Career Readiness Efforts with Identity-Based Populations

Meredith Metsker:

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Career Everywhere podcast. I’m your host, Meredith Metsker, and this week I’m joined by Larry Jackson. He’s the Senior Associate Director for Career Education and Engagement at UC Berkeley. Thank you for being here, Larry.

Larry Jackson:

Thank you very much for having me. It’s such a pleasure to be here today. Thank you.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I am super excited for this conversation. I’m super glad to have you, and excited to talk to you today about all of the amazing things that you and your team are doing to promote career readiness with identity-based populations on your campus. So I know you’ve got a lot going on. We’ll dig into that here in just a bit. But before I get into my questions, Larry, is there anything else you’d like to add about yourself, your background or your role there at UC Berkeley?

Larry Jackson:

Oh, thank you for the opportunity to share this. So I’ve been with UC Berkeley now for about four and a half years as their senior associate director, most recently. When I first started at Berkeley, I was an associate director for career education, overseeing staff that supported our letters and science population as well as Haas undergraduate business population. And I’ve just been really fortunate to be able to advance my career within Berkeley Career Engagement over the past four and a half years. It was also really exciting to be able to help shape the strategy and implementation of different activities within our office in order to make sure students had the career support that they were looking for. And also so campus partners understood the nature of the work that we do. So it’s been really an invigorating experience to be able to shape the direction of our office, and I’m just really excited to share some of that progress with everyone today, and hopefully provide some inspiration to those who are working on a similar campus, similar size, or needing support and supporting affinity and identity-based populations as well.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. And speaking of the size, UC Berkeley is pretty large, right?

Larry Jackson:

Yes, yes. We serve over 42,000 students, 22,000 plus of which are undergraduate letters and science students. In other campuses they may call it liberal arts or arts and sciences students. So it’s a pretty robust campus, and we are the main centralized career center on our campus, the only one that supports undergraduates through PhDs and postdocs. So to be on a campus this size, it’s not too uncommon for other campuses across the nation to have a decentralized model, where there are individual career offices outlined in certain schools or certain colleges. So we’re really fortunate to be able to serve as the main career services entity on campus that supports students in their journey.

Meredith Metsker:

Wow. So you all are the main career center for 42,000 students.

Larry Jackson:

Yes. Main career center.

Meredith Metsker:

All right.

Larry Jackson:

Yes, it’s definitely something that we’re very proud of. It’s a really big testament to the amazing services and values we’ve been able to bring to students.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, yeah, I bet. And I know we’re going to dig more into that element and how that impacts what you’re all doing here in a little bit. But before I get into my more specific questions about our topic today, I do want to kick us off with a question that I ask all of our guests. And that’s what does Career Everywhere mean to you?

Larry Jackson:

What a great question. I feel that Career Everywhere is a shared experience of helping students in their career journey, whether that be exploration, whether that be application. And I feel that, realistically, you can get career information around so many different places and modalities. Now there’s online career education resources, there is engagement with academic departments faculty, there’s engagement with student services units. So when I hear Career Everywhere, I look at the shared effort and being to help students with their career preparation, and it not just existing within a career center that’s on campus. And I think that’s one of the things I’ve been most proud of with our work at Berkeley Career Engagement, is that there’s been an initiative to work collaboratively with different campus departments, colleges, and also administration, to bring career readiness to the entire campus experience over these past several years. So I’m really thrilled that when we talk Career Everywhere, everyone is sharing the lift of elevating our students to their career potential.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. It sounds like you landed in a great place to implement some of those things.

Larry Jackson:

Yes, very, very fortunate. Very fortunate to do so.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. All right. Well, let’s go ahead and dig into our topic today. I’m just going to start with the big question, which is, what is your career center doing to improve career readiness among those identity-based populations?

Larry Jackson:

Thank you for asking. So over the past four and a half years, we’ve actually engaged in quite a few activities to help students from historically marginalized populations to get greater access in support from our office. When I started my role in 2019, many individuals can resonate with this, when you start a new job, you go on a listening tour, you engage with different campus departments and staff to better understand their knowledge or experience with your office. And some of the feedback that I was getting from our identity-based populations were there’s a lack of awareness of what we do, there was a intimidation factor of what is the career center and do I have to be fully prepared to go there? And there was also a desire to feel a sense of community within the career center so that they could feel it’s a place they can come to and get the support and the care that they were looking for.

So as I went on this listening tour and this became prevalent, things that came up through these discussions, I realized that there has to be a strategy shaped to help provide more support to student populations that really need the assistance. And as we were making momentum in that and having discussions with different campus units, no one would ever expect that a pandemic would happen. And the university, as well as many institutions across the United States, went to shelter in place, which felt like it was slowing down some efforts. I recall at the time we had a diversity career fair planned and a summit for students getting ready to happen in person. And those things had to be repositioned or canceled because of the shelter in place, along with the other programs that we had planned already. And no one would also expect that with the pandemic and social injustice issues that were happening through the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and other African-Americans, that there was this undivided attention now around racial justice, and how can we be better allies and better advocates to ensure that these injustices no longer take place.

So there’s two major movements within our society happening. One, we had this global pandemic that everyone’s experiencing and dealing with, and then we had this undivided attention to the challenges and injustices that are happening in our world. And that just mobilized the work that we were doing as an office to make sure that we are paying more attention to these issues, and making sure that we actually educate ourselves on issues related to equity and inclusion, and also make sure that we make a concerted effort to build stronger relationships with our identity units, knowing that they were going to require some deeper assistance. And that led to, over the next couple of years, of devising strategy of how do we support the needs of our identity communities. And at Berkeley alone, there’s well over 25% of the students are transfer students. So they’re coming from various community colleges within California as well as other areas.

There’s well over 23% of students that are first generation low income. There are student parents, there are formerly incarcerated students, there are veterans. And we were also noticing that over the past couple years, there’s been more Latinx students, more AAPI identifying students, that the campus moved is moving more towards a HSI destination, but is also secured in a PC serving institution designation. And that just even elevated the, I would say, commitment to make sure that we’re offering services that are going to support students in their career preparation. And a byproduct of this was first being able to establish a liaison model, so that these communities had a point of contact to our office, to understand the services we provide, and also establishing equity and inclusion goals for individual staff members, so they can get more versed in the issues impacting various communities, and also be able to deepen their understanding on ways that they can be allies to support these communities.

And these were all within starting to germinate within a year of the pandemic starting. And this actually helped to develop the cultural competency and fluency for staff to work with these communities, while also being able to serve as a visible ally to their spaces virtually and then eventually in person. So since those things have started mid-pandemic, we’ve actually started to expand even more with our programming efforts, our appointment efforts, where we’ve offering individual staff to settle out appointments in identity based population spaces. We have just recently did an open house for our affinity based campus partners, where they can get a chance to, not only explore our space, but really sit and process some of the challenges that we’ve had over the past year, and celebrate the successes that we’ve had in our collaborations.

And we’ve just been really fortunate to see how much this has transformed over the past four years, from having this barrier of students and units lacking knowledge of what we do or feeling some intimidation of coming to our office, to now having these individuals come in and take photos within our iris booth or having these individuals schedule meetings with us, or send programming requests for us to engage with their students. These individuals being co-sponsors of our fairs, being co-sponsors of brunches that we host with employers so that our students can get a chance to engage with employees before fairs. So we’ve just been really, really thankful for how much this has grown since its inception over four and a half years ago.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, sounds like you’ve got a lot going on.

Larry Jackson:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

I’m sure you stay busy.

Larry Jackson:

We stay very, very busy. Absolutely. And it’s really to just the passion that our partners have shown towards us, and seeing us as really collaborative and positive forces on campus, and really seeing the value that we provide to students. The amount of requests that we get now for programming is almost a third of our requests that come through from campus units. And that’s pretty astronomical. And some of these are small group sessions that happen with students over career planning issues where there’s a little bit more of a high touch personalization to give them a space to process. And some of these are large scale conferences and summits where students get a chance to engage with employers and make connections with fellow students. So none of this would be possible without our partners actually seeing us as allies to their spaces, and seeing us as true partners in the student journey.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s the Career Everywhere concept, right?

Larry Jackson:

Yes, absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. So in our prep call, you mentioned, and you touched on this a little bit, but you mentioned three key things that you all have been doing to help improve this career readiness among your identity-based populations. And the first one you touched on a little, a minute ago, about how you’ve built this liaison model. You’re developing these closer partnerships with equity and inclusion student-facing groups on campus. Can you just tell me a little bit more about what that looks like, what that has entailed, how you built those partnerships?

Larry Jackson:

Sure. So we started off again on a listening tour, really trying to understand what has been the history of engagement with those units with our office. And what we found is that some of them had little engagement, some had no engagement at all. It was the first time learning about us, despite having some proximity to our offices. We are on a very busy street that’s right across the street from our student union, and also across the street from some of our departments that support identity-based populations. And then we had some, really had some strong collaborations. One example of the strong collaborations we had was working with our transfer students and offering a session during their course as a transition to campus, that tells them about our services and developing their resume. So as you can tell, we had a very breadth of different types of people who have never really engaged with us, to people who have engaged with us and saw value.

And what we really wanted to unpack is what are the career-related issues that your students are navigating that they may not come and tell us about? What have been some successful initiatives you’ve worked on to help students with their career readiness? And what can we as an office do better at? What can we do to be better allies here in space? Where we’re not coming in as saviors to replace the work you’re doing or think that you’re not doing it well, but what can we do to show up better? And that led to some very productive conversations that outlined some of the things I mentioned, the desire to make sure that we’re present at different events, the desire to have points of contact to their office that they could connect with, and also to make sure that we’re being inclusive in the way that we represent the work that we do.

And from those conversations, we started to get some true sense of relatability from those campus units saying, “Okay, we’re building trust now and we want to continue this dialogue, and not focus so much on the outcome of getting students in for programs, but continue this dialogue on what can be helpful to better prepare students for their time at Berkeley and beyond.” And then that did result into some programmatic engagements, one of those being integration into the transfer course, one of those being coming to different preparation events or welcome events that those units were hosting, and we could just share who we are and what we do. And also just being able to have impromptu conversations with students at these kind of events, say, “What’s your time at Berkeley been like? What are some things that you are exploring at this time? Are you aware of our office? Is that something that you’ve crossed?”

And really being able to have an honest dialogue and break down any myths or concerns that they have. I would also say, I think, from a visual standpoint, the composition of our staff has changed over the past several years. And I think many campuses have experienced this with staff retiring or staff transitioning to different roles within their institutions, or to the private sector. So as a result of those transitions, we’ve had to hire additional staff, and most of the staff that have been hired have been more reflective of individuals who come through these communities, and have a commitment to supporting students that have these concerns. So I feel that this was all just a dovetailing effect where we’ve been able to see through these conversations, trust was being fostered. But from a visual standpoint, students are saying, “I see staff that look like me.

I see staff that I can come to that are reflective of my experience to share these concerns with.” And I think that helped to engender some support and make students feel more comfortable approaching us. And to this day, we have different entities hosting events, whether it be an open house or just a meeting with their student leaders, inviting us to come and talk about the work that we do. And those are the things that I value, because we know that time is sensitive to the meeting agenda of what students are trying to accomplish, but they feel that our students will benefit from this engagement, because you have already shown a commitment to working with us and we want to introduce you. So that trust and being able to introduce us to other students, in that place, has been really instrumental.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s huge, especially when you’re not in a decentralized model, you depend on partnerships. That’s super cool that you’ve built all of those relationships with those folks across campus. I think that one of the second things you mentioned, that you have been doing, to, again, improve this career readiness, is you’ve adjusted and customized your programming to be a little more personalized, and foster more meaningful engagement for these identity-based populations. Can you talk a little bit about that again, what it entails, what you’ve done, what you’ve seen?

Larry Jackson:

Sure. So there’s been times that we’ve offered some large-scale programming, especially to support identity-based populations, from a diversity career fair that we host annually as the starting point, but then also hosting different summit or conference experiences for students to help with their career exploration and preparation. So when I came in 2019, we were offering a career development summit just prior to this diversity career fair, where students can engage with alumni that look like them from the communities they come from, and get some career preparation tips. Everything from how to build a mentoring relationship with a new contact to steps of being successful within the workplace as a person within your identity. And that builds a momentum of creating additional programming. We moved that into offering a transfer student summit specifically, because we have a high population of transfer students who have many intersectional identities.

And we did that for several years. That had some really positive turnout from students saying, “I’m a transfer student. I’m coming to the summit so I can get a chance to meet with employers and meet with alumni who are also been transfer students.” And one piece of feedback to why we also created this is many of the transfer students felt that they were at a disadvantage with coming in with only two years left to complete their degree, and having to accelerate their application process and career planning process, because there are already students here for two years doing so. So we helped to create that pathway for them to meet with employers and meet with alumni from similar background, so they can actually get some mentorship as well as guidance in the application process. And that’s also led to some first generation efforts as well, where we were hosting a career conference for first generation students, and having first generation alumni come back and talk about their experience in the workplace, and helping students develop career competencies through resumes and mock interviews and other avenues.

And what that’s led to is we realize that students may value having a large scale event, but if you’re just offering one signature event that’s large scale, you still have a lot of other ground to cover throughout the course of a semester. And there’s not every student who can come to these large scale events. So there was a very conscious discussion of how do we create more representation in our programs that we’re offering to students to connect with alumni and employers, so they have multiple touch points, instead of one standalone conference that might be offered each semester. And so that led to actually creating some programs around industry or career preparation topics, and inviting alumni from these communities or employers from these communities to share ideas and feedback. Some notable ones that came to my mind as we talk about this is there was one of professionals of color in the legal field, so that there are students that identify as a person of color being able to see that representation from panelists and learn about next steps, and thinking about how do we be more intentional about having that representation.

We would do alumni chats where there would be individuals within the education or nonprofit sector or in medicine, who come from identity communities to actually share their experience and give students tips. So the representation went from just focusing on one large scale signature event to disseminating it across a series of different events, so there’s more than one touch point for a student. And now it’s evolving more into honoring that presence from alumni or employers from these communities to meet with students and help them. But working collaboratively with these equity and inclusion departments on curating programs together, and less of our office creating them in isolation. And we’ve been able to talk with entities such as our Cal Veterans, talk with entities as our Student Parent Center, and say, “Why don’t we start building some of these career preparation programs together so your students are able to get the benefit in their home space or get exposure to our office with your presence there

So it’s a symbiotic relationship of them being exposed to what you do, what we do, and helping them feel a greater sense of community?” And that’s been really instrumental, because now we’re seeing students come to our office with representatives from those departments there, or us going to their spaces and hosting workshops or satellite appointments with us being there in their space. And we’ve just been really great to see how this has evolved over time from just one large scale program to something that’s more partner aligned, based on the topic being fulfilled, based on what the department is looking for, and working collaboratively on a structure of those sessions where it’s going to be held, so it feels like they have multiple places to go to and not feeling as if they’re only getting it at one venue.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Right. Like you were saying earlier, it’s about that multiple touch points.

Larry Jackson:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

It sounds like you’re trying to bring in more perspectives when you plan these events, which makes sense.

Larry Jackson:

Yes.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay, cool. Well, I want to hit on number three of your three-pronged approach here, which I believe you said was you have some staff development initiatives around equity and inclusion, including, I think, you mentioned making it part of the performance evaluation process. So I would love to hear more about that, again, what that entails, what that looks like, how it’s working.

Larry Jackson:

So what it entailed is that… Actually, midpoint, when I started at my organization, our performance review process went through a change. Initially it was job mastery focused. It was really looking at what goals did you identify? How successful were you in those goals? What kind of outcomes? And they transformed the performance review process to be more values driven. So they still honored job mastery and your goals being accomplished, but they also started to focus on how are you collaborating with other stakeholders? How are you innovating on the work that’s being done? And one of the other additions to this performance management system was talking about inclusion. And inclusion was talked about in terms such as equity and inclusion and identity, but also how are you showing up in spaces? Are you creating a sense of belonging? Are you making people feel they’re part of a greater community?

And during the time that this new performance management system rolled out, we were still in the middle of the pandemic, where they were also talking about the social, racial issues happening within the country. And as a requirement on our campus, professional staff had to complete managing implicit bias series. And the series of trainings were done virtually and had to be completed by all staff by a certain time period. But we felt that that was a good starting point for staff to build their knowledge on things such as microaggressions, how these biases might show up in the hiring process, and also how are they showing up to their colleagues in different spaces, to provide some reflection on what they’re doing. And we thought that this was a prime opportunity to build upon this required training and start thinking about beyond just doing this training that’s mandated by the campus, what can we be doing, as an office, for staff to build this cultural humility and knowledge?

And we started to devise equity and inclusion goals at least one per year. This would be if you participated in a training, if you are building your knowledge development through participation in other activities, if you are working collaboratively with specific identity units to help bring career readiness and support to that population. And we started to factor that into our performance management system. So annually, staff had to develop a goal that was focused on equity and inclusion. And through consultation with the manager, as well as the department head, this led to staff being involved in equity and training series being offered by the institution, or staff participating in Division of Student Affairs trainings, to staff seeking professional association trainings. It also evolved into bringing in consultants and trainers on these topics to our staff meetings. In fact, over the past year alone, we actually established a training schedule where we had facilitators that identified as Chicanx Latinx talking about the challenges and successes of the community in ways to engender support.

Also having individuals from the African-American community doing the same, also having folks that are working with students that might have disabilities, to be able to get knowledge on best practices, supporting students, as well as those students who might be neuro divergent. So everyone… It led to a really good individual and collective training experience where staff would be able to sit in on these trainings with their colleagues or in an all staff meeting or within the division, to learn about these topics and build their cultural humility, or staff would be able to do this individually by identifying a training opportunity or a learning opportunity, or a collaboration with a unit that they haven’t worked with before to best support them. And I think that, again, showing that commitment that these are goals that we established and we’re sticking to it, has been able to shape the progress we’ve made with our E&I partners on campus.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, that’s really cool. It reminds me of a phrase I have often heard working in tech, which is like what gets measured matters. It sounds like that’s how y’all are really making this a focus for your team.

Larry Jackson:

Absolutely. In fact, now that we’re in a stage of seeing what we’ve been able to accomplish and what next, that has led to us reshaping our vision and our mission as an office, and our vision and mission has become much more Career Everywhere. On our vision statement, at the spirit of it, it’s establishing an ecosystem across campus where career support, it can be provided to students so they feel a sense of forward progression. And our mission has been focused on creating resources and services that provide equitable access. And we look at these things through our lens now when we’re procuring new resources for our office, when we are looking at service delivery models for students, to make sure that every student has the ability to engage in these opportunities, and it’s not excluding anyone. So we’re constantly in a place of building upon what we’ve created to make sure that it’s something that’s meeting the need to students now and for the future.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I love that. That’s really interesting. And I love that you use the word ecosystem. Because I have heard that come up over and over again in these podcast interviews when it comes to implementing Career Everywhere, that it’s really about engaging the entire ecosystem outside of the walls of the career center, everyone on campus, off campus, parents, employers, alumni, everybody has a potential role they can play in career readiness.

Larry Jackson:

Absolutely. And one of the things that… I’m glad you mentioned parents, one of the things that we’ve been very cognizant of over the past several years is making sure that we’re present at yield events, events where students have applied to Berkeley and they’re still discerning, do they want to come here or they want to go to another institution? And in a campus like ours that’s so diverse and also really has a lot of strong student identity, they are offering events that cut across multiple identity areas during this cycle. And we’ve been part of those activities at resource fairs by engaging with parents and prospective students about the services we provide. We’re actually stepping into one next weekend, where it’s going to be engaging with our newly admitted transfer students and their parents, which cuts across many identity areas. But we’ve done this with our multicultural student services entities on campus to be present at their senior weekends, be present at their resource fairs, to talk with students about what we provide as an office and what kind of things that we support them with, and also share with them some of our own journey.

One of my fondest memories is every time we have… And I know I’m switching topics when I share this. Every fall semester, we’ve been involved in our new student orientation, those students who have decided to coming to Berkeley and they’ve matriculated, and they’re getting familiarized with the campus. And we host a presentation during this new student orientation to educate students about our services. And one of my fondest memories was actually including transferred student who was African-American in our presentation and talking with students afterwards about, “This is what my experience has been as a transfer, and this is what some things that as an employee at BCE, what they’ve helped me navigate.

These are some things that can help you as you’re doing your time here at Berkeley.” And to have that captive audience of almost 1500 students, and sharing that testimonial, just tells me the impact that we’re able to make upon a person, and how much that can spread to more communities. So we’ve been really proud that we’ve been able to see opportunities for engagement to provide that personalized touch, that allows students to make a referral and say, “I’ve worked with such and such, or I came to this event, you should go check it out too.” And that’s been really rewarding to see.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, I can imagine. And that’s how you spread the word, right? I would think for students, it means maybe even a little more coming from a peer, a fellow student saying, “Hey, have you checked out the career center?”

Larry Jackson:

Absolutely. In fact, right now, we just wrapped up our hiring for student employees that are career ambassadors to our office, that help students with drop in appointments on resumes and quick tips for career planning. And this is the most diverse composition of students that I’ve seen evolve over the past four and a half years, where we have students from these communities sharing that knowledge and support with students that are from their identities and others. So this is another thing that we’ve been proud of, is how we’ve expanded representation with our student employees. So students not only have a point of contact to our office, that’s a peer, but can eventually see themselves working in our office, and has an outlet for employment themselves. And that’s something that’s really powerful.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, for sure. It’s a snowball effect.

Larry Jackson:

Exactly.

Meredith Metsker:

They start seeing people who look like them in their career center, they feel more comfortable going there. Maybe they’re like, “I want to do that. I want to help other people.”

Larry Jackson:

Absolutely. We just had a reception yesterday for our graduating career peers, and the supervisor for the career peer actually made a comment to one of them that I remember when I worked with you on a one-on-one appointment last year. And I said, “You’d be great for our career peer program, you should apply.” And she became a career peer, and now she’s graduating. And she feels so much more empowered and enthused going back home. So these are the things that are just irreplaceable.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. So it keeps us all on the game.

Larry Jackson:

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay. Well, I want to touch on something you just said, which is how you balance all of this. Because I know UC Berkeley is massive, as we said, about 42,000 students, and you’re the only career center. So I’m curious, how does your team balance supporting so many students with also providing that personalized customized programming for your identity-based populations?

Larry Jackson:

Sure. That’s a great question. And one of the things that I think we’ve been really consistent in doing is trying to streamline efficiencies as much as we can. So there’s always going to be some external outreach that happens through every career services enterprise, from your department, from a student organization, employers, et cetera. And on a campus our size, where we’re the only office, we are responsible for being able to support those requests. And one of the conscious approaches that we’ve taken with career education is being able to see what are the similarities in these requests? Are these entities that are working collaboratively, or at least they’ve had familiarity with each other and say, “Maybe we should all work together collectively on this instead of offering individual programs that might only meet a certain subset of student.” And I think that’s helped considerably. And also focusing on what do we see as high-quality programming versus high-volume programming. Prior to my start, the team was offering, I know at least well over 500 programs a year. At least.

Meredith Metsker:

Wow.

Larry Jackson:

And when we are, across the staff of 18 career educators, offering over 500 programs, wow, that’s a lot. Right? And now we’ve gotten this down to approximately 320 programs a year across a considerable same number of staff. But we also notice that student attendance at programs has increased with that reduction, which, at many times, you don’t see that level of attendance increase when there’s a reduction. And that’s just a testament to the fact of working collaboratively with units and devising programs together, as well as streamlining requests when that’s possible. Because it creates a higher yield for participation, and it also creates more personalization when we say, “Let’s work to these things collaboratively.” So that’s how we’ve been able to help manage some of the influx that’s happening. We still get high volume requests at peak times in a year, such as fall recruiting, or individuals that are about to [inaudible 00:37:49] spring break and are trying to get started with their last minute job search.

I think this is something that’s par for the course across many institutions that they have to navigate. But as we look at these things, we’ve also been creative and saying, “Well, what can we do that’s going to meet the student where they’re at?” And one, in addition to just doing individual programming, another thing that we’ve leveraged is being able to expand our digital media presence. So now some of our staff are curating content that’s focused on the career preparation process by including alumni or including employers, and including current students, to talk about best practices or tips as a student goes through this application period for whatever they’re applying to. And I think that’s helped create an additional reach for students, because it doesn’t make you feel like it’s confined to just one program at one time, but being able to click on this content and get some information to help with their career planning journey.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. Yeah, I totally resonate with that. That’s been a big focus for us here at uConnect this past year or so, is creating easier ways to get that curated content for different affinity and identity groups or career groups, and make it super easy to just funnel that into your web presence.

Larry Jackson:

Totally.

Meredith Metsker:

So I can totally relate to that.

Larry Jackson:

Thank you for saying that. And I’ll share too, that our digital media presence has been a journey. It’s definitely expanded over the past several years of me being a part of the office. And one thing that I think that helped to start that is having a very talented [inaudible 00:39:31] person who is so gifted in marketing and digital presence, to be willing to take this on as a responsibility within our office. So she’s been phenomenal in helping to create a strategy and content that really engages students and campus partners. And I think another part of this has just been some of the content that she’s created. I think what’s helped is there’s been acknowledgement of different types of identity-based celebrations and [inaudible 00:39:59] That’s been part of our content strategy, to help students feel, “Oh, I feel seen. I feel respected, I can connect with the content that’s produced.”

And some of the things that I remember happening over the past several years is acknowledgments in women’s history month by spot lighting some of the female identified individuals within our office, to share a little bit of their career journey, being able to have staff from different identities share a little bit about themselves and separate posts about what they do, being able to have students from identity populations share tips with other students going through that. I know that that’s helped influence the traction that we have with our digital presence, and that it’s also engendered some support from campus partners, where they feel we can refer you to their office because see, this is some of the content and some of the things they work on. You’ll be in good hands.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. I could not agree more. That’s our philosophy too, and why uConnect built our virtual career center platform product is because career content and career resources is so important. And you all work so hard to curate it and acquire it, that it needs to be available 24/7. It can’t just be something that’s available nine-to-five in the career center.

Larry Jackson:

Absolutely. And we’ve been… To stand upon that, we’ve been very fortunate to work with some business affiliates who have helped with expanding our reach that aligns with our mission, whether that be students trying to get project-based experience, students that need help with interview preparation, students that need help with strengthening their resume, all of these being on-demand resources 24/7, that they can utilize. And I just couldn’t feel more fortunate to have these resources because that just aligns with the mission of access and opportunity, because this work can take place outside the nine-to-five business hours.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Could not agree more. You’ve touched on a few of the results you’ve seen, including that attendance has gone up, even though the number of events has gone down. But I’m curious, what other results, qualitative or quantitative, have you seen since you’ve started implementing these programs to improve career readiness?

Larry Jackson:

I think what’s been so great is just seeing the wonder of students when they come to us and they realize, “Wow, this was really helpful.” Our net promoter score of student appointments as well above 95% across the entire office, which shows that students receive really good experience when they come to me for one-on-one appointments. And likewise, looking at the attendance for our programming that we offer, it’s positive to see students coming to those events, because clearly if there wasn’t any interest, students wouldn’t come. So I think that those key metrics have just been reassuring for us. On the qualitative side, it’s usually hearing some feedback from students directly about how helpful a particular staff, person or our office has been with their journey, whether that be reporting that they got an offer to one of their career educators and saying, “You’ve been so helpful in my preparation, thank you so much.”

Or if it’s been something that students been willing to share on our digital media about what the process has been like with them, and how our office has helped. So I just love that qualitative feedback from students, because it’s reassuring that our efforts are really fruitful. I would say on the partner side, with our campus units, the fact that they keep re-engaging with us, the fact that they’re reaching out to us and say, “Hey, can you provide this programming?” Or, “Hey, we’re thinking satellite appointments, what do you think? We want you to be able to be a part of this.”

Or, “Hey, we’re looking at different funding opportunities for our office and career components is one of that. We’d love your signature because of the work that you do.” These are things that are the intangibles, show that they see the value in the work that we’ve been able to support them with. Likewise, being able for them to say, “Thank you for hosting this space for us to come and share and celebrate,” every time that we have a meeting or a joint program with them. I feel that that that sense of community is really helpful in just knowing the impact, instead of just focusing solely on the metrics.

Meredith Metsker:

Right. Yeah. It’s that qualitative feedback that really just makes you want to keep going.

Larry Jackson:

Yes. Absolutely.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah.

Larry Jackson:

Absolutely. I think about reflecting on… And this is the first time we held our campus partner open house for our equity and inclusion partners. First time we’ve ever hosted this. And to have over 14 departments join this space, and representatives send emails for gratitude right afterwards saying, “Thank you so much. It was so great to commune with you all. Really appreciate this partnership.” These are things that we are so grateful for because, one, they didn’t have to come. And two, they really expressed how helpful this time has been and want to continue dialogue and collaboration. It gives them something to look forward to. There’s been other touch points between having events where their student populations are the composition of engagement with employers that have been fruitful. These are the tangibles that we look at that go, “We’re so happy that you see us as trusted allies and partners, and we want to continue to make sure we do right by it.”

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. That’s so cool. Kudos to you all for all that amazing work.

Larry Jackson:

Thank you. Thank you. Really, really appreciate it.

Meredith Metsker:

Well, I want to be mindful of our time here, because somehow we’re already almost at time, so I’ll start wrapping us up, but is there any other advice that you have for other career services leaders who want to do what you’re doing, they want to improve career readiness with their identity-based student populations?

Larry Jackson:

Yes, actually I do. The first thing that comes to my mind is listen, first and most. Listen. It’s important to be able to meet with equity and inclusion units and identity-based populations, and not come from a solution standpoint of how you’ll help and how you save. But to truly understand the issues impacting these communities and ask, “What are ways that we can provide support or walk this journey with you? What would be ways that we show up that will establish this trust and support?” That’s first and foremost, because equity and inclusion is a relational start, and then we can move into more of the systemic. The second is being very thoughtful and strategic about your… Strategic about what things you want to implement at the organization level to demonstrate your commitment. I reflect on something, or one of the consultants that we’ve had presented to us said to us, “Is your work an interest or is it commitment?”

And it always resonates to me when that individual stated it. Because the commitment means that you are actively pursuing excellence and understanding, as well as holding yourselves accountable to creating structures and opportunities where people feel that support and can get that support, and making sure that your policies and practices align with those things. So make sure you examine what you’ve done structurally to create equity and access for students and for campus units that have marginalized identities. That’s very, very important. And then I would also say the third thing is that don’t expect success overnight. It’s not going to happen.

You have to celebrate, I would say, the small wins as they come along. But it is really a journey. Because building relationship is always a journey. It doesn’t happen instantaneously. And seeing results doesn’t happen instantaneously either, but that’s where the commitment comes back in. You have to keep moving forward and display this commitment and work on yourself, and work as an office, and work on training, and work on education so that it shows that you’re trying to become your best in order to do your best. So continue that journey because that’s a long-standing. If you throw in the towel, it really just shows that it was a lack of interest. So stay the course.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. And can you say that phrase again?

Larry Jackson:

Which part?

Meredith Metsker:

Did you say it’s not an interest, it’s a commitment?

Larry Jackson:

Yes. It’s not an interest, it’s a commitment. And this is not personally that came from me. I want to give credit to where credit’s due. We had an external facilitator that shared this with us, so I did not create this. But it was such a poignant comment asking us, “Is this an interest or a commitment?” So I didn’t create this, but it really narrows down that you have to be committed to this work, and it has to be a long-term, lifetime commitment, and that’s really where the traction is going to happen. Make sure you commit and don’t just display a passing interest.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, absolutely. For sure. Well, Larry, is there anything else about our topic today that you would like to add before I start wrapping us up?

Larry Jackson:

I just want to thank you so much again for creating this opportunity to share our journey as an office, and hopefully provide some inspiration and opportunity for individuals, and their own offices to start to create this traction with our students that need it the most. So thank you, again, and I really hope that everyone that’s been listening has found this beneficial.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah, of course. I’m so glad to have you. And 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?

Larry Jackson:

Yes, feel free to reach out to me via LinkedIn. I do have a LinkedIn account. I highly, highly prefer that individuals send me a personalized message. Unfortunately, I’ll share that I’m not an open LinkedIn networker because I really value the relationships that I build with community members. So if you’re interested in connecting, please send me a personalized message, and I look forward to the interaction and hope that we have the opportunity to chat more.

Meredith Metsker:

Okay, great. Yeah, and I will be sure to include a link to Larry’s LinkedIn profile for those of you who are listening or watching. Okay. So Larry, to wrap us up at the end of every interview, I do this, answer a question, leave a question thing.

Larry Jackson:

Okay.

Meredith Metsker:

I’ll ask you a question that our last guest left for you, and then you’ll leave a question for the next guest.

Larry Jackson:

Okay.

Meredith Metsker:

So our last guest was Rebecca Pare of Pare Consulting, and she left this question for you. What’s one thing you’re most proud of in your work as a career services leader?

Larry Jackson:

Wow. Making an individual and collective impact. That’s what I’m most proud of. On the individual, I’ve had the opportunity to support students in coaching, had the opportunity to mentor and guide and support staff and their development. On the collective, being able to help shape the strategy and operations of a unit as well as an office. So being able to see the impact in both of those endeavors.

Meredith Metsker:

I love that. That’s really cool. All right. So what question would you like to leave for the next guest?

Larry Jackson:

My question for the next guest is, what keeps you up at night related to your career or your day-to-day work, and how do you address it?

Meredith Metsker:

Ooh, thought-provoking one, I like it.

Larry Jackson:

Thank you.

Meredith Metsker:

Cool. Well, I’m excited to hear the answer to that one.

Larry Jackson:

Me too.

Meredith Metsker:

Yeah. Well, Larry, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast today. This was such an interesting conversation with tons of, I just think, fascinating nuggets that I’m sure are listeners and our viewers will take a lot from. So just thank you very much for sharing your time and your expertise today.

Larry Jackson:

Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.