a commuter student who doesn’t have the luxury of being able to drop by the career center, ’cause they have to go to work after class or an adult learner and is thinking about how to take the next step in their career.

And they’re taking classes online after the kids go to bed. And if they have virtual career center that can sit behind that sort of online academic experience, then that’s a much better experience for them than taking class online and then having to figure out how to go visit the career center in between the raindrops. So that’s a little bit of what we do. And then of course, a lot of the work that’s being done at uConnect is also just about elevating these really important stories and these really important leaders who are doing great work so that there’s more recognition for the work that they’re doing. And again, there’s more of a blueprint for those that follow in their footsteps.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay, yeah, I remember when I was interviewing for the job at uConnect, this mission of improving access really spoke to me, and it just made so much sense how many more students’ lives could be vastly improved if they had 24/7 access to career resources, even if they’re a parent. And so maybe they just, like you said, they don’t have time to go stop by the career center after classes. They have other responsibilities. They can do that research, that exploration at any time of day or night that works for them. And that just really spoke to me

David Kozhuk:

Totally. I think when people see the light about what their career could look like, a lot of times that results in passion and enthusiasm and excitement. The other side of the coin is that when people don’t have a clear path, it can result in anxiety and concern and stress. And so the more exposure, hopefully the more ideas that people have, the more clarity they have of how they can pursue particular paths, and that results in more enthusiasm for pursuing professional pathways. So access is critically important, and especially early, early, early, well before college because some people don’t have to go to college, some people don’t have to go to a four-year school. Some people can achieve their professional pathways that make the most sense for them with alternative education. So the earlier somebody is exposed to career paths, the more I think accretive their academic journey is to realizing that potential and everything else that they do. So yeah, access matters a lot.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I could not agree more. So kind of sticking with this uConnect theme really quick, I know you have worked with career services professionals for over a decade now, but you didn’t come from a career services background. So I’m curious, why did you start uConnect? What’s that story?

David Kozhuk:

Yeah. Well, I definitely didn’t come from a career services background, at least not as a employee of an institution. The relatively short story is that I was really professionally ambitious when I was younger. My older sister worked on Wall Street as an investment banker, and her and I have always been very close, and I got exposure to the financial services industry in sort of late middle school, early high school, just through osmosis, just through conversations with her and learning about her work and her seeing that I was interested and her being willing to share more with me about what her day-to-day was like, what her company did, what the industry was about, and I got a little bug. I got really interested in financial services and the sort of Wall Street culture and all that sort of stuff. And so when I went to college, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do and I had a really clear picture.

And so I was really intentional knoll in sort of all of my engagement. And I used all the resources that were on the college campus that I was at to be able to set me up to launch a career in finance. So I joined the finance club and the investment management club my freshman year. I was asking finance faculty whose classes I didn’t even have the pre-reqs for, if I could support academic research that they were working on. And I was definitely in the career center all the time. It was in the business school on the first floor. And I would just swing by and ask them about what employers were coming to campus or if they could connect me with alums at this particular company or in that particular field.

And so when I graduated, I probably had four or five internships, but more importantly, I had a really strong conviction of what I wanted to do and I could articulate what my value would be to a company and why I would be a great hire and all that. And so I graduated in 2008, which is the middle of a financial recession. And I went to UMass Amherst. I was a decent student, but definitely not setting any records in the classroom. And I got an opportunity to join a private equity firm in Boston right after graduation. To me, that was really a tribute to just the time that I had to sort of think about my career path network with the right people, build the skills that were important to launching that career and that time was everything. And that was the sort of biggest factor, I think, in my sort of success right after college.

And then long story short, I joined the private equity firm. It started growing. We raised another fund. Partners asked me to recruit a couple of junior analysts. And so I reached out to the head of career services at my alma mater and I said, hey, good news, things are going well, and I’d love to come back and host an info session and talk about my journey from college to career and actually recruit some of your top finance students. And she was thrilled to hear from me and decided to have me back on campus and get me in front of students. So they sort of created a, set up an event, big Rome had the dean introduce me, all of that stuff. And when it came to the day of the event, only three students showed up to the info session on a campus for like 25,000 students, which was a huge bummer.

And it was also the first time that I had realized that my path was different, that I use career services for the reasons that I mentioned, and that most students actually don’t and they don’t meaningfully engage in career services at all. And about a year after that event, I quit my cushy private equity job that I really loved and started uConnect. So I think the short version is that I benefited tremendously and realized that most students were struggling as a result of not being sort of engaged in that process and leveraging the resources that career offices offer students. And that was probably having a disproportionate impact on not only ROI of their college experience, but their long-term fulfillment and satisfaction. So at that point, it occurred to me that if we could drive more engagement with career services, then students would do better, institutions would have more success, and the world would work a little better.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. It’s such a good story.

David Kozhuk:

Yeah, I mean, I’ve told it many times, but it’s cool that when I launched uConnect, I had a sort of purpose and vision behind it, and we’re here 10 years later doing exactly the same thing. So we’ve iterated obviously many times and the product has changed and all this stuff, but the general core mission of our work has stayed the same. And I’m really proud of that

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. As you should be, and we’ve got a great team.

David Kozhuk:

Yeah, no doubt.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Well, I want to start wrapping this up. I want to be mindful of our time here, but David, what advice do you have for career services leaders who want to continue improving access to career services for all students?

David Kozhuk:

I think the biggest piece of advice is make the case, like we said earlier, I think that a lot of senior leadership in higher education understands why if career services worked really well, that would be beneficial for students and institutions alike. I think that in my experience, in my observation, that the answer for them is not just give more money and more resources to the career office. And so for better or for worse, they’re probably taking a little bit of a reactive approach. And I think if we’re going to get them to react, more career leaders have to make the case.

Daniel Pasco Aguilar is one of our long-term partners and is incredible at this, just sort of sharing his vision of what career services could be and what is required to get there, and the support and resources that need to be put in place in order to execute. And he’s been on a few different campuses over the last 10 years and has been really effective in getting the resources that he needs. And I’ve seen that more and more across the field. Other folks just sort of standing up and making a really thoughtful and strategic case for more resources and more support from senior leadership. And so in more cases than I would like, I think I see career leaders feeling like they’re, like it’s not appropriate for them to make the ask or that’s not how it’s been in the past, so I don’t want to sort of shake things up too much.

The reality is that they’re putting themselves out there. And so that can be daunting, that can be intimidating, but it’s really important to make the ask because even if you don’t get it right, you’re still on the radar of senior leadership. They understand that you’re ambitious and they’ll remember that. So if you make the ask another ask and then continue to push for more and more, but there has to be a thoughtful strategy and ambitious outcomes that come with that ask. So I think if more career leaders did that, the career services field in general would have more support. And I think that’d be better for everyone. So if I had to boil it down to one thing, I would just say just be audacious.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. It’s a good advice in general.

David Kozhuk:

Yeah.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. Well David, is there anything else you would like to add about our topic that we haven’t covered?

David Kozhuk:

I think this was good. I mean, there’s probably a lot more than I can add, but this is great. And I think probably shared I some of the core tenets of how we think about career services. And I’m just excited about continuing to build our team and improve our product and our solution for career services leaders at uConnect. 2023 was a really great year for us. We grew more in 2023 than we had in any year previously. And while we’re over 10 years in, I do feel like we’re still just getting started. So I’m really excited about what we’re doing at uConnect and excited to work with people like you, Meredith, and the rest of the team that is really such a big part of what gives me energy every day. And so for folks who are listening to this, if you’re a customer, continue to engage with us and share ideas and share what your aspirations are. And if you’re not a customer, then keep an eye on us and we’d love to chat.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. On that note, if people would like to connect with you or learn more from you, where’s a good place for them to do that?

David Kozhuk:

Well, anybody can email me and we can put the email in the show notes or they can find me on LinkedIn. Still need to become more active on LinkedIn, per your advice, but I am on LinkedIn. I do check it regularly. So just feel free to message me on LinkedIn if that’s easiest.

Meredith Metsker:

All right. And yes, I’ll be sure to include links to David’s LinkedIn profile in the show notes along with his email. So David, I want to wrap us up with something I do at the end of every interview, which is this, answer a question, leave a question thing. So I’ll ask you a question that our last guest left for you, and then you’ll leave a question for the next guest. So our last guest was Michael DeAngelos of the University of Pennsylvania, and he left this question for you. When you were a senior in college, where did you see yourself in 20 years?

David Kozhuk:

Like a finance guy, like a big shot LBO finance professional. I mean, I was so focused on entering the investments field and launching a career on Wall Street that that was probably where I saw myself, at least professionally. So needless to say, I took a different path, but that’s probably what my answer would’ve been as a senior in college.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Yeah, I also took a different path. I thought I was going to be big leagues of journalism and I veered off in a different direction and I am so happy that I did.

David Kozhuk:

Yeah. But I think, maybe you and I have a commonality in the sense that the fact that we had a clear vision of what we wanted to do I think sort of led to us realizing that continuing to think about that path is really important and then continuing to sort of refine it and adjust just comes naturally. So I think that professional ambition is something that we value a lot at uConnect, and I think it’s something that we hope more and more students and young people have as they continue in their journey and they launch their career and hopefully they iterate many times and find the right calling for themselves. But yeah, I’m glad I’m not a finance executive, I’ll tell you that.

Meredith Metsker:

All right, well David, what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

David Kozhuk:

So this was tough. I would say, one thing I think is really important is recruiting great people to work in career offices. And there’s not a lot of discussion about it. There’s obviously natural limitations. But my question for the next guest, assuming it’s somebody in the career services field, which I imagine it will be is, if you had a magic wand, what would you change that would have the biggest impact on your ability to recruit top talent for your career office? And I would say compensation aside, because if you had a massive budget, obviously that makes it easier. But what, aside from compensation, would have the biggest impact in your ability to recruit top talent for your career office?

Meredith Metsker:

I like that one. I think we’ll get a creative answer to that question.

David Kozhuk:

Yeah. Yeah, that would be interesting to hear people’s responses and obviously an interesting topic to continue to talk about in career services only as good as the people that we work with. So, yep, I’ll look forward to that.

Meredith Metsker:

All right, well I’ll be sure to pose that to the next guest. And David, just thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. This was such a fun conversation. Yeah, how often do you get to ask your CEO questions for an hour about the future of career services and all the great things that are happening at uConnect and higher ed and beyond. So just thank you so much for sharing your time and your expertise today.

David Kozhuk:

It was a pleasure, Meredith. Thank you for having me.