by By Nelly Leon, Florida International University
My career history stems from the trenches as a mid-level professional that survived the economic crisis of 2008. I’m not a senior leader nor a thought leader in the career services profession, but a passionate career coach with 12 years of career services experience working in the private and public higher education sector. It is no doubt that we have entered uncertain times due to COVID-19. It’s not something I and most of us have witnessed during our lifetime. We are managing through the emotional toll of a pandemic with personal and professional challenges while witnessing our students, colleagues, family and friends losing jobs and/or internships. Something that sounds all too familiar for me.
With this said, I begin my career development journey at a for-profit university in 2007 and shortly right after, the economic crisis of 2008 began. I was lucky to have remained in my position as a Senior Career Advisor for several years before I knew I might be next on the chopping block, most likely due to the ramifications of the crisis. After 2008, I was witness to the overall down spiral of career centers’ struggle to provide connections and opportunities for students. Career fairs’ employer registrations dwindled, jobs and internships postings decreased, and employers stopped calling our office to recruit students. To add more salt to the wound, enrollment at my for-profit university decreased over the years and this caused an impact in the workforce. Many of my colleagues in the career office and other departments unfortunately fell victim to the impact of these challenging times. I knew my head would most likely be next on the chopping block, and I made the decision to find greener and more secure pastures. I was lucky to find and accept an offer at Florida International University in Career & Talent Development and that today, I am proud to say is my “work” home!
Here we are, 12 years later after the economic crisis of 2008 and I find myself having flashbacks. To keep up with the latest information in our profession, I am feverishly registering for the NACE Town Hall sessions, the Vision Chats and with Johns Hopkins and other sessions that pop up. It’s something many of us are doing to keep up with the employment and hiring updates. According to the latest National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) polls, the employer poll shows “65% of recruiting offices are not changing their staffing levels, though 10% have laid off staff while 9% have furloughed staff”. According to another survey released by Yello, a staffing platform, “more than one-third of students who had confirmed internship offers for the summer said those opportunities were subsequently canceled, according to a survey of 900 students.”
We are faced with similar challenges now as we did back in 2008 but as I experience the stress and anxiety of the unknown I refer to learned lessons from that time in search of strategies to move forward. Working within the trenches as a mid-level professional gave me an opportunity to learn through trial and error how to navigate uncertain times in our profession. It was critical to the success of the career center to work side by side with my leadership and colleagues, being open to all ideas as novice as they could be so that we could adapt to this “new reality”. As I reflect on those days, there are three takeaways from the last economic crisis that stay with me today. I find them essential to keep our career centers thriving and to support and promote student career success:
Adaptability
Adjusting to new conditions is critical.
During the crisis of 2008 while at my previous university, I had to work more with less resources and people on the team. Becoming a “jack of all trades” in the career office provided exposure and helped me to learn “employer relations” and “career event planning”. My position as Senior Career Advisor was no longer specialized in student development. Our office strategy changed where the employment outcomes metrics were emphasized more than ever. There was more emphasis on calling students to match them up to opportunities that were available and less career fair planning. Programmatic efforts that involved faculty and co-curricular partnerships were born. An example of this was a partnership with the local Toastmasters Chapter in the community and increased membership with new student and alumni participants. We saw the value of providing tools to build the students mock interviewing and networking skills at the time.
Another setback was less funding for professional development. This meant that I would need to take ownership and find ways to identify and seek professional development on my own. With a professional development budget disseminated I began to research “free” professional development opportunities and read articles and research from NACE and other professional associations to stay updated. My resourceful instincts to identify at no cost professional development opportunities have kicked in again during COVID-19 and I prowl NACE, SoACE, LinkedIn and all related announcements to register for sessions that will help me to stay up to date.
Nurturing Relationships
Employer calls and emails dwindled for on campus recruitment. We are facing this today with several industries. It became clear that “grass roots” campaigning would be key to building and nurturing employer relationships. Emails were replaced with personalized phone calls and “company drop in visits”. A box of doughnuts or give away items can go a long way when nurturing relationships! We reached out to our employer contacts that we had great relationships to “keep in touch”. Sending holidays cards and semesterly check-ins were a common routine in our office with employers. Economic downturns are cyclical. It was a matter of time (who knew it would take several years!) before the market would get better. It paid off that we had nurtured relationships with our most valued employers, because when the market improved, they contacted us again to recruit on campus!
We stayed in touch with recent graduates and alumni to find out if they were hiring so that we could generate new employment leads. To further attract alumni, the Career Office partnered with the Alumni Association to launch a social alumni event and maintain a connection with our Alumni. Again, when the market improved our alumni payed it forward and alerted us with new job and/or internship postings!
Faculty and campus partner relationships were also nurtured and were a source for new company leads, as well. Nurturing faculty relationships also provided access to the classroom for workshops and forged partnerships with academic partners that would result in company visits and an employer advisory board on campus. Today I follow the same recipe for nurturing employer, faculty and campus partner relationships. I send bi-weekly email communication to the staff and faculty in my college to alert them of virtual career events, internships and employment opportunities. Our team is reaching out to employers to invite them to present with our staff in career development workshops and we are launching the Career Partner Training sessions this summer to recruit campus stakeholders to be career advocates on behalf of our office.
Creativity
Thinking outside the box helped me survive and keep my previous job during the last economic crisis. I was fortunate that my leadership was supportive in accepting new initiatives and we depended on each other to create new ideas to continue the university and career office mission. I think the same is true at this moment. We have to find innovating new ways to service our students, employers and our very own colleagues.
From my own experience in Career & Talent Development at Florida International University, it was encouraging to see our team work together to successfully transition our programming to a virtual environment during the first week of remote work. From professional development workshops, individual appointment sessions, a virtual drop-in service, employer information sessions and all other related activities, basically our full operations transitioned overnight. We are fortunate that we have Zoom and Microsoft Teams access to continue communication (sometimes overcommunication!) and enable our large career team to be on the same page. We are providing new opportunities for students through virtual drop in hours, micro-internships, virtual paid internships and creating “outside of the box” programming to help build their networking and skills development. The employer engagement team has updated the virtual /remote internship policy to ensure opportunities are legitimate and follow NACE guidelines. We should continue to generate new initiatives, resources and programmatic efforts to meet our students needs during these challenging times and to help the employers that will hire them.
In my final thoughts, the lessons learned from the past economic crisis can help us overcome these uncertain times. As It was for me in the past, it is true at this moment that adaptability, relationship building, and creativity are the main drivers that in my opinion will help us continue our mission to serve students achieve career success. Of course, there’s other skills and strategies that are critical, but these stand out to me the most. In a time where we don’t know when normalcy will return or if we’ll get back to how things were prior to COVID-19, we can always reflect on our experience for insight and/or inspiration. I am personally fueled by the resilience of the past and the passion for the work I see as essential. For inspiration I turn to Maya Angelou’s motivating words, “No what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow”.
Nelly Leon is the Assistant Director of Career Development for the School of International Public Affairs at Florida International University. She is a Higher Education professional with 10+ years student development experience in career coaching, program development and employer relations. Nelly earned her Master’s degree in Higher Education Administration from Barry University. Nelly coaches the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs graduate students and alumni and serves as the employer relations liaison to her assigned college.
All SoACE Members are welcome to submit potential blog posts to Leslie Walton at lwalton@utk.edu
